<Articles>The Historical Perspective on Civilization in the First Half of 20th Century China (Special Issue : Civilization)

The concept of civilization derived from the West exerted tremendous influence upon the formation and development of the modern historiography in East Asia, and caused the boom of the "historical perspective on civilization" 文明史観 at the end of 19th century and early in the 20th century. In China, Liang Qichao 梁啓超 who was a famous journalist and activist in the era of the Hundred Days' Reform, pioneered the early introduction of the "historical perspective on civilization, " and was followed by Li Dazhao 李大釗, one of the founding members of the Chinese Communist Party, who had once applied the perspective to his unique understanding of the significance of the Russian October Revolution. In fact, in understanding the "historical perspective on civilization, " Liang and Li were deeply influenced by the publications by Japanese journalists, such as An Outline of a Theory of Civilization (Bunmei ron no gairyaku), General Introduction to the History (Shigaku Genron), and A History of Human Life (Ningen Seikatsu shi), written respectively by Fukuzawa Yukichi 福沢諭吉, Ukita Kazutami 浮田和民 and Kayahara Kazan 茅原華山. Thus, we see that the "historical perspective on civilization, " according to those Japanese intellectuals, was commonly accepted as new knowledge by Chinese intellectuals regardless of their political positions, be they reformist or revolutionary. It is noteworthy that Liang and Li accepted the so-called "geographical determinism" with the historical perspective on civilization. They argued that the rise and fall of peoples, the flourishing and demise of civilizations throughout history had been determined by geographical factors such as topography and climate. Their understanding of the relationship between geography and civilization can also be explained by the influence from the above-mentioned Japanese intellectuals. Today, historical research that is based on the "theory of geographical determinism" is rejected by both geographers and historians because the theory is seen as superficial. However, it was recognized as an important and core element of the historical perspective on civilization at that time. Furthermore, it was also the important theoretical foundation that supplied the backing for the early field of human geography as a science in the West. In the prolonged debate on the East-West notions of civilization during the May Fourth period China (from second half of 1910s to the first half of 1920s), the theory of geographical determinism was frequently used as convincing evidence to explain the differences among civilizations of the world. Some intellectuals went as far as to recognize the historical materialism as a theory analogous to that of geographical determinism. Li Dazhao was none other than one of those who came to espouse historical materialism via geographical determinism. However, as official dogmatic historical materialism prevailed among the left-wing intellectual community in China after the 1930s, geographical determinism along with the historical perspective on civilization was not only criticized as a 'wrong' interpretation of social and economic phenomena, but also at times considered anti-Marxist. Thus, geographical determinism, the most popular ideas of one era, gradually lost its influence thereafter, and was completely rejected in the early decades of the People's Republic of China. This essay also critically examines a recent argument by some Japanese historians that the origin of the well-known term "the four major ancient civilizations" was created only after the World War II (in 1952) and has currency only in Japan. The argument is unsound, because the term appeared as early as at the end of the 19th century in both Japan and China.