A historical book review, more than 200 words.
Huang Renyu's reading leads us to review the history of China from a new angle, which is undoubtedly a dry land shower for those of us who are deeply influenced by national history textbooks. At least put our historical knowledge into a "logical and reasonable" format.
The book Talking about the History of China by the Hudson River lists dozens of important figures in the 2000-year history from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period to the North of Yuan Shundi, and analyzes in detail the cause and effect of China's historical process.
Huang's books all have similar styles. Although the analysis is thorough and novel, through this passage, we can still smell a strong familiar atmosphere. After careful analysis, we can easily find that Huang is an out-and-out believer in historical materialism: "economic determinism" is a main thread running through all his historical works. The difference is that Huang did not regard any peasant rebel leader as a promoter of the historical process, but regarded the emperor as a real peasant leader and the dynasty as a peasant organization.
Those who advocate that "the peasant uprising is the driving force of China's history" always avoid explaining that the leaders of the successful peasant uprising in China's history all became emperors, Chen Sheng, Liu Bang, Huang Chao, Zhu Yuanzhang, Li Zicheng and Hong Xiuquan! If the replacement of Zhang Sandi with Li Sidi can be regarded as historical progress, history has become a monthly card. Today is yesterday's revolution, and now it is bound to change the life just now.
Huang's view of history highlights the role of people: the direct influence of important people on history. It also emphasizes the relationship between the perfection of these individuals' personality and talents and the historical process. Outstanding performance is the regret of Wang Anshi's political reform. "Fifteen Years of Wanli" pointed out that Wang Anshi "has a heart but no talent", which is one of the reasons for the failure of political reform. Huang believes that Wang Anshi's political reform was technically immature at that time. In essence, if the society can remain stable 100, Wang Anshi's reform will be successful, without any problems, but the technical problems are minor after all. However, the geographical and historical environment of China cannot tolerate too many waves in this society. The agricultural civilization settled in the Yangtze River and Yellow River impact plains has been confronted with the nomadic civilization on the powerful plateau for a long time. If its power balance is slightly broken, it will immediately lead to social unrest. A new nomadic people is eyeing the Central Plains between the White Mountain and the Black Water. At this time, the Northern Song Dynasty should be an era when all the people were soldiers. However, the opposite is true. When Wan Yan's war horse stood upright in Yanshan Pass, the Song people were still singing their "Riverside Scene at Qingming Festival". When the building was overturned, Wang's hard work was inevitably burned, and the last thought of the Han people was extinguished.
The beauty of knowledge lies in logic, especially history, but due to various non-historical reasons and the personal color of historians, many history books are inevitably inconsistent and full of loopholes; It is uncomfortable to read. Huang Renyu's historical books only pay attention to logic and analysis, emphasize cause and effect, and largely avoid personal likes and dislikes.
He and Wan are undoubtedly rare books!