On January 19, 2022, the Academic History Research Group of the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences held a Spring Festival Symposium in the Lizhou Hall of the China Academy of History, with the theme of "Review and Prospect of Academic History Research". The symposium was presided over by Luo Jianqiu, a researcher at the Institute of Modern History, and attended by more than 20 scholars from Tsinghua University, Beijing Normal University and the research offices of the Institute of Modern History.
Meeting site
The symposium was introduced by the moderator, Researcher Luo Jianqiu, who first introduced the origin and background of the establishment of the Academic History Research Group. Luo Jianqiu pointed out that academic history is a traditional research branch in the field of history, and it is closely related to the study of intellectual history, political history, cultural history, social history and other fields. Nowadays, the research materials on academic history in the academic circles are becoming more and more abundant, the research methods are innovative, and the research results of interdisciplinary and interdisciplinary fields are increasingly valued. Under this background, the Institute of Modern History will use the establishment of the Academic History Research Group to further consolidate academic strength, strengthen academic exchanges, and enhance the friendship of colleagues.
This Spring Festival Symposium is the first activity organized by the Academic History Research Group, which invited Ma Yong, researcher of the Institute of Modern History, Professor Qi Xuemin of the School of Humanities of Tsinghua University, and Professor Zhang Zhaojun of the School of History of Beijing Normal University to make keynote speeches, and representatives of scholars from various research offices of the Institute of Modern History made exchange speeches. Luo Guanqiu hopes that scholars can base themselves on different perspectives and research expertise, and conduct multi-level and all-round review and prospective of the existing achievements and future directions of academic history research, so as to expand research horizons and ideas, explore academic methods and governance paths, and jointly promote the extension and deepening of academic history research.
Researcher Luo Jianqiu
Subsequently, the symposium entered the keynote report session. The first speaker, Ma Yong, a researcher at the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, combined his own academic experience to introduce the special topic of Zhang Taiyan's research in the field of Chinese academic history. Since Ma Yong studied for a master's degree at Fudan University in the early 1980s, he has already paid attention to Zhang Taiyan. After 1998, he began to systematically read Zhang's writings and articles centered on the historical materials collected by modern history, and later successively sorted out and published books such as "Zhang Taiyan's Collected Letters" and "Zhang Taiyan's Lectures". Ma Yong believes that Zhang Taiyan is a key figure in the study of Chinese academic history, he is not only the last person to comprehensively clean up and criticize China's classical scholarship, but also opened the road to the establishment of modern Chinese scholarship, and cultivated famous scholars such as Huang Kan, Qian Xuantong, zhu Xizu and other famous scholars. However, for today's researchers, in order to understand and enter Zhang Taiyan's ideological world and academic world, it is also necessary to have a relatively rich and complete knowledge reserve, which puts forward great requirements for the academic training of researchers.
In view of this situation, Ma Yong shared some ideas and ideas for personal research on Zhang Taiyan, he pointed out that Zhang Taiyan introduced many western resources in modern Times and Japan, especially involving the content of Western classical philosophical thought, so in the future, the academic community should pay attention to the combing and elaboration of the connection between Zhang Taiyan and foreign academic thought. In addition, there are many topics worth further exploring and deepening in the study of Zhang Taiyan's academic thought, such as Zhang's research on the history of the founding of Manchuria, Zhang's interpretation of the Cao Wei Three-Body Stone Sutra unearthed in the late Qing Dynasty, and Zhang's study of political thought, etc. These topics are of great significance to understanding Zhang Taiyan's academic image, and require a new generation of researchers to continue to work hard and contribute more wonderful academic achievements.
Researcher Yong Ma
The second speaker, Professor Qi Xuemin of the School of Humanities of Tsinghua University, from the perspective of his long-term research on Yan Fu, emphasized the importance of the origin of Chinese academic modernity, which is the proposition of the times. Qi Xuemin believes that nearly a hundred years ago, The Chinese academic community began from the study of Confucianism, and there was a vigorous "academic revolution", such as Yan Fu, the pioneering figures of modern Chinese academic history, most of whom were influenced by the Western cultural and ideological atmosphere represented by the Victorian era in Britain at the end of the 19th century. Therefore, an academic forerunner stands out because of the era of change, and in turn creates and promotes the era in which he is living, just as the so-called people can promote the Tao, the Tao is also a person, the two influence each other, each other's gains.
Based on the overall grasp of this background, Qi Xuemin introduced his research on the Qing history of Wenyuan Andulin in the past 10 years. The formation of these texts involves many complex political, geographical and cultural checks and balances and game factors since the Qing Dynasty, not just an academic issue, but a realistic topic closely related to social history, which inspires today's researchers to re-examine and reflect on the formation process and overall context of Chinese academic history. At the same time, Qi Xuemin also pointed out that we should not underestimate the degree of Chinese academic globalization in modern times, when academic exchanges between the East and the West were actually very frequent, such as Yan Fu and others' study and translation of Western scholarship, which need to be further excavated and sorted out, and we should examine and examine global academic exchanges from a broader perspective, and then rewrite China's modern academic history with novel viewpoints.
Professor Qi Xuemin
The third speaker, Professor Zhang Zhaojun of the School of History of Beijing Normal University, focused on summarizing the inheritance and uniqueness of Chinese academia itself. He believes that one of the cores of Chinese cultural history is academic history, and it is difficult to explain the characteristics of Chinese culture without talking about academic history. However, the "academic" traditions that arise from Eastern and Western cultures are different, and each researcher's own understanding of the concept of "academic history" is not consistent. In Zhang Zhaojun's view, the uniqueness of Chinese scholarship can be summarized as humanism, attaching importance to practicality, and its core is to pay attention to the daily life of human beings and emphasize the unity of knowledge and action, which is different from the objective abstract thinking of Western science. At the same time, Chinese scholarship is still a discipline that emphasizes the comprehensiveness of literature, history and philosophy, which is often implemented on specific personnel relations, and emphasizes the tradition of governance that is passed on from generation to generation and inherited from interpretation, and is not suitable for subdivided research by the modern academic system of sub-disciplines.
Since entering the modern era, Chinese academia has emerged generations of predecessor scholars, Zhang Zhaojun divided the representative figures into four generations, the first generation is Zhang Taiyan, Liu Shipei and other people in the late Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the People's Republic, whose academic strengths are concentrated in the field of primary schools and Zhuzi studies, but also inevitably have the limitations of the times. The second generation is Liang Qichao and Hu Shi and others, who have profoundly influenced the concept of "Guoxue" as understood by today's people, and their founding role cannot be ignored. The third generation is Qian Mu, who studied the classics from a historical standpoint and discovered many academic problems that the previous generation of scholars did not see from the perspective of history. The fourth generation is Hou Wailu, who has a strong ability to grasp historical materials, and has a knowledge base of modern social sciences, a broad disciplinary vision, and reinterprets China's academic history from the perspective of materialist history and social economy, which deserves the attention of today's academic contributions. In general, each intergenerational scholar has its own strengths in governance, layer by layer, and today's researchers should also be objective and fair in their evaluation of the previous generations of scholars. Zhang Zhaojun believes that in the future, we can start from the context and methods of traditional Chinese scholarship such as bibliography and school science, and extract the beneficial essence of it, which is also of great significance for the construction of the three major discourse systems of contemporary Chinese scholarship.
Professor Zhang Zhaojun
After the keynote speech session, representatives of scholars from various research departments of the Institute of Modern History also made exchange speeches.
Researcher Zou Xiaozhan, director of the Intellectual History Research Office, expressed his views on the relationship between the study of modern Chinese intellectual history and the study of academic history. He observed that the theoretical propositions of many political figures in modern China are generated from the source of their personal academic thoughts, which requires researchers to have a considerable accumulation and clear grasp of both traditional Chinese academic resources and Western knowledge, and the two cannot be abandoned, and pay attention to handling the relationship between the transformation of ideological discourse and the transformation of academic discourse, which requires high requirements for the researchers' own academic reserves. At the same time, Zou Xiaozhan believes that the late Qing scholars played a greater role in promoting the transformation of modern Chinese scholarship, but if you look closely, to what extent they were influenced by Western studies, it is a systematic introduction, or a fragmentary acceptance, which requires further in-depth examination by researchers.
Researcher Zou Xiaozhan
Ma Ping'an, a researcher at the Political History Research Office, summarized the three characteristics of China's academic history: "general, miscellaneous, and specialized." He believes that Chinese academic history is first of all an all-encompassing and all-encompassing comprehensive science, and researchers should have a long-term vision, strive to break through the boundaries between various research branches, and achieve time and space penetration. At the same time, the content of academic history research is diverse, and researchers need to establish a common and interconnected perspective of investigation to avoid fragmented research in which each speaks its own words. Ma Pingan hopes that the academic history research masters and experts in today's academic circles can play a leading role and lead young people to jointly promote the in-depth development of academic history research.
Researcher Ping An Ma
Professor Tang Shichun, director of the Social History Research Office, took the case study of Soviet legal experts who came to China in the early days of the founding of New China and participated in legal education and legal system construction in China as an example, and emphasized the importance of using the perspective of academic social history to study the history of cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. He believes that through their personal work experience in China, Soviet legal experts have raised their level of understanding of China's legal system, produced a number of important Chinese legal research results, reflected the efforts and results made by Soviet legal experts in combining Soviet experience with China's reality, and extensively and profoundly influenced Russian scholars' research on Chinese legal science. In general, this kind of research turn has appeared in other fields of education and economy, making contemporary Chinese politics and society become the key research field of Russian sinology, changing the development direction of Russian sinology, proving that the interaction between academic research and real society is very closely related, which shows that the field of academic social history research is still an academic garden that needs to be deeply cultivated and has great potential.
Researcher Tang Shichun
Associate Researcher Lu Wenhao of the Social History Research Office discussed the constraints and influences of China's inherent social structure and cultural accumulation on the process of China's modern academic transformation from the perspective of the study of the history of modern Chinese sociology. He believes that modern Chinese intellectuals after May Fourth began to emphasize academic training and academic norms, and their remarks were more expressed in professional fields, or gradually expanded outward from professional circles, and paid attention to the basis of professional knowledge when discussing political, economic, cultural, and social issues. However, we must also see that the ideological realm, emotional world and style of dealing with the world of these modern scholars are still Chinese, and the purpose of their academic research is to have a strong concern for the times and the orientation of reality. Lu Wenhao stressed that the study of the history of Chinese sociology should pay attention to sorting out the path of sociology into China from the perspective of social culture, and understand from the perspective of historical context what kind of atmosphere modern Chinese intellectuals chose to devote themselves to sociological research, which schools or doctrines they absorbed when studying China issues, what characteristics they showed, and how they participated in the transformation of modern Chinese social and cultural changes in the form of academic research, thus revealing the cultural connotation of the history of Chinese sociology.
Associate Researcher Lu Wenhao
Zhou Zuwen, associate researcher of the Institute of Modern History, discussed the research of China's modern economic history, and through the analysis of the research results of The Chinese and foreign academic circles on the changes in the total GDP of China's economy in modern times, he found that the measurement standards of traditional Chinese economy are actually difficult to apply the terminology concepts of Western economics to be bluntly summarized, which inspires researchers to actively think about how the concepts of Chinese and Western economic thought should be mutually reduced and correspondingly described, and pay attention to reviewing and summarizing the academic hot topics of traditional Chinese economic history research, but at the same time it can go beyond the academic review level This is also another form of academic history research path, which deserves attention and exploration.
Associate Researcher Zhou Zuwen
Researcher Zhao Qingyun, director of the General History Research Office of the Institute of Historical Theory, has long paid attention to the special topics of Chinese Marxist historians and historical research in the 20th century. He believes that the study of academic history should not stop at "academic theory", but should pay attention to the investigation of the "foreign history" part. Taking Marxist historical research as an example, he emphasized that the study of academic history and historiography should be implemented on specific people and events, and present research with a "sense of history". At the same time, researchers should pay attention to returning to the historical context, combined with the factors of modern Chinese politics and social reality, to specifically analyze the key academic concepts of Marxist historiography, to show the academic confrontations and differences between different scholars, and to sort out how historians understand, accept and apply theoretical concepts in specific research practice. It is believed that through such in-depth study of historical details, a refreshing, vivid and full-bodied novel conclusion will be drawn.
Researcher Qingyun Zhao
Zhang Shuxian, assistant researcher of the Research Office of Historical Materials, reported on the progress of the project with the title of "Research on the Pan Clan of the Wang Clan and Suzhou Social Governance in Modern Jiangnan" by the National Social Science Foundation of China. She introduced the research status and existing historical materials of the Pan family in Suzhou, examined the impact of the transformation of pan's old and new education on the development of the family, and the creation, dissemination and social impact of the Pan GongBao Scroll based on Pan Zengyi. Zhang Shuxian said that she will focus on how Suzhou Pan's family has created, maintained and developed a cultural community centered on life and scholarship based on blood relations, using social relations such as academic, geographical, and in-laws as a network, thus revealing the unique role played by modern Chinese academic families in academic thought and cultural inheritance.
Shuxian Zhang, Research Assistant
Dr. Wei Haoyu of the Social History Research Office hopes to provide the historical community with fresh materials and new perspectives from the perspective of the social history of modern and contemporary Chinese art, and to provide the historical community with fresh materials and new perspectives from the field of art history. He believes that since the first half of the 20th century, the first batch of art history founders with a Western background and a "new historiography" vision in the modern sense have emerged in China, and they have begun to seek to use new problems, new methods and new materials to rearrange and interpret the long and broad artistic heritage and old traditions of ancient China, and have constructed a new set of time and space frameworks and expression dimensions for the writing of Chinese art history in the 20th century, and their research concerns are closely in line with the conceptual construction of the modern Chinese nation-state and the identity ideal of national cultural identity. Driven by this background of academic transformation, new art scholars began to live in an "academic society" composed of modern academic institutions such as new institutions of higher learning, research institutions, academic societies, museums, art galleries, government cultural departments and archaeological cultural organizations, which greatly shaped the academic concepts, discipline structure, academic system and discipline appearance of modern Chinese art historiography, and made the study of new art history closely linked with social movements, cultural trends, elite thoughts, and people's lives in China in the 20th century.
Dr. Wei Haoyu
After the exchange of speeches, Researcher Luo Jianqiu made a final summary of the symposium. He stressed that the study of Chinese academic history should not only focus on academic production in the ivory tower in isolation, and the process of formation, dissemination, dissemination and influence of elite ideas and academic concepts, and their relationship with social culture and popular customs and concepts, still need further in-depth study. From this point of view, strengthening the exploration of academic social history may become a new path beyond the domain and another path, which can be thought and tried from the research of the background of the growth of academic families and scholars, the study of scholars' academic travel and social networks, the study of scholars' emotional mentality and family relationship, etc., so as to reveal the living space, ideological concepts and spiritual world of elite groups, presenting a vivid and rich, vivid and diverse historical outlook.