Nationalism And Chinese History Writing

This paper, mainly bases on the high school Chinese history textbook during the end of Qing Dynasty and Republic of China, focuses on the nationalism and Chinese history compilation during the first half part of 20's century.The first Chapter is a brief introduction to the compilation of the high school Chinese history textbook during the end of Qing Dynasty and Republic of China. The compilation of the textbook was tightly connected with the change of the epoch and the society, and mainly influenced by the educational policy and aim of the government as well as the knowledge structure and professional attainments of the compilers.The second chapter presents how the historian in the end of Qing Dynasty sought the historical position of his own nationality according to the compilation of history textbook. And it also discusses the definition of "ancient times" and "modern times" in the Chinese historical stages. The historian in the end of Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China had various views and various modes to divide the stages of historical period and they had different cognition to Chinese history. After the Kuomintang government united the country, the previous multi-view had been changed to "West-east" view on the observation of the history. And they put the Chinese history into the "General history". This influenced the historical cognition and thought of the people.The third and the fourth chapter analyses the influences to Chinese history compilation by the archeological discovery. During the period of Republic of China, the archeological discovery influenced the historical notion of the people. They changed their opinion on history record in ancient times. And this was showed by the change of the type of Chinese history textbook, i.e. the "ancient times history" appeared and the starting point of Chinese history changed. The ancient archeology established the contact with Chinese history through the Theory of Evolution. The ancient Chinese history system that established according to the archeology has a significant distinction against the ancient history system. From the relationship between archeology and Chinese historiography we can see the exigent spirit of Chinese historiography to re-establish Chinese ancient times history according to the archeology.