Chen Xiaojiang And The "Modern Historiography Movement" In Zhongshan University

In the 1930s, Zhu Qianzhi initiatived the "Modern Historiography Movement" in Zhongshan University, and Modern Historiography was its basic journal.The movement took three ideas of "Modern Historiography" into practice:"Modernization of history",it means that all history is modern history and historical research should be related to the social reality; "Studying history with modern methods ",it means that scientific methods, which combine the methods of the composition of history and historical evolution should be taken into historical research; "strengthening the study of modern history and social history ", it means that modern history is the history of culture, especially the social history and economic history among the cultural history.Chen Xiaojiang is the main participant of the " Modern Historiography Movement "and responsible for editing Modern Historiography journal. He insists on the three ideas of Modern Historiography and first advocates the "New Historiography Movement " whose purpose is to establish the social foundation,the scientific foundation and the practical foundation of history. He insisits that history research should completely farewell "ancient tomb parties" who only collect historical materials and keep touch with the social reality. He puts up the flag of "Modern Historiography Movement" to promot science and thinks that history is a kind of science having its own independent principles. The "independent" means that history is not comprehensive knowledge and has its own independent discipline status. The "principles" means that history has the law of evolution and we should seek the rules of its evolution rather than simply narrate it. In the "Modern Historiography Movement", he actively practices the social economic history research,and names the nature of the society from Qin-Han dynasty to the middle Qing dynasty as Social System of Tenant Farmers (Advanced Agricultural Society). His theory corrects the Marxism’s formula of historical stage. He explores actively the reason that China has not set foot on capitalist society.The "Modern Historiography School" is the pioneer who rethinks the formulation and theorization of the Social History Controversy. Then, ShiHuo school follow up positively.They make the research of social economic history turn into specialization,refinement and attach great importance to the research of material and theory. That has a far-reaching impact on transformation of the social economic history research. "The Modern Historiography School" object to the Conception History School who value theory but despise the historical data and the Historical Materials School who only collect historical materials but don’t contact with social reality. It is the reflection on two major schools (Conception of History and Historical Materials) in the 20th century history. The "Modern Historiography School " try to integrate the two ways of Conception of History and Historical Materials.However, in the practice of the "Modern Historiography Movement ",they pay too much attention to make history to be social science, so the history lose the independence as a discipline.Because the contents of the Modern Historiography issue are fairly broad, including history theory, cultural history,social history, secondary science history, distinguishing false and proving true and the content of the history of marriage, education, the traffic,etc. So comparing with other research institutions of social economic history, such as Historical Material School, ShiHuo School and the Institute of Social Sciences, the influence of the Modern Historiography School is small.