Gu Jiegang’s Northwest Investigation And Ancient History Reseach (1931-1948)

Gu Jiegang is the leader of the "School of ancient history discrimination".His movement of distinguishing ancient history has deeply influenced the Chinese history circle in the 20 th century.Ancient history research occupies a leading position in Gu Jiegang’s academic life.After 1930 s,the national crisis was becoming more and more serious.Gu Jiegang began to pay attention to the northwest under the influence of the current situation and friends.He had visited northwest five times before 1949,including Xinwei’s visit to ancient China in 1931,Suiyuan in 1934,Shaanxi in 1936,Gansu and Qing in 1937-1938 and teaching in Lanzhou University in 1948.Gu Jiegang’s understanding of the northwest gradually deepened,from his interest in visiting the northwest at first,finding evidence for the study of ancient history to being stimulated by the national difficulties,and devoted a lot of time to the research of historical geography,national frontier and other issues.Several northwest studies have had an important influence on Gu Jiegang’s individual life and ancient history.His experience of visiting ancient China in 1931 was a turning point of Gu Jiegang’s academic research orientation.He changed from the pure concept of "learning for learning" to the direction of practical use of the world.Gu Jiegang’s study on Yugong and historical geography was rooted in his ancient history research and gradually deepened under the influence of Northwest investigation.Although the Chinese nation is one,although it emphasizes the realistic role of saving the country,the way to brew it comes from Gu Jiegang’s thinking and Research on the relationship between the ancient Chinese nation for many years.Gu Jiegang and a group of archaeologists paid attention to the northwest,not only because of the government’s call for the development of the northwest in the Republic of China,but also the pursuit of the scholars to establish a modern academic system.As one of the important birthplaces of Chinese civilization,Northwest China is the best focus of writing history which conforms to the historical trend and has national cohesion.Gu Jiegang paid close attention to Archaeology and looked for traces of the early history of Northwest China,which was closely related to his desire to reconstruct the ancient history.The academic turn of Gu Jiegang in 1930s-40 was caused by the influence of national crisis and the development of his academic context.The general history writing in the Republic of China was a new paradigm writing under the influence of "new history" and Japanese academic circles.Under the stimulation of the increasingly serious national difficulties,historians began to try to write general history.Gu Jiegang has been a volunteer to write general history since he was a young school textbook of national history.Later,his experience of Northwest investigation made Gu Jiegang’s desire to write a popular and national Chinese general history more intense.Although Gu Jiegang did not write a general history at last,his pursuit of general history writing was later passed on to the students of children’s book industry,Yang Kuan,Baishou Yi and so on.Gu Jiegang’s intention to reconstruct ancient history and his concern for the nation and Northwest can be attributed to his pursuit of general history writing.To some extent,such pursuit also makes up for Gu Jiegang’s regret that his achievements in ancient history research are less and less in 1930s-40’s.