Reaching Out For Kindling

This paper focuses on learning and experiences drawn from Western historical science during the modernization of the science of history in China. Based on a re-examination of the modernization process of Chinese historical science, it puts clarifying the confusion between the concepts of modernization of historical science and modern history. Within such a theoretical framework, it analyzes fundamental aspects of the modernization process of Chinese historical science related with its borrowing from West historiography.Firstly, it analyzes approaches adopted for learning from Western historiography, which include translating Western history works, sending scholars to study in Japan, North America and Europe, and making investigative trips to western countries. Secondly, it examines the borrowing of diverse historical perspectives from the West, with an emphasis on evolutionary historical perspective and its impact on the modernization of Chinese historiography, while at the same time touches upon the influence of other perspectives in various historical periods. Lastly, it deals with the three major schools of historical studies that had certain impact on the modernization of Chinese historical science: Civilization historiography, New Historiography of Robison, and Western Positivist Historiography.Modern Chinese historians exhibited extraordinary initiative and enthusiasm in borrowing from Western historiography. However, conditioned by historical circumstances, they have trodden a difficult, long path in their pursuits. Their contributions to the development of Chinese historical science and the setbacks they encountered show that the borrowing from Western historiography must be grounded on traditional Chinese historiography. Only by finding an appropriate channel that is compatible with both Western and Chinese historiography, can the borrowing from the former contribute to the development of the latter. Furthermore, historical studies must combine practice with theory in order to create new theory and thereby promote the development of historical science in China.