"Jiang Tingfu's Modern Chinese History" Author: Jiang Tingfu Publisher: Jiangsu People's Publishing House

From the Opium War to the Revolution of 1911, from the Westernization Movement to the Hundred Days' Reform, from Zeng Guofan to Kang Youwei, from Li Hongzhang to Sun Yat-sen, this book tells the evolution and characters of nearly a hundred years. There is no boring research or accumulation of historical materials, but it fully demonstrates the country's future, the nation's destiny and the trend of social development.

This book takes China's modernization as a clue, and believes that "whether the Chinese can modernize will affect the rise and fall of the country." It mainly explains the self-improvement efforts made by modern people in the face of "great changes that have not been seen in thousands of years" and the reasons for their failure. It further proposes that "modernized national defense requires not only modern transportation, education, and economy, but also modern politics and citizens. Half-new and half-old are useless."

The historical framework and period history system constructed in this book once led the trend of modern history research and was highly praised by later researchers. It is known as the pioneering work in modern Chinese history research.

Jiang Tingfu (1895-1965) was a famous Chinese historian and diplomat. He went to the United States to study alone in 1911 and received a doctorate from Columbia University. He returned to China in 1923 and became the first dean of the History Department of Nankai University. Together with Liang Qichao, he became the founder of the history of Nankai University. In 1925, he was transferred to Tsinghua University as the dean of the History Department. In 1935, he gave up his studies and joined politics. He died of illness in New York in 1965.

Mr. Jiang Tingfu opposed the traditional method of "studying history books rather than historiography" in his study of history. He adopted a new historiographical method of "focusing on synthesis, analysis, and overall grasp", and introduced it into the field of modern history, which was still a desert at the time. He achieved great success and was called a "pioneer", "founder", and "unparalleled in modern history".