History was regarded as a very dangerous subject which could not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. The Historical Museum was also in a state of continuous upheaval as different historical figures were reassessed. Captions had to be adjusted, verdicts reversed, exhibits withdrawn and replaced.[1]
In simple terms, the Cultural Revolution condemned tradition - most notably Confucianism - as ‘backward’, and it reversed any sense of hierarchy (even between parents and their children), placing peasants instead at the core of society, from whom intellectuals and others were supposed to learn. Similarly, in Canada today, as many abandon ‘the Western tradition’, our schools, museums and universities turn to learn from Indigenous Peoples, thus making history “a very dangerous subject.”
[1] See the memoir by Frances Wood, Hand-grenade Practice in Peking: My Part in the Cultural Revolution (London: Slightly Foxed, 2015), pp. 157,158. See also Konrad Yakabuski, “National Gallery Mess shows what happens when decolonization goes awry.” The Globe and Mail, 16 December 2022.
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