The Commercial Press, which has existed for a quarter of a century, is a towering cultural building in China, and has made many outstanding achievements, benefiting generations of scholars. I am one of countless beneficiaries, and I have spoken a few words to express my gratitude.
After graduating from the History Department of Peking University in the 1950s, I was ordered to stay at the school to teach ancient history in the world, and some of the reference books I studied were related to commercial publishing books. However, at that time, teachers were paid a low salary, and they generally could not afford to buy books, so they could only borrow books from the library to read. I remember that in the 1950s, I bought the translated "Medieval History" edited by Kosminsky of the Soviet Union, and later bought the first few volumes of the ten-volume "General History of the World" edited by the Russian edition of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. But soon, I found the great power chauvinism in the Soviet edition of the books, which was uncomfortable. For example, it is generally said that Copernicus who proposed the heliocentric theory was Polish, probably because Copernicus's hometown was once in the Territory of the Soviet Union, so the Soviet version of the book says that Copernicus was Soviet. For this reason, I also looked for some commercial publishing Ofucan and American books to reference, and I remember wells's "Outline of World History" and so on. The slogan at that time was "Learn from the Soviet Union, refer to Britain and the United States", so it is still okay to learn a little about Britain and the United States.
After the reform and opening up, ushered in the spring of ideological emancipation science, many famous works translated and published by commercial organizations have become indispensable books for my desk, and many classical, medieval, and modern masterpieces have almost all been bought and benefited a lot. The first book I got was a translation of Charlemagne's Biography by Mr. Qi Guogan, which was published commercially in 1979 and given to me in January 1980. Although it is a thin book, it is the basic historical material for the study of Charlemagne. Then there is the Chronicle of Germania and the History of the Franks, all of which are must-read books for studying the Middle Ages. In particular, Montesquieu's "On the Spirit of Law" attracted me to study feudal society, the relationship between feudal lords and vassals, and the early development of feudal society in Western Europe from the perspective of Western law, which was very beneficial. In addition, like Mr. Wu Shoupeng's translation of Aristotle's "Political Science", there is a project in his index called the title, which arranges the important terms in the book according to the political system, economy, law, etc., under each term, the notes are in Greek and English, and the explanation of the meaning of the term is also made later, as well as the provenance in this book, which is very detailed. If you encounter a problem, you can retrieve it. All of these can be said to be the gifts of business to me.
At that time, the business also convened a meeting of some scholars and asked them to recommend the translation of the bibliography of famous works. I've also been fortunate enough to be invited a few times. I remember at the beginning I recommended Bloch's Feudal Society, which was soon included in the translation catalogue. Soon, Zhou Yingru, an old business editor, reminded me that I should translate the book. I also thought about it, knowing that translating this classic work on feudal society recognized in the West is still very helpful for my research. But on second thought, my little English level made it very difficult to translate this book. Mr. Qi Guogan's translation has been praised by business, and he graduated from Yenching University with a high level of English. My English can be said to be self-taught, I have not taken any formal courses, but I have studied a little in the east and west, and the original text of the book "Feudal Society" is French, and then translated from English, I will probably encounter many problems. After turning it over and over, I put the translation on hold. Later, Comrade Zhang Xushan, despite the difficulties, translated this book and published it commercially. He went on to translate another Western classic on feudalism, Gunshof's What is Feudalism, also published commercially. I can only be invited to write a preface to these two books, introducing some situations and problems related to the study of feudal society and feudalism, which can be regarded as a slight contribution to the study of feudalism.
In addition to doing Chinese translations of Western academic masterpieces, business has also done some cultural popularization work. One of them is the publication of the "Small Series of Foreign Histories". This project was already underway before the Cultural Revolution, when the editor-in-chief was my teacher, Mr. Qi Sihe, and the editor-in-chief was changed to Mr. Chen Hansheng. Chen Han is highly respected and can be described as one of the giants of the mainland academic community, but he still strives to grasp this project. He personally talked to the author, asked the author to explain the content and meaning of the writing, and after his approval, he could start writing. It was only after chen Hanlao's interview was qualified that he wrote "Five Hundred Years of Serfdom in Western Europe", which was published by Commerce in 1983. Although it was only a short twenty thousand words, it was the painstaking efforts of Elder Han. At that time, the business also set up an editorial department of the "Small Series of Foreign History", and there were several comrades working, and I was listed on the editorial board of the small series of books, and participated in many meetings of the editorial department to discuss the selection of topics, the recommendation of writers, the editor, and so on. This small series of books has produced many volumes, and later has also produced works that have been republished with some similar topics. As a popular reading, I think that because most of the authors of small series of books are professional historians, they are highly professional, not lively enough, and insufficiently powerful to attract ordinary readers. This proves that it is not easy to do popularization work.
According to the past division of labor, zhonghua bookstore mainly produces ancient books, and business mainly engages in the translation of world academic masterpieces. Later, this rule was broken, and various publishing houses could publish various works on their own. While teaching at Peking University, I also wrote several books, but I did not dare to find commercial publications, and I always thought that the threshold of business as an academic hall must be very high, and it was easy not to make a mistake. In 2018, Comrade Du Tingguang of Commerce and others came to talk about the publication of my book "Research on the Economic Form of Feudalism in Western Europe" into their "Compendium of Contemporary Chinese Academic Works", and I could not help but be greatly moved, and I did not expect that my small book could attract the attention of business, and it was included in their series, and also included in the book a 30,000-word long article I wrote to correct the inappropriate views in the first chapter of the original book, "Re-understanding of the Transition from Slavery in Western Europe to Feudalism". In addition, this re-edition also requires me to add my own book chronicle and introduce some of my research over the years. In order to write this chronicle, I have reviewed my academic career, but it can be said that since I taught in the History Department of Peking University in 1956, I have not dared to slacken off, worked hard, and have achieved a little success over the years. But for seven or eight years, from the second half of the 1960s to the first half of the 1970s, nothing was achieved and nothing was gained. During the "Four Qings" and "Cultural Revolution" years, every day from the workers, peasants and soldiers to learn, labor, go down to the carp island, fight against the heavens and the earth, time is so wasted, although those who are afraid for a long time, but there is no way.
At the same time, Comrade Chen Heng of Shanghai also asked The Business To publish another academic essay for me, "Yu Yu of the History of Learning", which was included in their "Guangqi Library" series of books of Shanghai Normal University. This book contains some of my memories of the history department of Peking University and the teachers of other colleges and universities, as well as the preface I wrote for the works of other comrades, which is considered to be a preservation of some historical materials for the discipline of mainland history.
What makes me even happier and more grateful is that Business plans to include my "Research on the Feudal Economic Patterns of Western Europe" in the foreign translation project. I think that the reason why business has a translation plan to introduce this book to foreign countries is to use the words of the "Preface to the New Edition" that I wrote when the book was published commercially, "I know that my academic strength is shallow and not enough to meet the requirements of the 'Compilation of Contemporary Chinese Academic Works', and if there is any one-way view, it is to use China's feudal society as a frame of reference and put forward some understandings of Western European feudal society that are different from Western scholars for your reference." Remember.
(The author is a senior professor of philosophy and social sciences at Peking University)