Three insights from reading "What is History"
1. Rigorous and standardized yet easy-to-understand interpretation and narrative
"What is History" as a One of the series of books "What Are Humanities and Social Sciences" published by Peking University Press, its fundamental purpose is to popularize historical knowledge, improve humanistic quality, and shape the national spirit of civilization, openness, democracy, science, and progress. The book "What is History" is based on the excavation of China's local academic resources. It uses relatively popular language from four aspects: the origin of history, the types of history, why we need to understand history, and how to study and study history. More esoteric historiographic theory and knowledge of the history of historiography are imparted to a general audience.
For example, about the origin of "history". The term "history" comes from Japanese, although the two Chinese characters have been used in China for at least 3,000 years. (After the Meiji Restoration, Japan introduced a large number of Western scientific concepts, including history.) The glyph of the traditional calendar in oracle bones and bronze inscriptions is a person's feet walking through a forest, indicating the movement of time and space; "Shuowen Jiezi" "Calendar, It’s passed, it’s passed on.” In the "Book of Rites", "Guo Ye" corresponds to the movement of the sun, moon and stars, which is used to determine the year, month and season. With the noun "calendar". History in Oracle represents a person with a special status or a special position. "Shuowen Jiezi" says, "History, the recorder, always holds the center. Zhong means uprightness." That means keeping an upright attitude and recording events with the right hand. Before the end of the 19th century, "li" and "history" were closely related, but they belonged to two systems. "History" began to be used as a fixed vocabulary (in 1901, the "Qing Dynasty Draft" chaired by Liang Qichao). In fact, Japanese borrowed fixed collocations that already existed in ancient Chinese books. This kind of rigorous, standardized and easy-to-understand explanation is helpful to the teaching work of middle school history teachers, especially enlightening the teaching of content with strong theoretical content. For example, there are three compulsory subjects and six topics.
Another example, today, the topic "What is the use of learning history?" is still a question that many young readers want to ask. French historian Braudel said: "History should not be keen on fabricating nationalism (nationalism is often condemned), nor should it only indulge in humanism (although humanism is my preference) "The important issue is that if history disappears, national consciousness will not survive. If this national consciousness is lost, neither France nor Italy will have an independent culture and true civilization." I thought it talked about the highest and ultimate role of history. Just imagine, without the vast historical books and historical works left by our ancestors’ historians, the Chinese people today would not know about the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, the Qin Emperor and the Han Ancestor, the Tang Zong and Song Ancestors, Tang Poetry and Song Ci, etc., and they would not know why we are Chinese. If you are not an American or a New Zealander, there is no such thing as Chinese culture or civilization in the world. In the book "What is History", the author quotes a passage from the modern historian Liang Qichao's "New Historiography", which also expresses the same meaning: "Historians are the most profound and important people with knowledge. The mirror is also the source of patriotism. The reason why European nationalism is developed today and the countries are becoming more civilized, half of which is contributed by history." The author opens a chapter on "Why we need to understand history", starting from "Dong Hu's. "Strength", "Spring and Autumn Writing Style", "Status of Tai Shigong", "Zi Zhi Tong Jian": The role of history in Zi Zhi", "Using the past for the present", "Insinuating historiography and its legacy", "Getting out of Lushan", "The wisdom of history", "Looking at the future from history" "Nine aspects, eloquently explained, illustrate the significance of learning history. We learned from this that the early historians, like the four brothers Dong Hu and Qi Taishi, fought successively at the cost of their lives in order to write history in a straight line; Sima Qian "suffered to survive" in order to write a "Study of Heaven and Man," "Historical Records" to understand the changes in ancient and modern times. The inheritance of China's five thousand years of civilization depends on the contributions of such a group of historians.
Excerpted from Baidu netizen, thank you.