A Contrastive Study On Historical Thoughts Of Li Dazhao And He Bingsong

Li Dazhao and He Bingsong are very influential historian in the first half of the20th century, who play a significant role in promoting the modernism of Chinesehistoriography. The two people have a similar background of Sinology and Westernexperience, which is the same road to pursuing their studies, from a private school tothe New Schools、the Higher School and abroad school. Under the stern supervisionof family elders and their own efforts, they had laid a good foundation for theNational Culture and had initial fame once. After went to the United States and Japan,they also accepted the advanced Western-style education. During the study in the U.S,He Bingsong was directly affected by the most influential Robinson’“New School ofHistory”, and accepted it gradually. When studied in Japan, Li Dazhao put moreenergy on social practice. On the basis of in-depth study of political economy, he hadfurther contact and understanding of the theory of socialism, which laid foundationfor his acceptance of the political theory of Marxism and his view of history.After returning from abroad, He Bingsong committed to the spread of Robinson’“New School of History” theory, translated and edited many works. Robinson’“NewHistory” is the most representative in the translation of the works; the “historicalmethod” and “Tong Shi Xin Yi” were the most famous in the works. These works hadgreatly advanced the spread of the Robinson’s “New School of History” in China. Bedifferent with He Bingsong, the real beginning of the historical life of Li Dazhaoshould be attributed to his acceptance of Marxist historical materialism. The handoutof “A History of Historical Thoughts” and “Historical Materialism”(unfinished) arethe textual and preliminary application of his Marxist historical materialism.“MainOpinions on Historiography” laid the founder status of Marxist historical materialist.In the aspect of historiography thought, He Bingsong and Li Dazhao had manysimilarities in related concepts of history, the nature of the discipline of history, themethods of historical research and the function of history, but they also had manysignificant differences. The fundamental reason was owned to the awareness of the history of scientific. Li Dazhao considered that the economic relations of humanhistory could reveal the causality in the history, and made the history become ascience. He Bingsong thought that there wasn’t causality in the history, and it is notscience seeing from the essence. But we should use the “comprehensive view ofhistory” research history with a scientific attitude. They built their own historianstheoretical framework and formed their own historical theory system while they stickto their academic point of views, which had a tremendous impact on futuregenerations.