The New History is a long article written by Liang Qichao, which is an important symbol for bourgeois historians to criticize traditional historiography and try to establish a new theoretical system of historiography.
In the 28th year of Guangxu (1902), Liang Qichao published the historical narrative of China in Qingyi Daily last year, and then published the famous long article New History in Xinmin Congbao. The former focuses on the specific idea of writing "China history";
The latter focuses on criticizing "old history" in theory. The author calls himself a "new historian" and advocates a "historical revolution" to create a "new historiography". These two articles were later included in the third and fourth volumes of the Collection of Drinking Rooms.
The full text of New History consists of six sections, which are: the old history of China, the definition of history, the relationship between history and race, orthodoxy, calligraphy and chronology. It has many similarities and differences with China's history and narrative. But the basic idea is the same, and the two articles are complementary in content. Therefore, it is appropriate to study them together, which shows the author's purport of advocating "new historiography". Liang Qichao dabbled in western learning in a wide range. In these two articles, he put forward and expounded some important historical theoretical problems by using the historical philosophy (mainly modern evolution) and historical methodology of western scholars.
On the nature and scope of historical narration. In both articles, the author discusses the "definition theory" of history, and the nature and scope of historical writing is the most important issue in the "definition theory". The author points out: "Historians describe evolutionary phenomena." The "history" he said, according to its meaning, is the history written by historians, that is, the history reflected in the history written by historians. Historical writing is a "phenomenon of narrative evolution", which actually points out the essence of historical writing of "new historiography". Under this premise, the author defines a connotation for history, that is, "those who evolve, those who never return, those who evolve without success." Everything that belongs to this kind of knowledge is called history. "In short, history should take the theory of evolution as the guiding ideology, investigate and describe various evolutionary phenomena, which is the essence of New History. The author thinks that "the true image of history" means that the law of motion is "like a spiral". The "history" here refers to the objective historical process. His understanding promoted China's naive view of evolution in traditional historiography to a new stage. However, the historical evolution and truth of Liang Qichao's words did not go beyond what his teacher Kang Youwei called chaos, peace, harmony and progress, that is, they were confined to the scope of vulgar evolution theory. Regarding the scope of historical writing, Liang Qichao said: "People who write history also describe the phenomenon of population evolution. "The author believes that everything has the phenomenon of evolution, which belongs to the scope of history. However, what is recorded in history is usually limited to human beings. This is because: "people are also the extreme of evolution, with various changes, and people who are not poor are also." It is pointed out that human evolution is the most complex feature in the evolution of "everything". In this way, Liang Qichao noticed that the study of history is divided into "broad sense" and "narrow sense": "The broad sense of history is not all-inclusive and cannot be completed; In a narrow sense, it is only bounded by human beings. "This division is very important in theory. Liang Qichao further pointed out: in terms of "narrow sense" history, not all can be written as historical narrative. He believes that "if you want to have traces of evolution, you must rely on the crowd", and "if human beings evolve in the clouds, it is Gunnoshin, not a person". Therefore, "the most important thing to pay attention to in history [writing] is the crowd. If it has nothing to do with the crowd, it does not belong to the category of history [writing], although it is very strange, very strange. "From the development of China's historical view, it is a great progress from respecting fate to attaching importance to personnel. Paying attention to the role of individuals in people is another great progress. However, Liang Qichao emphasized "the phenomenon of population evolution" and neglected the role of the material production activities and their distribution relations of "population" in this "evolution", which is his limitation.