The establishment of Marxist historiography in China
It is an area that witnesses very rich research results. According to a few scholars, as early as in the 1930s a group of historians began to engage themselves in the study of Chinese history with Marxist historical view and methodology. They had created a number of Marxist historical works and preliminarily established the research pedigree of Chinese Marxist history. Their actual accomplishments included: having established the historical view of materialism, and taken it as the guiding ideology to respond to and solve the realistic problems of Chinese society, having explored and used the research methods of Marxist historiography, having opened up and expanded many new areas of historiography research, and having refined and analyzed the categories and problems of Chinese historical research.8 In an examination of the development of Chinese Marxist historiography, it was pointed out that Chinese Marxist historiography has its own academic roots and origins, and that it has transcended and sublated the new historiography in the late Qing Dynasty. Therefore it is closely related to the history of Chinese revolution, to the international communist movement, and to the process of Chinese localization of Marxism, being a scientific and academic form with Chinese characteristics. As a combination of historical materialism with Chinese history, Chinese Marxist historiography for the first time has successfully revealed the internal regularity of Chinese history, having made great theoretical contributions to Chinese localization of Marxism, and introduced scientific thinking methodology and research methodology to Chinese history through its unprecedented exploration, research and formulation of a series of theoretical propositions to the great enrichment and deepening of our knowledge of history. Some scholars were also able to show that an academic community of Chinese Marxist historiography came into formation as a result of the debate on Chinese social history in the 1930s after they studied its process. The historians of such a community had elucidated the basic principles of historical materialism in theory on one hand, and on the other they had applied historical materialism to research practice, having thus achieved revolutionary and scientific unity on Marxist historiography in the process of debate against various anti-Marxist schools of thought. Since its establishment, Chinese Marxist historiography has gradually formed the following two unique characters: one is to seek the truth of history as its primary purpose, emphasizing seeking truth from facts and specific analysis, reflecting the scientific attribute of historical research; the other is to give full play to the practical application of historiography, particularly in its service to reality. Truth seeking and practicality, namely being both scientific and realistic, are the very dual character of Chinese Marxist historiography.9
In addition, under some investigation were the contributions made by those famous historians in the establishment of Chinese Marxist historiography. For example, Fu Yiling has experienced fundamental transformation from his “identification with” to “self-consciousness” of and finally to “sublimation” of Marxist historical materialism in his adhering to the path of “making statements from history” and “seeking truth from facts” and the approach of combining literature review with field investigation, by which he has comprehensively studied various aspects such as the evolution of Chinese social form, the coexistence of old and new factors in Chinese society, its class struggles, social contradictions, peasant wars and tenant farmers’ struggles against rent, the evaluation of historical figures, history of China’s commerce and history of maritime trade. Fan Wenlan being one of the few historians who fully devoted himself to the compilation of Chinese general history, his Concise General History of China is a systematic narrative of Chinese history with Marxist theory and perspective, and at the same time with strong national characteristics, having thus maintained a good balance between “truth seeking” and “practical application” created a completely new system of Chinese general history. Rong Yuyuan has made great achievements in the study of modern Chinese history by applying historical materialism.10
