A Study On The Series Of Chinese Cultural History Of Commercial Press

Cultural History is a comprehensive subject combining of Culture and History. The study of Chinese cultural history, which began with new historiography springing up in the early20th century, was to bring order out of chaos towards the phenomenon that the traditional history paid attention to the historical facts of politics than culture’s from modern Chinese historians. The Series of Chinese Cultural History edited by Wang Yun-wu in the thirty’s was one of the representative achievements at that era on the research of culture and cultural history. Its codification was not only to directly reflect the publishing idea of the Commercial Press seeking to promote progress of thought and culture and paying attention to management of series, but also to deeply reflect the cultural undertaking of modern Chinese scholars facing Powers’ aggression and seeking national self-preservation, and their cultural introspection in modern academic consciousness.In the light of the deficiency that the research of cultural history started from a macro perspective and was lack of depth before this series, the people of the Commercial Press headed by Wang Yun-wu combining with academic general trend and absorbing the views of Liang Qichao, Hu Shi et al determined to compile Chinese cultural history with the method of thematic history, which also became the main methods on the research of Chinese cultural history, together with the macroscopic overall study method.The entire series focused on collating historical data systematically, which laid the foundation for the construction of the subject on cultural history. It broke through the concept of old history, and created a lot of fields of research on special cultural history, and also provided a vivid example of the practice of modern academic idea. Enabling new personnel in the codification of this series also created a group of young scholars. Due to the war, the original work plan of the Commercial Press was disrupted and its authors were also powerless in the writings, so it didn’t be completed, which also reflected the entanglement between the Series and social politics and zeitgeist.