British Marxist Historian And Response In China To Study

Under the guidance of the theory of historical materialism, the thesis attempts to deeply expound the contemporary British Marxist historian—Eric Hobsbawm's historiographic thought, organize and bring out its main connotation, point out the contribution to the development of the world historiography made by British Marxist historiography represented by Hobsbawm. While trying to demonstrate the main points of his historiographic thought, the thesis reflects the academic ideas and rigorous scholarship of the world master. The thesis is composed of seven chapters:Chapter one mainly explores the academic origin of the British Marxist historiographic school represented by Hobsbawm from the overall framework of social change. Starting from the discussion of historical conditions for the school coming into being and the background of world trend of thought, the chapter expounds the interaction between New Western historiography and Marxist historiography, which is the important academic premise for the emergence and development of the British Marxist historiographic school led by Hobsbawm. The home and abroad environment for the influence on the British Marxist historiography exerted by the theory and approach of British Marxist historiography has also been underlined in this chapter.Chapter two explores Hobsbawm's historical ontology idea with social conception of history as its core from the perspective of progressive historical view, global historical view and the 'bottom-up' conception of history. On one hand, it analyses the change of Hobsbawm's progressive historical view; On the other hand, after briefly introducing the emergence and development of 'West-centralness', it discusses the characteristics of the global perspective and global conception of history in Hobsbawm's research. It particularly points out that his global conception of history is unable to avert the traditional West-centralness' infection and invasion. To a certain extent, his Euro-centric complex is an explicit and implicit combination of West-centralness. Guided by the 'bottom-up' historical perspective, he, together with other British Marxist historian, creates a new research model for social history.Chapter three focuses on the analysis of the key issues of Hobsbawm's historiographic view and the discussion of his main points on historiographic epistemology. It includes: 1, the reflection on the past significance and historical objective reality, the relationship between the now and the past; 2, paying attention to the relationship beween the understanding and appreciation of history and the predictive function of history. All these epistemological views somehow embody Hobsbawm's unique historiographic thought.In chapter four, it makes clear that Hobsbawm bases historiographic methodology on Marxist scientific methodology, that is, historical materialism. Starting from this point, it probes his view on historical research method and its significance to social science so as to reveal his reflections on the following questions from the angle of methodology: the relationship between historiography and social science; the methodological role that historical evidence and historiographic research method play in social science; the relationship between historiography and social science vs. historical evidence.