A Study On The Textbooks Of Chinese History Of Imperial University Of Peking In The Late Qing Dynasty

Since the Sino-Japanese War,the realistic environment and the academic pattern had changed dramatically in China,and the crisis of national survival and the introduction of extraterritorial knowledge had profoundly affected the historian circle in the late Qing Dynasty.Chinese intellectuals also began to establish the modern historiography system when rethinking the Chinese traditional historiography and they advocated transforming the traditional Chinese historiography with the new ideas and methods.The four textbooks of Chinese history of Imperial University of Peking were their significant try in the new history compilation.However,people know little about these textbooks.The Textbooks for History Discipline written by Tu Ji from the initial formation of human civilization to the Spring and Autumn Period,is especially concerned with the reconstruction of ancient Chinese history.The textbooks of Wang Zhouyao and Chen Fuchen extend the writing scope of history,which break through the limitations of traditional historiography limited to the “history of emperors” and the“political history”,and focus on describing the “academic history”.Textbooks of the History of the Qing Dynasty which was written by Wang Rongbao was published in1906 and is the earliest known dynastic history of the Qing Dynasty.It is an elegant and well-organized,and basically shows the general trend of historical development before the middle of the Qing Dynasty,so it is a masterpiece that was written by the people of the Qing Dynasty for its history.The four textbooks of Chinese history of the Imperial University of Peking are in the form of chapters in the complication method and divides Chinese history into different stages in accordance with the different classification standards,so that the layered structure is clear.In the conception of history,they all regard the evolution theory as the guiding ideology,it can be seen that the history was deeply affected by the extraterritorial knowledge in the late Qing Dynasty.However,most of the editors of the four textbooks were graduated from the old schools and they had tender feelings to the traditional Chinese academics.They paid attention to cultivating patriotic feelings through historiography,and hoped to find out the part of ancient Chinese civilization that was connected with Western civilization and the part ofChinese knowledge that was superior to the Western knowledge.They praised China's traditional culture by advocating the glory of China's history and culture in order to arouse the self-confidence of citizens and inspire them.Even when the Western colonizers attacked the Chinese nation as a “slave nation”,the editors of the textbooks did not hesitate to search for clues from ancient historical materials to prove that the Chinese nation came from the west to fight back the view of “the Excellent West and the Weak East”,which ignored the shortcomings brought about by approving the opinion of “Chinese Ethnic Deprived from the West”.However,it is shown that the intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty began a new round of national traceability.The textbooks of Chinese history of Imperial University of Peking are cover-all and it is a significant academic work to study the old and new confrontation in the historian circle in the late Qing Dynasty with the textbooks.