世界近代史断限问题新探

历史时期的划分不同于社会形态的演变。世界近代史不能同资本主义史画等号。划分历史时期,应以社会经济发展为主要依据．同时也要考虑到政治和思想文化方面的情况。世界近代史是人类进入工业社会和工业社会发展的历史。它的上限可以定在18世纪60年代．下限可以定在20世纪40年代。     

Memory and History: Liturgical Time and Historical Time

This article investigates the differential structure and representation of time in memory and history. It examines two moments in Jewish historical thought—in the Middle Ages, and in works written within and after the Holocaust—and demonstrates the fundamentally liturgical nature of Jewish historical memory in selected texts from these two periods. Following the groundbreaking work of Yerushalmi, it seeks to demonstrate that for Jews, historical experience is incorporated into the cyclical reenactment of paradigmatic events in Jewish sacred ritual. Recent or contemporary experiences acquire meaning only insofar as they can be subsumed within Biblical categories of events and their interpretation bequeathed to the community through the medium of Scripture, that is to say, only insofar as they can be transfigured, ritually and liturgically, into repetitions and reenactments of ancient happening. In such liturgical commemoration, the past exists only by means of recitation; the fundamental goal of such recitation is to make it live again in the present, to fuse past and present, chanter and hearer, into a single collective entity. History, in the sense that we understand it to consist of unique events unfolding within irreversible linear time, is absorbed into cyclical, liturgical memory.
This article argues that the question of Jewish history—both medieval and post-Holocaust—poses in a compelling fashion the question of the relationship between memory and history more generally, and serves to contest the current tendency in academic historiography to collapse history into memory. It claims that to the extent that memory "resurrects,""re-cycles," and makes the past "reappear" and live again in the present, it cannot perform historically, since it refuses to keep the past in the past, to draw the line, as it were, that is constitutive of the modern enterprise of historiography.     

马士及其中国近代对外关系史研究

马士是西方公认的汉学先驱之一。在中国海关任职长达30余年的时间里,撰写了一系列有关中国问题的著作,它们对20世纪前半期西方的中国历史学著作产生了深刻的影响。他的许多有关中国近代对外关系的著作,不仅开启了国外中国近代史研究的先声,为国外中国近代史研究奠定了坚实的基础,而且拓宽了西方汉学的研究领域,对西方现代汉学的发展起了重要的推逐作用。     

全球史视野与国家史观念:近代边疆史研究的两个维度

近代边疆研究日益引起学术界广泛关注,既是学术研究内在学理自然发展之结果,也与当代社会各界关注边疆问题的历史性反思有着密切关联。对近代边疆史的研究,既不能割裂其与古代边疆史的延续性,也不能拘泥于断代史的话语诠释;既不能忽略边疆问题的殊相,也不要陷入地方史的思维;既要有纵向的深入思考,也要有横向的宽广视野。须从整体思维出发,在全球史视野下审视近代中国边疆问题与全球化进程中国际秩序重构的复杂关系,以国家史观念从全局上把握近代边疆问题与中国国家建设之间密切不可分割的互动关系。     

严复社会史观的建构与近代史学转向

严复对社会史观的建构颇有“西方史学本土化”、“中国传统史学近代化”这一近代史学转向的特征。以往学术界探究严复社会史观的理论建构的专文鲜见,笔者从思想与社会互动的层面对此作探索,既在横向层面关注严复社会史观的理论源头,即斯宾塞社会进化论、甄克思宗法制度论、西莱政治史学等学术思想与本土学术资源中苟子的社群观、杨朱之自利、墨子之兼爱及佛教的“心境之说”等思想,又从中西文化会通的社会语境中分析严复社会史观的嬗变及其昭示的理论得失。