Three Traditions of Western Historiography

Threepartition: There can be a variety of ways to differentiate the epochs of Chinese history, and the popular distinctions can be broadly represented by the following three. Their ****similarity is the adoption of the trichotomy of antiquity, medieval and modern times.

The first theory holds that the ancient period is from ancient times to the end of the Warring States period, the medieval period is from the Qin-Han period to the end of the Ming period, and the modern period is from the beginning of the Qing period to the modern era. This is the era differentiation method found in Moriya Mitsuo's "An Introduction to the History of Asia and the Middle Ages" (1940).

The second division is Ancient (or Upper Ancient) = Taikou to the Qin and Han Dynasties, Medieval (or Middle Ancient) = the Later Han Dynasty to the Five Dynasties, and Modern = after the Song Dynasty. This is the theory advocated by Dr. Hunan Naito.

The third method of distinguishing between eras is Ancient Times = Upper Ancient Times to Tang Dynasty, Middle Ages = Song to the end of the Ming Dynasty, and Modern Times = end of the Ming Dynasty to modern times. This is clearly a rehash of the Naito doctrine, and is believed by many materialistic theorists of history in Japan.

The Tetralogy. It is represented by Dr. Kuwabara Stallion Zao's "History of the Middle East", and was followed by the "Small History of the Naka East" and others, which also adopted the four-part method. Only the names of the eras are slightly different from the present, Upper Ancient = Taikou to the Warring States period, Middle Ancient = Qin-Han to the end of Tang, Near Ancient = Fifth Generation Song to the end of Ming Dynasty, and Modern = after Qing Dynasty.

This is the historical staging method that divides history into "Ancient" (ancient times), "Middle Ages", and "Modern Times" (modern times) according to the age of the past.

Theoretically, this staging method is completely feasible. However, the development of human history has not been balanced, and different regions of the world have entered a certain socio-economic form earlier or later, and have experienced a certain socio-economic form for a longer or shorter period of time.

The essence of this is also the threefold division of history, but because of the specific conditions of the country, the modern and the contemporary are separated, and sometimes "contemporary history" is listed separately from the modern. Of course, the authenticity and objectivity of the records of modern and contemporary history is also a "headache" in historical research.

In particular, since history has entered the civilization period, it is rare to see the social managerial forms that absolutely purely belong to a bunch of stages or that stage, and it is also rare to see the absolutely neat and single development of the transition from the lower social managerial forms to the higher social managerial forms layer by layer.