On the Beginning and Transformation of Modern Chinese Historiography

After the First Opium War (1840-1842) there were increased academic interests in studying the history and geography of China’s northwestern borderlands,introducing foreign history and geography and writing the modern history of China.Such interests,however,were no more than reflections of the times in history studies and could hardly improve the whole picture of historiography.At the turn of the 20th century,Liang Qichao published “The Introduction to Chinese History” and “The New Historiography”,which marked the emergence of a new trend of thought in historiography and should be deemed the beginning of modern Chinese historiography.Soon after,the “national quintessence school”(guocui xuepai) called for preserving the quintessence of Chinese culture and attempted to bridge Chinese and Western scholarship.Then the “Reorganization of National Heritage”(zhengli guogu) Movement came,urging to re-arrange traditional scholarship.Hu Shih (1891-1962) explicitly put forward the goal of “compiling a history of Chinese culture,” helped dissolve the boundary between modern and traditional historiography and indicated the approach to the transformation from ancient to modern historiography from a perspective of discipline classifications.This “new trend” of Chinese historiography,centering on new materials,new methods and new issues specified the research path for the early stage of modern Chinese historiography.

Reflections upon Some Fundamental Issues in Educational Historiography

This paper categorizes educational historiography as part of“historiography”because educational historiography is leaning towards historiography in spite of being a fundamental educational discipline with the dual disciplinary attributes of education and historiography.It is argued that the nature of a discipline is partly defined by its researchers and its roles,but more importantly,by its origin,major research topics and objectives,basic research theories,methodologies and paradigms,as well as its relations with cognate disciplines.And each of the above factors is elaborated on to illuminate the dual disciplinary nature of educational historiography.From the perspective of educational science,what reflects the nature of education the best is people’s“educational activities,”which can be defined as the aggregate of specific activities directed to promoting valuable human development,and the various ways educators and learners participate and interact in the educational process.This paper maintains that the history of educational activities constitutes an upside-down triangle relation with the histories of educational thoughts and system.The history of educational activities is the origin,premise and foundation,whereas the latter two are the derivatives and results.Therefore,the history of educational activities must be studied as part of the research on the history of education.

Objectivity in the historiography of COVID-19 pandemic

The world is facing a once-in-a-lifetime situation:the COVID-19 pandemic.During the pandemic,the World Health Organization announced an infodemic as well.This infodemic caused infollution and sparked many controversies.Pandemics as extraordinary occurrences are always attractive to historians.However,infodemics and biased information threaten objective history-writing.Objectivity as it regards historians is already a much-discussed subject.In this commentary,the fundamental theories about objectivity are delineated.Second,the relationship between the infodemic and COVID-19 pandemic is explained.Lastly,the problems regarding objectivity in the historiography of the COVID-19 pandemic are explored.

Traversing knowledge networks:an algorithmic historiography of extant literature on the Internet of Things(IoT)

Research on the Internet of Things(IoT)has been booming for the past 6 years due to technological advances and potential for application.Nonetheless,the rapid growth of IoT articles and the heterogeneous nature of IoT pose challenges to conducting a systematic review of IoT literature.This study seeks to address the abovementioned challenges by reviewing 1065 IoT articles retrieved from the International Statistical Institute Web of Science via a blend of quantitative citation analysis and qualitative content analysis.For the former,we generated a historiography of IoT research,a citation network,in which we tried to identify main paths of codification and diffusion,as well as path-dependent transitions.For the latter,we explicated the progression of knowledge through 30 central IoT articles in chronological order regarding infrastructures,enabling technologies,potential technologies,and research challenges.Findings from this study contribute to both IoT research and management.

Global trends and hotspots of treatment for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease:A bibliometric and visualization analysis(2010-2023)

BACKGROUND Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease(NAFLD)is chronic,with its progression leading to liver fibrosis and end-stage cirrhosis.Although NAFLD is increasingly common,no treatment guideline has been established.Many mechanistic studies and drug trials have been conducted for new drug development to treat NAFLD.An up-to-date overview on the knowledge structure of NAFLD through bibliometrics,focusing on research hotspots,is necessary to reveal the rational and timely directions of development in this field.AIM To research the latest literature and determine the current trends in treatment for NAFLD.METHODS Publications related to treatment for NAFLD were searched on the Web of Science Core Collection database,from 2010 to 2023.VOSviewers,CiteSpace,and R package“bibliometrix”were used to conduct this bibliometric analysis.The key information was extracted,and the results of the cluster analysis were based on network data for generating and investigating maps for country,institution,journal,and author.Historiography analysis,bursts and cluster analysis,cooccurrence analysis,and trend topic revealed the knowledge structure and research hotspots in this field.GraphPad Prism 9.5.1.733 and Microsoft Office Excel 2019 were used for data analysis and visualization.RESULTS In total,10829 articles from 120 countries(led by China and the United States)and 8785 institutions were included.The number of publications related to treatment for NAFLD increased annually.While China produced the most publications,the United States was the most cited country,and the United Kingdom collaborated the most from an international standpoint.The University of California-San Diego,Shanghai Jiao Tong University,and Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine produced the most publications of all the research institutions.The International Journal of Molecular Sciences was the most frequent journal out of the 1523 total journals,and Hepatology was the most cited and co-cited journal.Sanyal AJ was the most cited author,the most co-cited author was Younossi ZM,and the most influential author was Loomba R.The most studied topics included the epidemiology and mechanism of NAFLD,the development of accurate diagnosis,the precise management of patients with NAFLD,and the associated metabolic comorbidities.The major cluster topics were“emerging drug,”“glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist,”“metabolic dysfunction-associated fatty liver disease,”“gut microbiota,”and“glucose metabolism.”CONCLUSION The bibliometric study identified recent research frontiers and hot directions,which can provide a valuable reference for scholars researching treatments for NAFLD.

On the Present and the Past of Pandemics

During the COVID-19 pandemic,a multitude of narratives saturated the print,audiovisual,and electronic media.Improvised,uninformed,apocalyptic and voluntarist approaches abounded.These notes-written during the pandemic and delivered in the conference series-address the proliferation of such discourses,emphasizing a series of issues.First,the widespread ignorance about the history of epidemics.Then,the inability to deal with the uncertainties that reign during pandemic times,as well as the announcements that this extraordinary health/sanitary event would produce a profound watershed in all walks of life and in all corners of the world.Finally,and against the general assertion that“one learns from the past to understand the present,”these notes seek to point out how the present can illuminate the study of the past-or,more personally,what I think I have learned as a historian in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A New Chromatic Vision:The Early Impact of Color Photography on the Representation of Architecture

The role of color photography in the representation of architecture is a subject little investigated by architectural historiography.The link between the color values of architectural design and its visual transmission in the early phase of modernism was certainly problematic.Color photography had an undeniable impact on architectural color in practice:color photographs in books and periodicals published between the 1940s and 1960s clearly influenced the use of color in architectural design.

1945年以来法国的音乐史学

在大约一个世纪之中,音乐史学科在法国获得了巨大的发展。在初始阶段,一部分博学的专家以文献学的方式为法国音乐学的诞生打下了学术基础,随后,该学科在转型过程中面临了挑战,但同时也因为机构设置的更新而获得了机遇。尤其是在"二战"后,法国国家科学研究中心(CNRS)和综合性大学都产生了很多音乐学的职位,系统性的课程也在全国高校普遍开展。1970—1980年代,音乐分析和音乐史这两个学科的竞争使后者在最近20年得到了极大的更新,尤其是在引入社会科学方法的层面,法国音乐学有了全新的改观。

Scientometric analysis and mapping of 20 years of glaucoma research

AIM：To provide a scientometric analysis in the field of glaucoma.METHODS：A bibliometric method was used to obtain a view of the scientific production in field of glaucoma by data extracted from the Institute for Scientific Information（ISI） from 1993 to 2013.Specific parameters were retrieved from the ISI.Articles about glaucoma were analyzed regarding the topics＇ structure,history,and document relationships using HistCite software.Also,the trends in the most influential publications and authors were analyzed.RESULTS：The number of articles was constantly increasing,and most highly cited articles addressed clinical and epidemiologic topics in this field.During the past three years,there has been a trend towards genomic research studies and also more molecular translational research.CONCLUSION：This was the first scientometric report on glaucoma,analyzing the characteristics of papers and the trends in scientific production.A constant increase was observed in the number of papers,while the subject of papers had a shift in the past three years towards genomic research studies.

On the Historiographical Reform of General History of Chinese Science and Technologyin the Post-Needham Era

The research of General History of Chinese Science and Technology(GHCST) has so far failed to transcend the"positivist history", a program of historiography initiated by Joseph Needham. The historians after Needham have made important explorations on the historiographical reform of GHCST. However, nearly all of these explorations are still the methodological reflections of the positivist history perspective, failing to reflect metaphysically on such historiographical presuppositions as views of science, technology and history, which means they have failed to break away from the positivist history perspective. To go beyond the limitations of positivist history calls for the introduction of the perspective of phenomenology of body and reflecting on and criticizing the historiographical presuppositions of positivist history on a metaphysical level. Such reflection will lead us to a new program of historiography in the post-Needham era, that is"phenomenal history"or the GHCST from the perspective of the phenomenology of body.

Humanistic Spirit of Long Education

The essential attribute of education is the humanistic attribute.A saying from The Book of Changes emphasizes judging from astronomy to detect the change of time and judging from the humanities to transform into the world.The development of Chinese education should be based on characters,inherit Chinese culture and civilization;trace back to the origin of education in history and grasp the diachronic and synchronic development of education;construct educational thoughts and thinking in traditional cultural classics.

说历史编纂学:一个中西史学文化比较的立场

言及'历史编纂学',人们总会联想到与之对应的英文'historiography'。一般也是如此对应翻译。但这种以主要意谓'史学'或'史学史'的'historiography',去界定和理解中国语境下历史'编纂'之学存在很大问题。语义分析表明,中文'编纂'所指的是单纯的文本编织组织,而没有'historiography'的意指。中文所谓'编纂',是对国家职掌管理、整理档案文献职能的史官组织历史文本行为的描述。这种'编纂'的性质,决定了中国传统史学文本的以连缀组织已有文献为主的生产方式,而史官的官僚性,也决定了文本组织的立场和视角的国家性,决定了反映内容的社会性和整体性,决定了其对于政治实体的治乱兴衰,以及为容纳多重内容而追求的文本组织形式的多样性。与此不同的西方史学,由于相当长的时期属于个人行为,没有被纳入到国家的职能之中,所专注的焦点多局限于个人或亲历或传闻的诸如战争等重大事件,关注的是人性的善与恶,导致在组织文本时,不太考虑社会各因素之间的关联性和整体性,更注意表现事件的线性过程和事件的情节。因而,在西方史学中,与历史(history)一起组合使用来表示文本历史的,一般采用narrative或writing,如history narrative,或history writing等。'编纂'一词的分析,或可以在一定意义上揭示中西史学文化上所存在的差异。

Warfare, Imperialism, and the Making of Modern Chinese History： A Review Essay

This historiographic essay contends that warfare made and unmade the Qing dynasty between 1644 and 1911, and its study has helped to create the field of modem Chinese history during the past seventy years. It advances three principal claims. First, the literature on war, especially interstate conflict, can serve as a synecdoche for the development of the modem China field as a whole since the 1950s. The research interests of late Qing specialists have oscillated along an ＂external-internal-external＂ axis that corresponds with three distinct periods of intellectual inquiry, scholarly production, and generational dominance. Second, historians have reached inaccurate conclusions about the state capacity of the Qing Empire after 1840 through a crude analysis of the First Sino-Japanese War, a mistake they can rectify by adopting a longer-term perspective on the state-making process. Third, scholars have deftly traced the changing role of military power in modem Chinese politics but have also adopted the interpretive categories of wen and wu from literati discourse without sufficient critical reflection. In the future, researchers may seek to explore the intersection of warfare and the environment, technology, and ethnic identity, approaches that will continue to move the field in comparative, global, and Inner Asian directions.

The Cyclical Views of Human History in Thucydides’Archaeology and Sima Qian’s Historical Records

Many previous thinkers have imagined that there was a glorious or harmonious period in the past better than the world of their own time,but Thucydides and Sima Qian do not describe the early stages of human society as a Golden Age.I suggest that Sima Qian marks a separation between the mythical stories and the historical spirit in China,just as Thucydides did in Greece.Further,they both presented a modified cyclical view of human history.For a better understanding of the basic characteristics of Greek and Chinese historiographies,this paper discusses the cyclical views of human history underlying ancient Greek and early Chinese historiographies through a comparative study of Thucydides’and Sima Qian’s texts.I analyze some similarities and differences between the two great historians’conceptions of historical process,and I conclude that Thucydides believes human intelligence develops through a historical spiral,while Sima Qian focuses on dynastic cycles with a strong moral concern.

Policy Blending, Fuzzy Chronology, and Local Understandings of National Initiatives in Early 1950s China

This article proposes the concept of policy blending to improve our understanding of the densely interactive quality of political initiatives in early 1950s China. Using three cases studies, I argue that policy blending, defined as the process by which previous political experiences shaped the implementation and interpretation of those subsequent to them （sometimes in ways contrary to the government＇s intentions）, occurred frequently during this period, to the extent that people＇s understanding of the first years of Chinese Communist Party rule cannot be separated from this phenomenon. Using examples from marriage registration, the Marriage Law and the national discussion of the 1954 draft Constitution, I advance the historiographical argument that the early 1950s should not be demarcated by, or taught mainly with reference to, ＂temporally encapsulated＂ policies with clear beginnings and ends （i.e., policy ＂a＂ occurred in year ＂b,＂ followed by policy ＂c＂ in year ＂d＂）. Rather, policies seeped into each other, producing a blurry--but sometimes accurate--＂impression＂ of state power. I further suggest that the concept of policy blending can be helpful in understanding subsequent political initiatives as well.

The Nature and Impact of Late Imperial Chinese Academies:A Review of Some Recent Publications in China

This review essay analyzes the historiography of Confucian academies(shuyuan)in imperial China,focusing on five representative books published in China between 2008 and 2014,including two new editions of books originally published in 1995 and 2004.The five authors share a deep concern about the nature of academies,particularly their relationship with the state.A secondary theme that these books address is the impact that academies had on late imperial Chinese culture and society.Read together,these five works show how research on academies in imperial China has evolved over the past two decades.

New Chinese Military History, 1839-1951： What＇s the Story？

Since 1990, New Chinese Military History in the West has remedied scholarly neglect of Chinese warfare and changed the usual stories of modern China. These studies disproved Orientalist assumptions of a unique ＂Chinese way of war＂ or a strategic culture that avoided aggressive confrontation. Scholars also challenge the assumption that Confucian immobility led to a clash of civilizations and decisive defeat in the Opium Wars, First Sino-Japanese War, and Boxer War of 1900. In fact, Qing officials were quick and successful in creating a new military regime. New military histories of the warlords, the Sino-Japanese Wars, and the Chinese Civil War show that developing new types of warfare was central in creating the new nation. All these wars split the country into factions that were supported by outside powers： they were internationalized civil wars. The article also asks how the choice of terms, labels, and categories shapes interpretations and political messages.

Innovation and Integration:Chinese Exegesis and Modern Semantics Before 1949

It is widely accepted that knowledge in the humanities is highly situated. Especially mediated is knowledge in the domain of meaning studies, the differences in time, space and language being particular challenges for researchers to interpret and represent the past. This article, in terms of linguistic historiography, offers an overview of the spread of modern semantics in China since 1906, its mixture with traditional Chinese Exegesis, and its growth into New Exegesis(Semantics), and presents the differences between traditional Chinese Exegesis and New Exegesis in their nature, scope, principles, and research methods in order to bring the past and the present into dialogic engagement, and meanwhile to offer references to the writing of a history of modern Chinese semantics before 1949.

Differentiation in Context:Case Studies and Macroscopic Views of History

The opening of the twentieth-first century offers both opportunities and challenges for the development of historiography.Of many concerned issues,historians across the world have been debating on how to balance case studies and macroscopic views in historical research.1 In China,text criticism as a meticulous approach of case studies has dominated the field since the High Qing period.2 Some criticize this scholarly tradition,believing that Chinese scholars have been too narrowly focused on the text and shunning away from some more significant issues in authentic historical experiences.