Liang Qichao's On the Transitional Age and Contemporary Historical View of Transitional Period

There have been two approaches to explain Liang Qichao's historical mind. One considers Liang as a pioneer of the new historiography in China, whose most important contribution was to interpret Chinese history in the context of the world Thus, the traditional perspective of dynastic circle of Chinese history was replaced with the causal view of one dimension. The other believes that Liang turned to a cultural conservatism after he was back from Europe, abandoning the idea of progressive history. In fact Liang Qichao held a transitionally historical view, which emphasized the fact that historical progress was an inevitable trend, and also Liang pointed out that interpretation of history relied on not only scientific means but the human intuition as well. Meantime, Liang insisted that the cultural accumulation was not merely a result of the development of material culture in the civilization. The method of his interpretation can probably help Chinese historians exceed the ideological restriction from Western historical ideas and avoid the extreme results from the interpretations of modern and postmodern.