A Summary And Comment On The Historiography Of Chinese History In The 20th Century

There's no special term in western history studies by contrast to the "complete history" in Chinese history studies, and the meaning of "complete history" in ancient China has a different meaning to that in modern times. The modern Chinese "complete history" is the result of the modern new historiography thoughts, upon which the new historians expect to preview the future by tracing back to the past.At the beginning of 20th century, the ideal "complete history" by the historians is the one that could embody the common sense and common laws of the historic development. At first, Zhang Taiyan like many other scholars tried to sum up the old history with new thoughts, however it is proved that the traditional biography isn't fit to show the evolution and orders in the historical development. A Japanese scholar Naka Michiyo used the western style of chapters to arrange history by the order of time and integrated the elements of Chinese traditional historiography and the western way of telling history as an evolution.Naka Michiyo is the first one to write the new Chinese "complete history" in this way, while Kuwabara Jitsuzo summed up the Chinese history in the perspective of oriental history, using the rise and fall of the Han nationality as a clue. The frames and structures they created have great influences on the latter Chinese historiography.Most of the "complete history" books written at the beginning of the Republican period have adopted the new style of narrating history, but they didn't apply new research methods, so that they inevitably became the...