Studies On Chen Dengyuan's Academic Research

Chen Dengyuan(1899-1975) styled himself Boying, who came from Yuyao(Now. Cixi), was a famous historian and educator in modern China. He was a prolific scholar. And History of China's Culture, History of Land Tax in China, A Survey of Book Collection and Anecdotes of Chinese History are his representative works. In history study, he was creative and brave to overthrow and correct previous scholars' conclusion, which left a lot of scholarly legacy to us.This dissertation focuses on Chen Dengyuan's life and his academic thoughts, and tries to evaluate it objectively. Additionally, this dissertation also locates his position in academia. This dissertation is divided into 4 parts.Part 1 is Chen Dengyuan's life. This part introduce his life and scholarly achievements and the exordium of the study of Chen Dengyuan.Part 2 is Chen Dengyuan's achievements on the study of Culture History. In order to make up the insufficiency of Liu Yizheng's History of China's Culture, expand China's culture and waken Chinese, Chen Dengyuan compiled history of China's culture. He studied the history of China's culture entirely, emphasized people's position and function in history of culture and concerned people's daily life. In his study, he offered a more entire theory of history of culture. He putted his theory into his study of China's culture, and divided the history of China's culture into 5 periods, ancient period, medieval period, latter medieval period, modern period and contemporary period according to his theory.Part 3 is Chen Dengyuan's achievements on history study. Chen refuted the viewpoint that history is useless. He emphasized the importance of history which is the summary of people's activity. He focused on the study of historical figures and persisted that historians should evaluate historical figures objectively. He believed that history would repeat. He summarized the repeat of history from 10 aspects, such as psychology, economy, conditions, etc. He also did some work in the study of historical material. He pointed out that historical material is divided into major ones and minor ones. He also offered his standard of how to divided the historical material. He was adept to use historical material in his study. Being well documented is a feature of his works.His study on China's economy history also achieved a lot. Based on the painstaking study of historical material, he pointed out that the well-field system didn't exist. He developed the viewpoint of the relationship among land tax, society and economy. So, he pointed out that existence of double landownership. He believed that academic activities should face society and reality. Aiming at the heavy land tax and land collection in his aged, he thought land tax and landownership should be reformed, people should be organized to open up virgin soil, and industrialized China.Part 4 is Chen Dengyuan's achievements on the history of book collecting. Firstly, he summarized the history of book collecting. He thought that politics, war, hiding and interpersonal relationship made books missed. On the base of old experience, he offered his methods of book reservation. In his viewpoint, the government should intervene and manage private book collection, olden and scarce books should be re-published. At the end, it also summarized Chen Dengyuan's achievement on the study of various scholars from pre-Qin to early Han period and literature study.The end is a conclusion. The dissertation summarized Chen Dengyuan's academic thoughts, affirmed his achievements, and review the study of Chen Dengyuan.