Studies On Yin Da's Historical Research

Yin Da (1906～1983), a famous historian in modern China, has got a great success to the development of the Marxist historiography in China.Yin has gone through several times in his life, the change of which deeply affected his academic development, leaving clear marks on his academic ideas. Graduating from Henan University, Yin Da conducted the first archaeological excavations followed Liang Siyong. He went to Yan'an during the anti-Japanese war, and played an important role as a leader in a long term after the establishment of new China, turning to the field of historical theory in the post-academic research. The academic career of Yin can be roughly divided into three stages:the first phase, from 1931 to 1937, is a period when Yin stepped gradually from immaturity to maturity in the archaeological field. PhaseⅡ, from 1938 to 1949, is when Yin of comprehensively learnt Marxism, went toward a new revolutionary way, and become a true Marxist historian. PhaseⅢ, it after the founding of New China, when Yin continued guiding in the archaeological field, and gradually shifted from the archaeological field to history.During Yin's academic career of over half a century from the 1930s, he followed the older generation of the Marxist historians, and made very important contributions on promoting the development and progress of Marxist historians. His ideas on history have a distinctive feature of the times, mainly containing history and politics and reality, history and historical materialism, historical style of studying and so on.Yin's academic contributions focus on three areas, with three important academic works as representatives respectively, named "the Stone Age", "Chinese primitive society" and "History of Chinese History,". Yin's historical theory has two features, one is focusing on multi-disciplinary, multi-angle cross-research and comprehensive research, and the other is focusing on theoretical guidance on the subject of history.As time goes by, some of Yin's academic points of view are to be discussed, but this does not affect the great contributions Yin has made in the field of history. It has important value and practical significance of the times to seriously sum up the historical contribution of Yin and objectively evaluate its position and role in the academic field of history.