Huang Renyu (1918-200065438+10/8) is a historian. Born in Changsha, Hunan Province, he entered the Department of Electrical Engineering of Nankai University in Tianjin from 65438 to 0936. After the outbreak of War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, Huang Renyu, a freshman, decided to drop out of school and work in Changsha Anti-Japanese War Newspaper, during which he met Tian Han, Fan Changjiang and others. After joining the Kuomintang Chengdu Central Military Academy, 1950 retired. With credits from the United States Army Staff University, he was admitted to the University of Michigan, studied journalism, with a bachelor's degree of 1954 and a master's degree of 1957, and then transferred to the Department of History, with a doctor's degree of 1964 (doctoral thesis: water transport in Ming Dynasty). He was a visiting associate professor at Columbia University (1967) and a researcher at the Institute of East Asian Studies at Harvard University (now Fei Zhengqing Institute) (1970). Participated in the collective research work of China Science and Civilization hosted by Dr. Joseph Needham, Dean of Case College, Cambridge University, England, during the biographies of celebrities in Ming Dynasty and the history of China in Cambridge. He died of a heart attack in new york in 2000. In recent years, his works are very popular on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, but many scholars have questioned and criticized his views.
At first glance, his resume is not outstanding, but perhaps it is this bumpy experience that enables him to better improve his theory. The book "The Great History of China" gave me the biggest and most direct impression that he did not do textual research on a person, but focused on the overall situation of history, but commented on China's "Great History" from a macro perspective on China. In this book entitled "Why is it called" The Great History of China ",generally speaking, to learn history, unless you study it deeply, you only need to know a general and basic development context, but you can't be specific to every detail of history. This is true of studying history, especially foreign history. In order to meet the needs of this kind of teaching, the author began to compress the history of China for thousands of years. Later, this comprehensive research method of "great history" became one of the author's research methods. Thus, there is a great history of China with 230,000 words. As the title of the book says, "macro history" is more about looking at history from a macro perspective, not sticking to details, but criss-crossing, recording the replacement and evolution of dynasties, and making a comparative study in world history, from which we can see the rise and fall of China's history.
After reading The Great History of China for the first time, we can feel that the history written by the author has been asking such a question from beginning to end: Why didn't China's civilization develop capitalism? In order to solve this problem, the author focuses on the fiscal and taxation system.
According to this idea, from the author's narrative, we can vaguely see that the author divides the development history of China for thousands of years into three sections: the first section is the period when centralization, bureaucracy and ideology gradually formed, from Shang and Zhou Dynasties to Qin and Han Dynasties; In the second period of Sui and Tang Dynasties, urban commerce and international (border) trade gave birth to the bud of commercial society. However, in the face of bureaucracy, yeoman economy and ideology, this kind of seed only developed luxury production and commerce for the pleasure of court landlords. During this period, from Song and Yuan Dynasties to Ming and Qing Dynasties, from Wang Anshi's political reform to Zhang's political reform, it seems that there is an intention to engage in "mathematical theory", but the conditions of mathematical theory have not been met. The third paragraph is that the late Qing Dynasty was invaded and impacted by foreign countries and began to look for a way to become a powerful country. From the Westernization Movement in the late Qing Dynasty to the Reform and Reform, to the Revolution of 1911, the May 4th Movement, War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, the War of Liberation, and the Agrarian Revolution, until the reform and opening up, these revolutions finally overthrew the feudal monarchy and produced "new higher institutions" and "new lower institutions". And "China's current task is to lay institutional links between high-level institutions and low-level institutions, so that they can manage from top to bottom in an economic and legal way and get rid of the monopoly of bureaucratic institutions."
Someone commented on Huang Renyu's book: In just over 200,000 words, it outlines the whole history of China for thousands of years. However, he did not show the characteristics of his "great history" because of his short space or his failure to describe historical figures and events in detail. The reason why Great History is called "Great History" is that the author changed the writing style of China historians in the past, and did not take the accumulation of historical materials as the writing purpose, nor did he take the description of a single historical event as the main focus of his works, let alone applaud the historical events close to the author's era. In the conception of this book, we first set up a big conception, "compress the existing historical materials by induction to form a concise and coherent program, which has a comparative scope and level with the history of Western Europe and the United States", and then do further research. It can be seen that this way of writing "grand" history focuses on the outline of the macro lines of history and the description of the shaping of history itself (that is, the type of civilization mentioned by Toynbee or the cultural form mentioned by Bingler), which highlights its historical characteristics in the mutual comparison of regional history. Although this kind of historical writing has no academic significance of quoting classics and textual research, nor does it inherit the usage of traditional historiography to assist politics or hide people's eyes and ears, it can exempt us from the burden of studying history. Therefore, we don't have to read history as a mirror of history, and we don't have to use history as a tool to carry forward a certain moral concept. Jump out of the value whirlpool of history "should be like this" and satisfy people's curiosity about the causal relationship of history "why is this".
Huang Renyu pointed out that the traditional society in China "has more assumptions than practice", "aims to meet the people's minimum expectations" and "is a regime with simple organization, low efficiency and lack of flexibility and strength". Twenty-four histories are by no means the genealogy of twenty-four surnames. Focusing on the vicious circle of moral evaluation, Huang Renyu turned the rise and fall of a dynasty into an investigation of the efficiency and ability of an organizational structure, which provided a wonderful perspective for the interpretation of history. In ancient history, nomadic people became a threat to the farming countries in the Central Plains, and they were often able to replace them. The reason is not that barbarism has defeated civilization, but that nomadic people have simple structure and high administrative efficiency, and are more dynamic than the old empire in limited resource allocation and battle mobilization. From a macro perspective, many complicated problems in China's history are, in the final analysis, institutional crises. Since the Duke of Zhou, politicians and thinkers in China have always tried to govern the old empire through artificial and perfect organizational schemes. A huge bureaucratic organization that does not divide branches according to professional skills is doomed to be unable to adapt to the new era only by education and discipline. After reading Huang Renyu's Great History of China, the biggest feeling is that traditional society (including ideology) cannot produce a modern economic system. Huang repeatedly stressed that the traditional society in China could not be managed by numbers, referring to the lack of quantitative management thought in old China. The more moral judgment replaces value judgment, the more limited practical technical means are.
Huang Renyu believes that in the early historical process of China, due to its vast territory, the technology of population statistics and land survey was not ready since the Western Zhou Dynasty, which led to artificial political division, which he called "shelf design". This design is a centralized and autocratic society after Qin and Han Dynasties. Its foothold is a unified rural organization in the country, and the upper level is a disciplined bureaucratic organization with the same unified structure. In this way, China's dynasty was placed on a social foundation with a huge power structure, and it was difficult to make a peaceful transition in a short time. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, it lost its expansibility and development, and became introverted and uncompetitive, which is also the historical root of China's backwardness and humiliation since modern times. From the Qin and Han Dynasties to the beginning of the 20th century, China has been under the centralized bureaucratic rule. After Qin Shihuang unified China, centralized system began to form before social diversification. In the Han Dynasty, he adopted the policy of constantly strengthening the central rule, rationalized the autocratic imperial power through the political philosophy of combining world outlook, climate and politics, and formed a centralized bureaucratic system, which made China's political system premature and became a model of China's entire imperial period. By the Qing Dynasty, this system kept China in a long-term order and stability, but it also completely exposed the weakness of the state system, because it was simple and inefficient, lacked flexibility and strength, and its structural fragility made it lack the power to resist external pressure, making it difficult to become a bridge that can be used for transformation to promote civil rights or transform into a pluralistic society.
Economically, it is mainly a small farmer, so it has been collecting taxes directly from various farmers. The tax base of this tax is extremely broad and fragile, which makes the country's financial resources too scattered. The strength of the government is based on whether it can collect food and manpower from a large number of small farmers, resulting in economic equalitarianism without the depth of managers. Moreover, China's economy is based on the most backward sectors in rural areas, and this is the national standard, which is to sacrifice quality for quantity, without the intention of the national economy. Because the government itself is not interested in service-oriented organizations and undertakings, it is possible and realistic to diversify the economy without justice and legislation. Due to the lack of motivation to save manpower, agricultural tools have not been significantly improved for a long time and are still widely used. The rural economy lacks the connection between regions and the operation between industries. The way for the government to raise funds is either to collect taxes directly, or to increase the pressure on the lower classes, make extra donations and increase unpaid labor. Disputes between villagers, such as inheritance, marriage, property delivery and fighting, are mostly settled within the family, which lightens the task of yamen, but it has long hindered the development of civil law. In northern Song Shenzong, Wang Anshi advocated new laws and tried to use modern financial control as an administrative tool to manage state affairs. However, the social development at that time had not reached a level sufficient to support the success of this reform experiment, and the new law could not be implemented smoothly. The Hongwu-style finance in Ming Dynasty was too accommodating to the rural economy, which made all localities barely make do, which ran counter to the world trend. It can't help the further development of township industries and local enterprises. Moreover, the middle level of the government lacks the ability of managers, the implementation of finance lacks mandatory control tools, and there is no unified standard for its accounts, resulting in technical difficulties and more lax implementation. As a result, administrative efficiency is reduced, various water conservancy projects are in disrepair and corruption is rampant.
Politically, the unification of China since the Qin and Han Dynasties has led to an autocratic system, which is politically premature and lacks checks and balances. It is based on the discipline of Confucianism, and the negative character of this political authority is very obvious. When this discipline is destroyed, this totalitarianism cannot be maintained. In fact, discipline alone is not enough to maintain a high degree of centralization. Most of the achievements are actually made by terrorist politics, and in the long run, it also hinders the growth of the legal system. Because Confucianism is a ladder for officials, its influence maintains the relationship between officials and pushers, and regards business as secondary. At this point, Confucianism is accustomed to paying attention to personal relations rather than strictly respecting the rule of law, which can have an informal influence and easily lead to the collapse of the whole regime. China's traditional bureaucracy can't be managed by numbers, because it relies on the cohesion of culture and education, and has no intention of increasing the complexity of managers. Because the implementation of imperial bureaucracy depends entirely on the reputation and self-esteem of bureaucrats, it is easy to formalize and perfunctory, making fraud, corruption and fraud quite common. "In short, authoritarian government is not out of the choice of despots. The tragedy of China is that its local organization and technical equipment have not yet reached the scale, and the Great Empire has been unified before, so there is no effective intermediate stage between the upper and lower levels, and everything is supplemented by the autocratic monarch. " Because bureaucracy relies on social values as an administrative tool, some power struggles that were originally caused by technical problems should also be disguised as moral problems. For the failure of the Opium War, the heavy organizational burden and the huge and improper structure were the fundamental reasons, and the organizational defects could not be concealed by the operation of spirit and belief.
Culturally, Confucian moral concepts are indispensable to its administration, but moral administration is always inseparable from autocracy, and authoritarian regimes are always inseparable from morality. The traditional government of Confucianism pays attention to cultural integration rather than a strong government, so it is not like a country, but more like a body shaped by culture. Although the popularization of Confucianism makes the concept of bureaucratic organization consistent, it also has a bad influence, that is, literati have nothing to do but be officials, which leads to local governments being better at ideological rhetoric than the ability of managers. Except for the Six Classics, knowledge itself has never been advocated by the government. Because its dependence on ideology is extremely obvious, it does not have the technical complexity to solve many conflicts of interest. When managing millions of creatures, it has to represent the sum of social values under the guise of hereditary monarchy. This system is easy to disintegrate, causing confusion, reflecting the fragility of the state system and exposing the humble atmosphere of this mountain village culture. Therefore, the discussion of people with red, white and black faces cannot reflect the historical depth and practical significance, and it is useless to regard technical issues as moral issues.
The biggest problem faced by modern China was that traditional society could not produce a modern economic system, because traditional China was like a huge "submarine with meat and bread". The top piece of bread was called bureaucratic class, and the bottom piece of bread was called peasant, which was both chaotic and consistent, lacking individual color. Using moral standards to supplement criminal law lacks the structural strength and necessary toughness to become a modern country. China's traditional social system is based on consanguinity, with abstract moral concepts and ideology, without legal support. It can't clearly define private property rights, let alone give legal support, which exposes its institutional and organizational defects in dealing with private property issues. The modernization of a country is mainly based on the principle of commercial organizations to state affairs, with money as the tool of state control, commercial organizations replacing the past agricultural organization system, gradually entering a society managed by numbers, getting rid of the strange circle of dynasty cycle and long-term stagnation, and transforming from a closed medieval country to a modern country. The problem in China lies in the backwardness of the whole system. The long-term revolution in China aims to break away from the old agricultural control mode and then adopt commercial principles as the basis of organizational structure.
From a macro point of view, the great history of China has a global structure, and accidental mistakes in some details may not necessarily lead to global mistakes. In some aspects, the author advocates "great history", and advocates that the existing historical materials should be summarized and highly compressed, and a concise and coherent program should be formed first, and then research should be carried out on the basis of comparing European and American history. This book analyzes the historical process of China from a technical point of view, focusing on how the modern economic system can't be tolerated by the traditional society, and what kind of opportunities make it settle down in China, with a broad vision and unique views, which is still desirable today. Of course, there are too many history books in China for beginners to enter. Whether this conclusive article is credible or not depends on the reader's knowledge without citing evidence. Many western academic works have this feature, so there are always many reference books listed later to let readers know the source of their own statements.
Among China historians in the 20th century, Mr. Huang Renyu should be regarded as an anomaly. He became a monk halfway and was furious. He published his first book when he was nearly sixty years old. He kept writing for the next 25 years and finally reached the peak of his academic career with a bald word. With his grand vision and charming style, he has written a representative version of history books, which is popular in the Chinese world and has fascinated countless readers. His persistence in learning is really admirable. The master's spirit of "listening early and dying late" is also manifested in Mr. Huang Renyu once described his chosen career as follows: "Historians can't arbitrarily shape characters and fictionalize their lives in order to make the story wonderful and moving; Nor can we adopt the perspective of artistic aesthetics; It is also impossible to show the reporter's on-site knowledge and observe the process of historical formation. But this does not mean that a historian's life must be boring. He can explore past events that extend or shorten the time period. He can establish a macro vision, or describe a single event in many details; He can sort out an independent event, or compare different events; He can follow the logic of the hero and heroine in his works, echo their feelings, and expose and refute their positions; He can't praise anyone, nor can he overturn the established theme. Historians can be craftsmen, technicians or thinkers. " From this, we can also get a glimpse of Mr. Wang's view of history.
In a word, Huang Renyu's angle of analyzing history is different from that of traditional historians who judge history by moral standards and Marxist class division and class struggle. He focused on analyzing history from the historical perspective of technological evolution. Although he has systematically deconstructed both the West and China, the focus and center of his discussion has always been the interpretation of the history of China and the future development direction of China, which is easy to understand from each of his works. His analysis of some aspects of China's history is unique, profound and wise, which embodies his profound academic foundation and keen historical insight. Although he is an American citizen, he has always been concerned about the reunification and future development of the motherland. Generally speaking, his analysis of many historical facts and China's current national conditions is unscientific, not because of his lack of knowledge, but because of his great view of history.