本土资源与外国史研究

Domestic Resources and Study of Foreign History

中国的外国史研究面临许多困难 ,其中最严重的问题是本土资源相对缺乏。欧美的中国史研究依托于其史学的整体性发展、厚重的学科积累和丰富的本土理论资源 ,故能取得令中国和国际学界瞩目的成绩。中国的外国史研究尚在幼年时代 ,学科积累单薄 ;而且 ,由于中国史学在转型中出现困难 ,不同学科领域缺乏交流 ,本土社会科学理论均不成熟 ,因而外国史研究未能从本国学术和思想中获得充分的滋养。外国史研究者通常只能片面地借助域外资源 ,难以产生有特色和影响的学术成果。在这种情况下 ,中国学者更应借鉴欧美中国史研究的成功经验 ,充分发掘本土资源 ,在修养和学识上形成一种对域外资源的过滤、消化能力 ,借助本土文化底蕴、中国文史修养和深切的现实关怀 ,形成独特的观察角度和解释框架 。

The Study of foreign history in China meets a lot of difficulties. The most difficult one of them is the relative lack of domestic, or rather, the indigenous resources. In Western countries, the study of Chinese history has got remarkable achievements benefiting from their domestic resources: the development of the science of history as a whole, and a deep and broad cognition of the science of history. The study of foreign history in China is still in the times of its infancy, as a discipline, it is a poor and feeble accumulation. Again, in times of transformation, the study of foreign history has to meet a set of difficulties of the time, for want of academic exchange and the immaturity of other social sciences is unable to help. The Chinese scholars who study foreign history in such a fix could yield no unique and influential results for they can but rely on the secondhand resources. There is a long way for us to go to broaden and deepen our efficacy, especially the knowledge of languages, both Chinese and foreign countries', and the theories of history, to cultivate the ability commanding the resources home and abroad, to learn from the successful experiments in studying Chinese history of the Western scholars, to have their indigenous resources to be filtrated and digested, together with what we could exploit from our indigenous resources making a mating type on which the surface the substance and beneath it the Chinese ability. A type, as such, would be meeting with the Chinese realities.