The Research Of Tan Qian’s Ming History Conception

Tan Qian (1594-1657) was a famous historian during the late Ming and early Qing periods. Since he didn’t reach such high academic achievement as "the great three during the late Ming Dynasty",his research hasn’t attracted much attention from others. Whereas his life experience is worthwhile of our deeper exploration when doing research on late Ming historians. Since the founding in1949, more importance has been attached to the research on Tan Qian among historians. Considering different research phases, the research can be divided into four parts; on the research content, it can be divided into five important aspects.During the Ming-Qing dynastic transition period, the whole society was under the unsteady turmoil. But the writings on Ming history were flourishing in bloom. Guo Que by Tan Qian was one of them, winning a place in the development history of researching on late Ming history. Refusing to secure an official position for the Qing Government, he chose to be "a man never dead"; the faith to preserve the history despite the motherland’s perishing drove him to protect the history to preserve his moral integrity. Introspection of the Ming’s perishing became the Ming historians’ motivation to live on, including Tan Qian. This Thesis attempts to induce the core content and historic value of Tan Qian’s "Ming History Conception"via summarizing the evaluation data of Ming history like "Tan Qian’s Saying"in Guo Que, through which Tan Qian’s faith of managing the society with history" and his patriotic feeling of never giving up was revealed. By reorganizing different historic data, I sort out Tan Qian’s research on different classes of people in Ming Dynasty, and induce some thoughts about the perishing of Ming Dynasty, centering on which the content feature and historical idea of Tan Qian’s Ming History Conception is explored.The first chapter of the thesis inspects Tan Qian under the big historic background of the Ming-Qing Dynastic Transition, attempting to uncover his motivation and purpose of writing Ming history fairly and objectively. The following three chapters focus on Tan Qian’s observation on the perishing of Ming Dynasty and current affairs, mainly including the evaluation on different classes of Ming Dynasty and examples differing from other historic document on Ming history via comparison, therefore concluding Tan Qian’s unique concern about Ming history and highlighting his value of rewarding value and punishing vice and his classic view of resolving to amend history. The fifth chapter talks about the connection between the formation of Tan Qian’s historical idea and his status of being an adherent of a former dynasty, in which way to indicate the living condition of historians in the Dynastic Transition period and their value orientation and spiritual pursuit. The last conclusion part summarizes the constitution of the main features and research value of Tan Qian’s Ming History Conception.