Dát minulosti nový řád: (dis)kontinuita v čínském historickém myšlení

The article is conceived in response to recent debates about a specifically Chinese historical thinking in modern times. It turns to the earliest articles about “new historiography” published since the very end of the Qing dynasty and during the early republican period, when history became an independent academic discipline in China. The research is based on several polemical essays beginning with Liang Qichao’s Xin Shixue from 1902, followed by the debate about “national past” (guogu) started in the radical student journal Xin Chao during the early May Fourth period, and the “reorganization of national past” (zhengli guogu) movement which followed afterwards. Besides Liang Qichao, ideas of younger authors are discussed extensively, such as Mao Zishui and Hu Shi, as well as Gu Jiegang and to some extent also He Bingsong. Comparison of the first systematic formulation of the concept of new historiography by Liang Qichao with the May Fourth debate shows mostly similarity in the basic demands for radical transformation and new orientation of the discipline. This observation confirms our understanding of the process of intellectual transformation of China and the influx of western ideas between the Late Qing and early republic as continuous.