On Historical Thoughts Of James W. Thompson

James Westfall Thompson is an American historian whose academic activities can be seen in the early decades of 20th century. During his academic career, he was specialized in the studies on medieval history of Europe while dedicating his teaching efforts to University of Chicago and University of California Berkeley successively, and was elected as the Annual President of American Historical Association in the year of 1941. Among the major studies on European medieval history in the American historical academia around the early era of 20th century, the studies made by James Thompson ranked as important components in which his theory of socio-economic history showed rather innovating significance. This dissertation aims at investigating the historical thoughts of James W. Thompson, mainly by examining his academic attitude towards the medieval history.In the early period of 20th century, the trend of New History swept across the American historical academia like a rising tide. Under the influence of such leading figures like James Harvey Robinson and so, American historians started to seek evolution beyond the traditional Rankean Historiography of 19th century. What these historians went against was the traditional historiography’s focus of merely political affairs and its positivism tendency. As a remedy of this, they believed that the new historiography should be pragmatic, while it should widen its concerning objects and researching methods, and the negative legacy of positivism should also be abolished in the meantime. James W. Thompson was one member of this academic trend and was influenced by it, he was with the creed of the School of New History and the way he fulfill this creed was to apply it into his study on economic and social history of medieval era as well as to avoid the positivistic historical determinism. So according to all these, James Thompson should be regarded as one active member of the American New History School and he was also the one historian who put the New History creed into the researching field of European medieval history.Before starting the analysis of James Thompson’s historical thoughts, there are two questions that should be stated and observed. The first one is about the developing trace of the prejudiced attitudes towards medieval history from the historiography before 20th century. These prejudiced attitudes might differ in the sides of positive or negative but they all share a similarity that the ways they saw medieval history were the reflections of certain purposes and they were taken as weapons by contemporaries to enforce changes in reality. The reason why such prejudices might exist through several centuries was, historiography hadn’t been developed into a level which could bring justice to medieval era. But it was time for changes when historiography showed development in early 20th century. The second one is about the path that the American medieval historical academia went through and its characteristics shown during the progress. The academia of medieval history study in America could only be traced back to the middle and later period of 19th century and the developing process was rather slow back then. But in early 20th century as more specialized scholars and more academic associations tightly relating to the field appeared, the American medieval history academia developed fast and showed professionalism in the study and corrective attitude towards the traditional prejudices on medieval history. As an active member of this field, James Thompson shared these traits of the academia in his own studies.In his historiography of medieval history, James Thompson was mainly obedient to the theory of economic and social aspects in medieval history. This obedience can be discovered in his overall thoughts about the positive character of feudal society as well as in his research on different parts of medieval times. For example, as far as this article concerns, such parts can be like European commerce in early Middle Ages, German eastward expansion in high Middle Ages, economic elements of medieval church, development of economy and society in late Middle Ages, and so on. By analyzing these topics, what James Thompson wanted to stress was that, the forces of economy and society were persistent and continuous in shaping the history of Middle Ages, and their existence never collapse even in the so-called darkest times. These studies made by James Thompson brought extension to the research field of medieval history in American academia, while his studies also erased the prejudices towards the Middle Ages in the past historiography. Though according to the point of views from some other scholars, the studies on socio-economic history of Middle Ages made by James Thompson were not flawless at all, and if some defective factors of that certain period of time were taken into consideration, it appeared that the historical thoughts of James Thompson still shared some flaws of the traditional historiography that he went against. But despite all these, in this dissertation the author tries to stress that the academic influence of James Thompson should be noted and he should be regarded as a distinguished historian on medieval history because of the value shown in his works.For few studies on the historical thoughts of James Thompson were carried out so far, this article tries to make a systematic inquiry into this topic. During the research of the topic, the materials being used are mainly consisted of the personal academic works of James Thompson, and some directly relating contemporary studies made by other scholars. By making observations on such materials the author of this article tries to summarize useful information out of them. Besides, the relationship between James Thompson and the world history academia in China is also touched upon in this article.