A Study Of Zheng Tianting’s Historiography

As one of the most famous Chinese historians in the20th century, Zheng Tianting had made great achievements in Ming and Qing history as the successor of the great historian Meng Sen, He also made great achievements in the fields of Sui-Tang and Yuan history. After1949, Zheng Tianting devoted himself to study Marxism like historical materialism and dialectical materialism, inaugurating a new academic realm in his Late Years. As one of the typical cases, his academic experience and achievements help us to understand the development of Chinese historiography in20th Century. I focus on Zheng Tianting’s historical achievements, historiography thoughts and historical education thoughts, researching on the development and change of Zheng Tianting’s academic thoughts in this dissertation to summarize the value and influence of the Zheng Tianting’s historiography. It can help us more clearly understand the overall context of the characteristics and development of modern Chinese historiography.Zheng Tianting had made extensive and deep reasearches in Chinese history, especially in Ming and Qing history, which are very significant and influential, such as important historical figures, the major historical events and important institutions. The obvious characteristic of Zheng Tianting’s reseach on Chinese history mainly reflected in three aspects:firstly, attaching great importance to the use of original literature; secondly, very careful combing the context of the evolution of historical events; and finally good at grasping the overall characteristics of different historical periods from a macro perspective. The main methods of Zheng Tianting’s research on the Chinese history are comparative study and history language study.Zheng Tianting’s historiography thoughts mainly reflected as following:Firstly, studying meticulously and finding big issues from small clues; secondly,"deep, wide, new, strict, coherent"; and finally combining precise textual criticism and historical materialism together. During his sixty years of teaching, Zheng Tianting created his own unique educational ideology for teaching history, such as guiding the reading and research approaches, focusing on teaching and combination with researches, paying more attention to compile history textbooks, encouraging communication and widening students’ academic horizon.Zheng Tianting also made great contribution to the development of the history department of Peking University and NanKai University. A systemic analysis of Zheng Tianting’s researches can provide a better understanding for the evolution and modern transformation of Chinese modern academic on the one hand, and on the other hand it helps us to discover the significance of Zheng Tianting’s research as an academic example, which is undoubtedly a useful reference for the contemporary historiography research.