Study Of The Historical Ideas Of The Old History Of The Five Dynasties

History theories are the intensive reflection of historical ideas, containing the historians’ various views on events, and thus are the key to understand historical ideas. This thesis studies the history theory in The Old History of Five Dynasties and reveals the historical ideas in the book by analyzing specific history theories.The Old History of Five Dynasties involves various contents. Focusing on three aspects which is argued more in the book, i.e. the understanding of destiny, the comments on legitimacy in Five Dynasties and the remark of persons, this thesis elaborates the study on the history theory in the book by discussing the destiny view to ignore destiny and to care human affairs, the legitimacy theory with Liang, Jin, Han, and Zhou as legitimacy, and the standard of biographying both philanthropists and evils for commenting history figures.In sum, through the study of the destiny ideas, the understandings of regimes in Five Dynasties and Ten Nations and the analysis of comments on historical figures, the thesis uncovers the evolvement of historical ideas from Five Dynasties to the beginning of Song Dynasty, in the hope of discussing the commencement of history studies in Song Dynasty.