Chen Gonglu’s Research On The History Of Modern Sino-foreign Relations

After the Opium War,Sino-foreign relations entered a new period of development.The tributary system with China as the center was broken and forced to transform to a modern diplomatic mode.However,due to the deep-rooted consciousness of China,this diplomatic transformation was very slow.Regarding this process,Chen gonglu,in his book modern history of China,takes "the view of modern history" as the research orientation,and explains a series of important historical events that affect the changes of modern China’s relations between China and the West and East Asia’s international relations,among which there are some unique views.He not only investigated the modern Sino-foreign relations in the context of the overall development of world diplomatic history,but also paid attention to the excavation and collation of Chinese and foreign historical materials and absorbed the research achievements of western scholars.Chen gonglu became an important representative in the study of modern Chinese history in the 1930 s and 1940 s.In addition to introducing Chen gonglu’s academic achievements and the two paradigms of the study of modern Chinese history in the period of the Republic of China,this paper focuses on Modern Chinese history to investigate and analyze his theoretical methods and academic views on the study of the history of modern Sino foreign relations.The main contents include the following aspects: first,through the two Opium Wars,the Sino French war and other major events,to investigate and analyze the Sino Western relations;second,with the relationship between China,Japan and South Korea as the main line,to investigate and analyze its modern East Asian international relations research;third,the western historical theory and Marx’s "history of foreign relations of the Chinese Empire" on Chen gonglu’s academic influence;fourth,in the historical materials Unique in application.As a historian with a sense of mission,Chen gonglu injected strong realistic concern into his research,hoping to find the law of development from the complicated historical process and deal with the life and death of the Chinese nation at that time.Therefore,taking history as a mirror and summing up the experience and lessons of modern Chinese and foreign negotiations has become one of its major research features.Any theoretical interpretation framework may have its limitations.Chen gonglu described China’s modernization in the trend of world modernization,reflecting the advanced of the West with China’s backwardness,which has obvious traces of western centralism.In addition,his research has the tendency of elitism,and his understanding of the essence of imperialism is inevitably lacking.This is due to the limitation of his understanding.