Chang Erh-t'ien (17 March 1874-15 February 1945), traditional scholar and university professor, was noted for his historical studies, including his contributions to the Ch'ing-shih kao, the provisional history of the Ch'ing dynasty published in 1928, and his studies of Mongol history.

A native of Ch'ient'ang, Chekiang, Chang Erh-t'ien came from a prominent family which had produced a long line of scholar-officials. As a youth he studied under several well-known scholars and at an early age acquired a reputation for his literary style. After purchasing the rank of student in the Imperial Academy, he took and passed the chü-jen examinations in the metropolitan prefecture of Shun-t'ien. His first post was that of a secretary of the Board of Punishments. In the final years of the Ch'ing dynasty he was made prefect of a district in Kiangsu.

After the overthrow of the Manchus and the establishment of the republic early in 1912, Chang, as a loyalist, withdrew from office and went into retirement, devoting himself to study and writing. A dedicated Confucian traditionalist, he became a member of the Confucian Association, a group founded early in 1913 by K'ang Yu-wei's disciple Ch'en Huan-chang to promote Confucianism as the state religion of China. Chang was a regular contributor to the K'ung-chiao-hui tsa-chih [magazine of the Confucian society]. During these years, Chang took strong exception to the writings of such doctrinal "liberals" as Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (q.v.), whose ideas he sought to refute in a small volume, the Hsin-hsueh shang-tui [discussions on the new school of thought]. He also wrote several articles upholding the values of traditional scholarship. These were published in th e newspaper Ta Kung Pao and in the scholarly magazine Hsueh-heng {see Wu Mi).

Although a scholar of the classics and of Buddhism, Chang Erh-t'ien's major interest was in the history of China. In this field his principal models for the writing of history were representatives of the Eastern Chekiang (Chetung) school of the Ch'ing period, particularly Chang Hsueh-ch'eng (ECCP, I, 38-41). In 1911 he published the Shih-wei [historical trifles], in which he attempted to revive and develop Chang Hsueh-ch'eng's broad approach to historiography. This work established Chang's reputation as a scholar in both China and Japan. Another historical work for which Chang was noted was his study of the T'ang dynasty poet Li Shang-yin (c. 813-858). In the Ch'ing dynasty several scholars had studied the life of Li Shang-yin, whose literary name was Yu-cb'i-sheng, but had failed to agree on the chronology of certain events mentioned in his poetry. Having collated the notes of these scholars, Chang published his own work in 1917 as the Yu-cK'i-sheng nien-p'u hui-chien [collected notes on the chronology of Yuch'i-sheng]. Meanwhile, when the Ch'ing-shih-kuan [office for the compilation of the Ch'ing history] was established by Yuan Shih-k'ai in September 1914, Chao Erh-sun (q.v.), the editor in chief of the project, invited Chang Erh-t'ien to serve as senior compiler, a position he held until 1921. During these seven years Chang completed the compilation of several sections of the Ch'ing history, including the Yueh-chih [treatise on music], the Hsing-fa chih [treatise on law], the section on Kiangsu province in the Ti-li chih [treatise on geography], the joint biography of Tuhai (ECCP, II, 784) and Li Chih-fang, and the Hou-fei chuan [biographies of the empresses and imperial concubines]. With the publication of the Ch'ing-shih kao [provisional history of the Ch'ing dynasty] in 1928, it was found that many last-minute alterations had been made, some of which seriously impaired the meaning of the original draft. Among the sections so altered was the Hou-fei chuan. Since Chang attached great importance to this section, which he regarded as representative of both his literary talent and his historical method, he published his original version in 1929. A number of Chang's contemporaries shared his political convictions and his scholarly interests. Among these were Wang Kuo-wei (q.v.) and the Confucianist Sun Te-ch'ien ( 1 869-1 935 ; T. I-an) , who together with Chang were known at one time as the Hai-shang santzu [three gentlemen of the literary world]. Chang was also a friend of the former scholarofficial Shen Tseng-chih (1850-1922; T. Tzup'ei) and was among the scholars whom Shen invited in 1915 to help him compile a revised edition of the history of his native province, the Che-chiang t'ung-chih [gazetteer of Chekiang]. Shen was a noted student of Mongol history, and at his death he left behind several unpublished works in this field. In the following decade Chang collated and published a number of these manuscript works, the most important being the Meng-ku yuan-liu chien-cheng [notes on the origins of the Mongols] , the Man-shu chiao-pu [supplement to the history of the Mongol dynasty], and the Yuan-ch'ao mi-shih chu [notes on the inner history of the Mongol dynasty]. Probably as a result of his association with Shen Tseng-chih, Chang Erh-t'ien became interested in the histories of the Liao, Chin, and Yuan dynasties. He turned to the work of the great Ch'ing scholar Ch'ien Ta-hsin (ECCP, I, 152-55), who had pioneered in the study of this field, and prepared the Ch'ien Ta-hsin hsueh-an [teachings of Ch'ien Ta-hsin], a critical evaluation of Ch'ien's thought. This study was later incorporated into the Ch'ing-ju hsueh-an [teachings of the scholars of the Manchu dynasty], compiled under the direction of Hsu Shihch'ang (q.v.). In the years following 1921, Chang Erh-t'ien served successively as professor of Chinese history at several colleges and universities, including National Peking University, Peking Teachers' College, National Political College in Woosung, and Kuang-hua University in Shanghai. His final post was at Yenching University in Peiping, where he first taught in the department of Chinese and later assumed tutorial responsibilities for the Harvard-Yenching Institute. During the Sino-Japanese war of 1937-45, Chang appears to have remained in Peiping; he died there on 15 February 1945.

Chang Erh-t'ien also wrote many short essays. Manuscripts of some of these essays, kept in his home, were destroyed or lost during the war. However, some 100 of them were preserved by his pupils and were edited and published in 1948 as the Tun-k'an wen-chi [the writings of Tun-k'an]. In style, these essays have been compared favorably with those of his contemporaries Liu Shih-p'ei and Wang Kuo-wei. Although married twice, Chang Erh-t'ien remained childless and adopted as his legal heir the eldest son of his younger brother, the philosopher and political theorist Chang Tungsun (q.v.).