Autobiography and history, 1600-1930 (continued)

This latest series of lectures on the theme of "autobiography and history" was mainly devoted to two texts dealing with the very last years of the Qing dynasty, on the eve of the 1911 revolution: the professional autobiography of a modest magistrate named Liu Duanfen 劉端芬, who practiced in Sichuan between 1908 and 1911 and whose text, written in 1914, was published in 1921 under the title Huan Shu jilüe 宦蜀紀略 (brief account of my career in Sichuan) ; and the youthful recollections of hydraulic engineer Li Yizhi 李儀祉 (1882-1938), written in 1926 or 1927 and first published in 1956 under the title Zigong 自供 (Confessions). Two testimonies that tell us a great deal about the political and social transformations that took place at the very end of the imperial period in regions far from the country's vital centers, Sichuan and Shaanxi.