Qingshi jishi benmo 淸史紀事本末

Qingshi jishi benmo 淸史紀事本末 "Topically arranged history of the Qing dynasty" is a narrative history book about the Qing dynasty 清 (1644-1911) written by the Republican historian Huang Hongshou 黃鴻壽 xxx. The 80-juan long book is written in the style of jishi benmo 紀事本末-type histories and follows the example of the Zuozhuan jishi benmo 左傳紀事本末 which is a re-writing of an already existing chronicle, the Zuozhuan 左傳.

The book is relatively short (400,000 characters) regarding the many historical events it narrates. It drew from only a few sources, like the official chronicle Donghualu 東華錄. Huang's argument to do so was that earlier history books of the type had used private sources which were not always reliable. In contrast to such a practice, the official chronicle Donghualu provided officially accepted material on history.

Huang critically revised ancient views on history, like the mythological origin of the Manchus from three celestial fairies, or the illegality of the three Southern Ming 南明 (1644-1661) emperors. He also stressed the importance of diplomatic relations (with tribute states in East and Southeast Asia, and European countries), administrative history, and philosophical discourses, and thus went beyond the pure narration of historical events. He also asserted that rebellions among the people were caused by errors in policy (baodong duo you zhengzhi wei liang 暴動多由政治之未良), and not just disobedience.

Following the paradigms of the books Zuoshi jishi benmo, Huang added a summary at the end of each chapter.

Nan Bingwen 南炳文 (b. 1942) and Bai Xinliang 白新良 compiled a book with the same title, arranged in ten long chapters corresponding to the reign-periods, but much longer (c. 3 million characters). It was published by the Shanghai University Press (Shanghai daxue chubanshe 上海大學出版社) in 2006.