Study Of Influence Of Fu Sinian On Modern Chinese Historiography

At the beginning of the20th century, there came a constant influx of western socialideological trends to China, which directly impacted the foundation of feudalismhistoriography. The cultural exchanges between China and the western world graduallypushed Chinese feudalism historiography to the edge of falling apart. Meanwhile, variousschools in historiography appeared like a storm, and great innovations and breakthroughshad taken place in historiography theories and methods. Fu Sinian, together with theSchool of Historical Data established by him, was one major force in the time.Born in an old family known by Chinese traditional culture, Fu Sinian had studiedfor seven years in Europe, which equipped him with a thorough knowledge of bothwestern and Chinese cultures, and made him a master in both. After coming back fromstudying abroad, he established the Research Institute of Historiography and Linguistics,and became the forerunner of group study. He advocated that research methodology innatural science should be applied into the study of historiography to establish newscience of historiography. It was he who put forward the thought that “Historiographywas Science of Historical Data”. He criticized the grandiose phenomenon in Chinesehistorian circle at the initial stage of the20th century, and proposed scientific andviewable historiography. Fu Sinian, together with his colleagues at the Research Instituteof Historiography and Linguistics, dug in the historical data, broadened the research fieldof historiography, and advocated many methods of scientific research, which were ofgreat significance to various domains of historiography such as Chinese archaeology,historiography of Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty, archival science, etc. This endeavormade outstanding contribution to boosting the development of modern Chinesehistoriography. This paper makes a deep analysis of the influence of Fu Sinian’shistorical thoughts on modern Chinese historiography by objective interpretation ofworks by FuSinian, his biographical data, and other related academic materials.This paper is divided into five parts. The first chapter is the introduction. In this part,the author explains the purpose of this topic and its significance. Then there follows theanalysis of the current research status of historiography, and a display of contents of thispaper, its focuses, and innovation points. The second part is about the social and academic background when Fu Sinian’s historical thoughts came into being. The authormakes an introduction of the life story of Fu Sinian and presents in-depth analysis of thesocial and academic background at the formation of Fu Sinian’s historical thoughts. Thethird part talks about the historical thoughts of Fu Sinian, by giving analysis of hishistorical thoughts and historical research methods. The fourth part is about the influenceof Fu Sinian’s historical thoughts on modern Chinese historiography. The authordiscusses the positive influence and also briefly analyzes the deficiencies in his historicalthoughts. The fifth part is the conclusion. The author makes a summary of the historicalthoughts of Fu Sinian, and the influence of his thoughts on modern Chinesehistoriography.