Recapping the World History Seminar “Virtue at the Dawn of Modern Capitalism: Richard Price’s Idea of Prudence and How Numbers and Finance Became Moral (1750-1790)” on 20 March 2025

Prof. Jacob Soll from the University of Southern California was invited by the Department of History and the Department of Economics to give a talk entitled “Virtue at the Dawn of Modern Capitalism: Richard Price’s Idea of Prudence and How Numbers and Finance Became Moral (1750-1790)” on 20 March 2025. In this talk, he traced the changing discourse of prudence, one of the four cardinal virtues, by examining works by Richard Price and his contemporaries.

The talk started with Renaissance Italy when the virtue of prudence was depicted as a two-head female figure incarnating the carefulness of individuals. Machiavelli, the philosopher of classical republicanism, interpreted prudence as a manly and daring virtue of managing a state properly. After Machiavelli, Enlightenment authors like Jacques Savary, Roger North and Daniel Defoe added a capitalist tinge to prudence by suggesting financial management as a means to achieve this virtue. Richard Price, commonly known as a moral philosopher in the Enlightenment, explicitly advocated financial activities such as accounting, insurance, and debt management as elements of prudence in his “Two Tracts on Civil Liberty”.

Prof. Soll uncovered both Price’s deep involvement in the insurance industry and his connection with his nephew William Morgan, an actuary. Price’s new definition aroused a backlash from Edmund Burke, who condemned it as immoral. By tracing the relation between the virtue of prudence and worldly activities of finance, Prof. Soll illuminated the development of capitalist ideology in the eighteenth century.

Recapping the Academic Seminar “Reflections on Historical Research: My Insights into the Study of Modern Chinese History” on 25 March 2025

Prof. Lu Fang-sang, from the Republic of China History and Culture Society, and Prof. Chen Hongmin, from the Research Center for Chiang Kai-shek and Modern China, Zhejiang University, delivered an academic seminar entitled “Reflections on Historical Research: My Insights into the Study of Modern Chinese History” on 25 March 2025 at CUHK.

Prof. Lu Fang-sang started with a short history of the Institute of Modern History in the Academia Sinica. Until the 1950s, the Institute of History and Philosophy was the single and also most prominent organization within the Academia Sinica for the studies of history. The idea of creating one more organization studying modern Chinese history was met with suspicion and opposition. However, the support of the senior administration of the Academia Sinica, the Cold War impact and the personal effort of Kuo Ting-yee finally led to the establishment of the Institute of Modern History. Initially, the research paradigm of the Institute of Modern Chinese History was a combination of J.K. Fairbank’s “challenge-response” problematics and modernization theory that was active in the 1950s and 1960s. Part of the reasons was that many Taiwan historians were trained in the US. However, as the modernization theory became outdated by the late 1970s, Taiwan historians were looking for new paradigms. After the 1980s, the drastic democratization of Taiwan also led to drastic changes in the study of modern Chinese history. The history of Taiwan became a popular and politically-charged field. Meanwhile, Taiwan historians were also attracted by the New Cultural History in Western historiography. Prof. Lu concluded by warning against one-sided reliance on theories and paradigms. To him, nothing beats the joy of discovering stories through reading tedious archives.

Prof. Chen Hongmin told an interesting story of his life as a historian. He entered the field of history more or less at random. Yet the randomness was shaped by macro-history. Were not the Cultural Revolution brought to an end and university education resumed, he would have spent the rest of his life as a factory technician. Once he started his postgraduate study, he was made to choose either the Taiping Rebellion or the Republic of History as his specialization. He chose the latter and step by step established himself as an expert of Chiang Kai-shek. Prof. Chen believes that historical research requires extra effort and the continuous discovery of more historical materials. In addition, the application of theory is also an important way to improve research quality. Theories not only help historians deepen the understanding of their existing research, but also open directions for new research topics. At the end of his presentation, Prof. Chen emphasized the importance of choosing a good research topic. A good historical research topic requires good historical materials, good methods, and the topic should be innovative. Taking Zhejiang University’s four criteria for evaluating academic topics as an example, Prof. Chen proposed that an excellent research topic should have four characteristics. Firstly, it should be cutting-edge, that is, the topic must be a frontier topic in the international academic community. Secondly, it should be international, which means that it must be able to have a dialogue with international scholars. Thirdly, a good topic should have practical significance. And finally, a good topic should be able sustainable for ongoing study. He believes that the choice of research topics can also reflect a scholar’s academic ability.

Interdisciplinary Reading Group: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Early China

Thanks for the generous sponsorship from the Research Institute for the Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a group of postgraduate students from the Departments of History, and Chinese Language and Literature have formed a reading group on “An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Early China”. A series of reading sessions throughout the 2024-25 academic year will be held. Each session will invite scholars from around the world who are engaged in the study of Early China to share their research insights, and with communication between the members of reading group.

The details of the upcoming session are as follows:

For any inquiries, please contact the organisers, Ms. HO Wing Yan (winniehwy@link.cuhk.edu.hk) or Mr. CHENG Kui Wa (kuiwacheng@link.cuhk.edu.hk).

Workshops for the First-Year RPg Students 2024-25

For enquiry, please call 3943 7448.

World History Seminar (2024-25)

Organizer: Centre for Comparative and Public History, Department of History, CUHK
Enquiry: 3943 8541

1st Annual Graduate Student International Colloquium

Our department is pleased to announce its 1st Annual Online Graduate Student International Colloquium. Themed “Trends, Issues, and Problems”, the event is organized by our graduate students for graduate students.

Providing a new platform for MA, MPhil, PhD, and recently graduated researchers to share their innovative research ideas and findings, the event also provides opportunity to engage in critical discussions regarding the current state of Southeast Asian and Chinese historical studies.

For more information, please visit our website: https://www.history.cuhk.edu.hk/newsarticle/agsic-1.

For teachers and students who have information to share with the Department, please email your articles in both Chinese and English to chanfiona@cuhk.edu.hk by 4:00pm every Monday.