On The Historiography Thought Of Zhou Gucheng

After the Opium War, the western historiography thoughts were introduced toChina gradually, it began to break the Chinese traditional historiography system andprompted the acceleration of modern transformation occurs. Taking Liang Qichao as atypical representative, the New Historiography was born with an almost irreversibleattitude, leading Chinese historiography to the development of the fast lane. Differentschools in historiography appeared one after another, and there have emerged manynew famous scholars, such as Chen Yanke, Gu Jiegang, Wang Guowei, Fu Sinian etc. They launched a fierce discussion on basic academic problems of history, promotedthe development of modern Chinese historiography. At the same time, historicalresearch started showing a trend of refinement, the studies of Special History gainedgreater expansion because of the fundamental advantages of traditional historiography,however the field of Comprehensive History was just unfolding. Compared withSpecial History, Comprehensive History needed to be more scientific analysis andguidance of the theory as the support. The introduction of Western ComprehensiveHistory theory undoubtedly provided a good template, but the resulting from the earlyComprehensive History books written by China historian and the modern significanceof works should be the two general history of Zhou Gucheng.As a famous contemporary historian in our country, Zhou Gucheng hadexperienced a long period of development in modern China, had been a "living fossil"of the development of modern historiography in China. To "China history" and"General history of the world" as the representative, he made outstanding contributionin the Comprehensive History research field in China, and became the only historianwho independently accomplished two general history writings in our country. At thesame time, Zhou Gucheng proposed "the history of Gestalt theory" and otherinnovation theory constituted the main contents of his historiography thought.The formation of the different background of the Zhou Gucheng historiographythought, have the certain difference. From Enlightenment of the early traditionalhistoriography thought, to the new historical period for each viewpoint of dialecticalthinking, and then to Marx historical materialism been assimilated, finally formedZhou Gucheng unique view combined with the knowledge of other subjects, thedevelopment of historiography thought of Zhou Gucheng had experienced a gradualformation process. But as the core of Zhou Gucheng historiography thought,"the history of Gestalt theory" which came from "living system" was the viewpoint healways upheld for research. In the opinion of Zhou Gucheng, history was always withintegrity, the integrity emphasized that was historical existence. Meanwhile, thepremise of writing general history was to abandon the one-sided view which justrepresented historical materials or History. More crucially, Zhou Gucheng thoughtthat whether writing a country history or General history of the world both needed tostand in the perspective of human activities, it has very obvious reflection in his book. It also extended Zhou Gucheng’s innovation in Comprehensive History that wasunique: Zhou Gucheng written "China history" amplification to the world historicalcategory, and denied the one-sided view which called "Eurocentric" in the "Generalhistory of the world". For today’s general history studies, the historiography thoughtof Zhou Gucheng undoubtedly provided many reference of views with great academicvalue.