Knowledge is the fruit of human cognition, which "grows up historically and is the crystallization of the various cultural activities of countless individual human beings." Knowledge, through a certain form of language, or materialized into the form of a product of labor, can be communicated and transmitted to the next generation and become the common spiritual wealth of mankind. Historical knowledge is the cognition that historical events that occur in this sense, which helps to interpret evidence, which always involves time, the spacing of time, that is, the distance between a certain time in the present moment and a certain time in the past, and tries to explore the meaning of it.
Around this theme, the author tries to explore the following three questions: First, what is the status of historical knowledge in human knowledge? Second, are there any valuable pursuits behind all kinds of world history theories? Third, what kind of historians do we need today?
The place of historical knowledge in human knowledge
In the late period of the agrarian economy, Europe published about 1,000 books a year, and only about 100,000 books were published in a century; in the era of industrial economy, Europe published more than 100,000 books a year. The world's first scientific and technological journals appeared in the 1660s, and in 1750 there were only 10 journals in the world; in the era of industrial economy, the number of scientific and technological journals increased by a factor of 10 every 10 years. It has been estimated that the total amount of human knowledge doubles every 10 years in the era of the industrial economy and every 5 years in the era of the knowledge economy. In the 30 years since entering the era of the knowledge economy, more papers have been published around the world than in previous histories combined. However, the proportion of historical knowledge in human knowledge is declining. At present, there are nearly 10,000 kinds of journals in the Chinese mainland, and 567 kinds of CSSCI-source academic journals are organized and evaluated by the China Social Science Research Evaluation Center of Nanjing University, of which only 30 are in the history category, and the proportion of historical academic journals is not high.
Why does historical knowledge carry less and less weight in human knowledge? Historians seem to have less and less influence on decision-making, what are the reasons behind it? In general, in the early days of human civilization, historical works were particularly valued, satisfying the curiosity of human beings at that time. By the 19th century, when history was professionalized and professionalized, it can be said that it reached the peak of influence. By the 20th century, the influence of history in human society, whether from the perspective of knowledge production, or the practical perspective of historical knowledge on human problem solving, or from the perspective of the impact on politics, showed a downward trend. The reason why today's professional historians feel that history is still important is largely due to the misunderstanding caused by professional hobbies, just a sense of self. The unavoidable fact is that in the whole process of human social development, the role of history is getting smaller and smaller, but it is not that history is not important, but that historical writings in the traditional sense have been replaced by other fields of knowledge that are more and more refined in the classification of disciplines, and the expression of historical writings is becoming more and more containing a certain value orientation and becoming more and more ideologically related.
All kinds of world history have their value sustenance
The term world history has never been a presumptive word with stable indicators. It contains semantic and analytical models of many different names, some of which pride themselves on their long academic traditions, while others have only been clearly recognized in recent times. These names include universal history, comparative history, global history, grand history, transnational history, contact history, interwoven history, sharing history, and other names. World history overlaps with all these names to varying degrees.
The change of the world's historical name not only reflects the changes of the times, but also reflects the taste, spirit and value of the times. National, national, regional, world, their histories are driven by national memory and the needs of the times. The "world history" of various peoples before modern times is a regional history in a certain sense, and historical accounts that exceed specific boundaries are basically a kind of historical imagination and are not academic. But after the Great Geographical Discovery, that all changed. Since the Renaissance, the Western world has no shortage of various world history theories, such as universal history, world history, modernization theory, postmodernism and postcolonialism, world system theory, dependency theory, global history, etc., which can be included in the category of world history, which are theoretical solutions proposed by historians to explain the phenomena of the times to which they belong.
If one does not consider the writings of the classical writers Herodotus, Polybias, and Theodolos of Sicily, as well as Augustine, Ibn Hellerdun of the Islamic world, and others, in Europe, since Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History (1681), various world histories have emerged in an endless stream, trying to prove that history is linearly developing, constantly progressing, and the constant manifestation of God's will. The French politician and economist Durgo said that universal history contains reflection on a series of human progresses and a careful investigation of the causes of these advances. As time passed, new peoples emerged. In the uneven progress of the peoples, civilized peoples surrounded by barbarians are conquering or have conquered them and are living with them. Whether or not the latter was influenced by the art and law of the former, and whether or not the conquerors brought brute force to the level of reason and cultural empires, the scope of barbarism was gradually shrinking. Voltaire of the Age of Enlightenment wrote the Treatise on Customs, which violently attacked this view of theological history, which had a great influence on the study of world history in later generations. "During the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, Voltaire, Montesquieu, and Leibniz all struggled to understand the history and cultural traditions of Persia and China, and tried to integrate them into the broader vision of world history." The American political philosopher Voegelin pointed out that the idea of a "comprehensive explanation of human society and human history" did not exist before 1700, and that adaptation to the new world and further exposure to Asian culture would be part of the creation of this idea. Since then, historiography has gradually become professional and specialized, and a number of great historians have emerged, especially in the 19th century.
Voltaire's Treatise on Customs
The greatness of the great historian is that he is good at explaining the world of the past and responding to the problems of mankind. The Romantic historiography of Macaulay and Carlisle, the Objectivist historiography of the Ranke School, the positivist historiography of Buckle and Turner, the historicist historiography of De Royson, and others such as the Whig interpretation of history, the history of civilization, and the history of bottom-up, all try to construct an interpretation system of world history, all of which serve the government with the help of history, and all have their own ideal sustenance. Heinrich Treitschke (1834-1896) of the University of Berlin believed that support for the fatherland was the driving force behind his writing and teaching, and his speeches glorifying Germany's war behavior were cheered by students and officers: without war there would be no country. Everything we know is born of war, and the protection of the citizens of the country by the armed forces remains its primary and fundamental task. Therefore, as long as there are multiple countries, the war will continue until the end of history. Braudel, in the Mediterranean World Trilogy, explicitly argued that Western historiography was in the service of the state: "After Europe invented the profession of historian, it used historians to serve itself. Now that Europe's own ins and outs are clear, it stands ready to provide evidence and make demands. ”
As far as the various world histories that have already appeared, the world history that can affect the moment is the history written by the historians of the "world" empire. Before World War II, this power was mainly in the hands of european powers, especially Britain, and after World War II, it was gradually ceded to the United States, becoming a tool for spreading American civilization. For the foreseeable future, world history will, to a certain extent, be an academic utopia, a noble dream, and a truth on the other side.
It can be said that the world history works before World War II were all products of progressive ideas, but this concept was shattered with the outbreak of the two world wars. The teleological view of history was gradually replaced, with a new view of history that emphasized "social space" rather than "nation-states", emphasizing human "interaction" and "process", a process of continuous change over time, a process that initially experienced differently in different regions, but eventually connected peoples around the globe and their traditions. This is the concrete embodiment of the materialist view of history. Engels pointed out: "The 18th century was the century in which mankind united and gathered from the state of division and disintegration caused by Christianity; it was a step taken by mankind before embarking on the road of self-knowledge and self-emancipation... The situation is exactly the same in historiography; for the first time we see the voluminous compilation of world history, which, of course, lacks commentary and has no philosophical analysis at all, is not, after all, a fragment of history limited by time and place, as it was before, but a general history. "The key at present is what kind of interpretation theory, interpretation system, and interpretation framework of world history can be provided by the Chinese historical community.
The right of interpretation is the yardstick of the degree of development of civilization and the pricing power of culture. Whether we can obtain the right to explain, to what extent we can obtain the right to explain, and the extent to which our explanations can be voluntarily accepted and convinced by others, are the true manifestations of cultural soft power and the intrinsic nature of great powers. It can be seen that the measurement of whether a country's history is developed and influential depends to a large extent on how many historians, thoughtful historians, and historians with a world vision can be trained to build a historical interpretation system.
Engels
What kind of historians do we need
What kind of historian will have what kind of historical works, and what kind of national qualities will be shaped, so the responsibility and mission of historians are extremely important. History will still find it difficult to escape the nation-state mindset in the foreseeable future. Historical development is always spiraling and repeated, for example, before the Sino-US trade war and the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, everyone was full of confidence in globalization, the flow of people, logistics, wealth, wisdom, etc. were unimpeded, and globalization was unstoppable, but the plague suddenly solidified all this, and it seemed that overnight it returned to the nation-state era of the 19th century. The compilation of world history seems to be entering a new era. The official emphasis on big history and grand narratives; the academic community emphasizes fine research, paying more and more attention to the details, and entering the so-called fragmented study of history. This is due to different interests, and there has always been a great tension between history as narrative and history as the past, history as imagination and history as reality, history as a political tool and history as an academic ideal. In the 19th century, Dreueson found Alexander, a great man for Prussian hegemony, and created the unique concept of the Hellenistic era, with the aim of making a grand narrative with the aim of finding a historical basis for German unification. Kang Youwei's "Togu reform system" is not like this. To a certain extent, the various schools of evidence that have emerged in history are fragmented studies, and they are all products of the social environment at that time. Both have their value and their rationality.
Chen Heng
Chinese culture has a long history and has its own knowledge system, but in modern times, Chinese scholarship has been immersed in the Western knowledge system, academic system, and discourse system, and the traditional cultural knowledge system has been disintegrated. Historiography is no exception, and the means of historical compilation, the form of text presentation, the object of study, and the scope of research today are very different from traditional Chinese historiography. The space, time, and field of historical research have undergone great changes, and many research fields still lack academic accumulation, and new research areas are emerging in an endless stream, such as space history, emotional history, animal history, etc. The boundaries, connotations, objects, and methods of historical research are constantly evolving, but they are inseparable from their origins, that is, to cultivate truly great historians. Great historians can not only truly present human history within a certain time and space, but their research results also profoundly affect people's concepts and behaviors, and shape human history to a certain extent. Therefore, if we conduct a comprehensive examination of the historians of ancient and modern China and foreign countries, compare their influence in breadth and depth, and thus evaluate the rank and rank, we can reflect on the role of historiography in the overall development of mankind from the perspective of individual historians.
The writings and ideas of historians who have important influence in the world have become the common cultural wealth of all mankind, such as Sima Qian and Herodotus, which belong to the A class. Historians with cross-national, cross-regional, and cross-cultural influences generally cover a wide range of work that also extends beyond their countries and regions, such as Polybia and Plutarch, and belong to the B level. Historians who record and present the history of their own country and ethnic group well play an important role in shaping the historical and cultural identity of their own country and people, such as Li Wei, who belongs to the C level. Historians with significant achievements in the field of historiography whose writings and theories promote the development of a certain research direction, such as Wilamoviz, belong to the D level. Some historians and historical works that have had a negative impact can also be classified as E-rated. If we look at the historiography of the countries of the world according to the above rules, arrange the influence of historians and historians according to the number of scores, and then calculate their percentages by nationality, we can generally see the general contribution of each nation-state in historiography. Foreign scholars want to know Chinese independent thinking based on national psychology and ideology, and history is one of the main ways to understand China; likewise, we need to understand how foreign historical consciousness is constructed and how much history plays a role in the cultural construction of the whole country.
The construction of the research system of contemporary Chinese history is a major practical problem that needs to be solved urgently, and this problem is essentially to solve the problem of the docking of Chinese history with the world academic system. We build three major systems, not to engage in a set of systems that others can't understand and that are contrary to the trend of world scholarship, not to engage in academic construction behind closed doors, but to learn world scholarship, integrate into world scholarship, and contribute to world scholarship, so as to show their own strength. If this problem is not solved, it will be difficult for us to dock with the international historical scene, and it will be difficult for us to have a real dialogue with influential historians abroad, and we will fall into the dilemma of self-talk. The task and responsibility of professional historians is pure academic research, proposing theories and methods of re-observing the world, explaining the world, and understanding the world, and shortening the gap with the world's academic frontiers as soon as possible. In short, what kind of historians to train for the country, how to train historians, and how many historians to train must not only be combined with the needs of reality, but also refer to the lessons learned from the development of historical studies in the past.
Let's look at a realistic set of data. In 2019, there were 83,687 undergraduate students majoring in history (060101) in China (including five classes of students, including the number of graduates in 2019). In 2019, the actual number of applicants for the national history major was 16,774. In terms of postgraduate training, in 2019, China already has 31 first-level doctoral programs in world history, more than 80 master's programs in first-level disciplines in world history, and dozens of postdoctoral mobile stations in world history, forming a complete world history talent training mechanism. The total number of graduate students in the history category is 6502 in 2019 (including ordinary universities and scientific research institutions), including 1154 doctoral students and 5348 master's students. The number of graduates of national colleges and universities in 2019 reached 8.34 million, a new high in nearly 10 years, of which history graduates accounted for about 0.18% of the total. It can be found that most college history students do not engage in history-related occupations after graduation, and not many actually engage in professional research.
Therefore, we need to think: Can these specialized historians cultivated every year become the main body of disseminating historical and cultural identity? Or who dominates the people's historical knowledge and historical awareness? Is it dominated by these history graduates? Can we produce a large number of international historians in the next 30 years? Can our training mechanism support the cultivation of international historians? When will Chinese historians truly become the mainstay of world history scholarship?
In addition, it is necessary to have disciplinary self-awareness, abandon localism, and recognize reality. The role of historiography in modern society is getting smaller and smaller, and cultural pluralism has long since dismembered the previous field of history, and the role of historians should not be overestimated, but also should not be arrogant. What history is cannot be understood in traditional thinking, and the real big history is the "big" history that includes all kinds of humanities and social sciences.
History not only grasps our current nationalities, societies, and cultures through the past, but also sometimes pries open closed minds and inspires our thinking. But we also can't expect too much. History cannot guarantee tolerance, although it is regarded as a weapon of wisdom; history cannot guarantee common sense, although it is regarded as the source of knowledge; history cannot prevent human pride and complacency, although history is full of lessons... History must be rewritten from time to time, even though there is only one real history. History will be the history of the nation-state for a long time to come, although people are constantly advocating the history of nations, countries, regions and civilizations and pursuing the internationalization of history, but this will be a long academic inquiry, "the history of all societies up to now is moving in class antagonisms, and this antagonism has different forms in different eras", and the epochality, nationality and nationality of history are difficult to change in the visible future. Therefore, we need our own history, we need to write our own history, we need the world history supported by our own system of ideas, interpretations, and moral systems.
The author, Chen Heng, is a professor at the Department of History, Shanghai Normal University. Comments are omitted here, please refer to the original text for the full version.