The title of this article is inspired by a famous book published twenty years ago by Dipesh Chakrabarty, an Indian scholar who taught at , the University of Chicago . When I wrote this International History Conference in the last article, I translated it as "Homeifying Europe" (Provincializing Europe), and adopted the translation of Professor Zhang Xupeng of the Institute of Historical Theory of the Academy of Social Sciences. (See Wang Qingjia and Zhang Xupeng: "Contemporary Historical Philosophy and Historical Theory", Beijing: Social Sciences Documentation Press , 2020, pp. 77-91.) Judging from the title of the original book, both translations are OK. I used this title to write this article to share with readers about the honor of attending this conference this time and to share with readers some thoughts related to the conference but not directly related to the content of the conference. By the way, Chakrabati's book has a huge influence. Its publication is an important opportunity for him to transfer from the University of Melbourne to the University of Chicago from Australia. He told me at the dinner party the night before the meeting that the Chinese translation of this book had already begun, but it was a bit disappointed that he had not been published for a long time. The Chinese academic community has always been vigilant and opposed Western hegemony and Eurocentricism . The success of the book "Localization of Europe" lies in its powerful analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of European historicism from a post-colonial perspective and proposed a correction.
To attend this conference, I took a Lufthansa flight from Germany to Philadelphia to Frankfurt the day before the conference (August 20), and then transferred to Poznan . As soon as I got off the plane, I saw a large banner: "Eastern energy, Western style" (Eastern energy, Western style), which I found it quite interesting. The writing of this article will revolve around this relationship between the East and the West, discuss the need to "regionize" Europe, and rethink the rich meaning of the cultural concept of "Western" that we are familiar with. In fact, although the author has lived and worked overseas for most of his life, visited Europe several times, and visited Poznan in 2011, seeing this slogan and every bit of attending this conference made me feel that we may still have the need to deeply understand the cultural identity of Eastern Europeans. There is a saying that distance creates beauty, which means that it feels beautiful because of its blur. Although some people may appreciate the blurring caused by distance at the aesthetic level, it is also easy for people to ignore cultural differences. For example, when people in Asia or what Europeans call " Far East " (Far East) talk about the "Western" (East Asians may also call it "Far West" - Far West), they often summarize it with European style and American rain. It seems that Europe is a solid piece. In fact, the difference between Eastern Europe and Central Europe and Western Europe is sometimes no less than the difference between Asia and the so-called "Western". The attitudes of Eastern Europeans towards Western Europeans are quite similar and comparable to those of Asians towards Europeans and Americans.
Poznan City Hall and the old town, the former has a Renaissance style
Among Eastern Europeans, Polish 's thinking, words and deeds may be a representative example. As mentioned above, this International Conference on History and Science was held in Poznan, , Poland, . I remember when the last conference closed in Jinan, Poznan City won the right to host the conference, which made the few Polish scholars who attended the conference very happy. There are several reasons here. In terms of area and population, Poland is undoubtedly a major European country. To be more specific, Poland currently has a population of 38 million, ranking eighth in Europe. The seventh place is its neighbor, Ukraine, which is in the smoke of war, and Russia, the opposing side, is the largest country in Europe, with a population of nearly 150 million. Compared with Chinese civilization, Poland has a short history. It was the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty. But in the early modern times, Poland formed a federation with Lithuania and became the largest European country with the largest population in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1791, the Federation was successfully constitutionalized and adopted the first modern constitution in European history.If the 18th century was a golden period in Polish history, then in the late century, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was divided up by Austria, Prussian and Russia, causing it to lose its independence for 123 years, and it was not re-established after World War in 1918. Thirty years later, the German Third Reich invasion of its in 1939 triggered the Second World War , and Poland lost its independence again until the end of the war. Perhaps it is precisely because the Poles have a tragic fate and have a tragic and tortuous experience of losing their country that their national pride is very strong. Before 2015, they tried several times to hold the International Historical Science Conference, which was quite comparable to the efforts made by the Chinese delegation.
Of course, Poland once held an international historical science conference, but that was the 7th conference held in its capital Warsaw in 1933. This is the first time that Poznan City has been the host. At this conference, Polish scholars specially published and presented the book "High enthusiasm and elegance: The 7th International Congress of Historical Sciences in Warsaw, 1933). It is obvious that they are quite proud that the International Conference on History and Science can be held in Poland. For Poznan, it seems even more honorable to be able to host the International Historical Science Conference on behalf of Poland for the second time, because Poznan is only the fifth-ranked city in Poland, with a population of more than 500,000. According to domestic standards, Poznan is at most a "third-tier" city, and its scale and architecture seem to me quite match it. There may be two reasons here that Poznan City has the confidence to hold an International Historical Science Conference known as the " Olympic " in the international historiography community. The first is because it is a historical city in Poland. As mentioned above, Poland was founded in the 10th century, and its founder, Mieszko I (930-992), was buried in the Cathedral in the northeast corner of Poznan. It is the oldest cathedral in Poland, with its full name as St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral. This church is named after the two most important founders of Christianity, which shows its "sacredness". Meshko I not only unified Poland in 960 (just the same time as the founding of the Northern Song Dynasty), but also Poland's first Christian king, whose conversion was influenced by his wife. The importance of Meshko I was also reflected in: when Poland regained independence in 1945, its land area roughly referenced to the territory he acquired and owned back then. On the morning of the second day after arriving in Poznan, I visited the oldest church in Poland with a strong recommendation from my Polish friend Ewa Domańska. I made videos on the floor tiles of a building inside, introducing the achievements of Meshko I and the history of Poland in multiple languages, and played them repeatedly for the sake of tourists. When I went there, it was drizzling and there were not many tourists, but the church was doing mass in the morning, and the crowd was full of people. Everyone looked solemn and listened quietly to the bishop's sermon. From the perspective of religious beliefs, Poland is also a great Catholic power. At this point, I suddenly remembered that in 2011, Domanscar invited me to give lectures at Adam Mickiewicz University. We talked about the famous book " Protestant Ethics and Capitalist Spirit" by Max Weber at dinner. She said Weber's observation only applies to Western Europe, where there are many Protestants, because the Catholic tradition completely discourages individual struggle and achieves wealth. Indeed, similar to Confucian culture , Catholicism hopes to restrain and restrain individual selfish desires; the cumbersome customs and strict hierarchical systems of the Catholic Church gradually evolved with this purpose.
St. Peter St. Paul's Cathedral in Poznan
Poznan's statue of poets named after it
Poznan City is unique, that is, although its population is only more than 500,000, because it has more than 30 universities, one-quarter of its residents are college students, and it is the second largest higher education center in Poland after Warsaw. This International Conference on History and Science was held on the campus of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.The school is one of the oldest universities in Poland. It was founded in 1611 and now ranks third in scale, with more than 40,000 students. Its liberal arts research, especially foreign languages and characters, is excellent. Eva Domanska is a professor of historical methods in the school. Since he was studying at the school at the end of the last century, he followed his mentor Jerzy Topolski (1928-1998), and later followed the postmodernist Heden White and Frank Anchorsmit. He was keen on the research of historical theory. In recent years, he has commented and promoted emerging schools including animal history and posthuman history. At the opening ceremony of this conference, she gave a keynote speech on behalf of the Polish historical community, and the content will be described below. As mentioned above, Warsaw, Poland held an international historical science conference, which was a grand event in the Polish academic community at that time. For this purpose, this conference specially edited and printed a book to all participants, while another book was Topolsky's collection of papers entitled "Theory and Methodology of Historical Knowledge", edited by Domanska and Topolsky's daughter. Topolsky has extensive writings and specializes in economic history and historical theories. In his book "New Directions of European Historiography", Professor Georg Igers, a famous international historiography, pointed out that the study of social and economic history of Polish scholars after the war is quite comparable to that of the French yearbook school . As a Marxist historian, Topolsky initially specialized in comparing European feudal society, and bluntly pointed out that compared with Western Europe, Poland is a typical stagnant feudal society. In his later years, he paid more attention to the innovation of historical theory and edited and published works in English. He was not only Eastern Europe but also a person worthy of attention among modern historians who introduced and compared modernist and postmodern historians earlier. (See Georg Iggers, New Directions in European Historiography, Middletown CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984, 138-142. The Chinese version of this book, translated by Zhao Shiyu , published by Huaxia Publishing House 1989. See also Jerzy Topolski, ed., Historiography between Modernism and Postmodernism: Contributions to the Methodology of the Historical Research, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994.)
Royal Palace Castle in Poznan City
Two books presented to participants
According to Eva Domanska, Topolsky also made another contribution to the construction of the history department of Adam Mickievich University, that is, he first served as a full-time professor of historical methods in the school. After his death, another professor took over. In recent years, Domanska has become the successor to this position as he wished. In the history departments of many universities in Europe, America and even the world, it is rare to set up a professor position for the research and teaching of historical methods. In other words, although in the view of the Chinese literary community, Western scholars are constantly innovating in theory, in fact, there are not many teachers specializing in the research of historical theories and methods in their university history departments. For example, "Introduction to History", "History Methodology" and "History History" courses in the postgraduate stage are generally taught by several teachers in the department who are interested in it in turn. The importance of the Polish history teachers and students attach to this field (Dormanska and his colleagues also regularly publish an English magazine of historical theories and methods, distributed to interested scholars at the conference), so it is different from the practices in Western Europe and North America, but is more comparable to those in domestic universities. Courses like "Introduction to Historical Studies", "History of Chinese Historical Studies" and "History of Foreign/Western Historical Studies" are generally compulsory courses in the history department in Chinese universities and are often taught by full-time teachers.
Topolsky's negative evaluation of the feudal era of Poland and Domanska's statement that capitalism cannot be rooted and developed in Eastern European society highlights the differences in cultural traditions and economic development models in Poland and even Eastern European, and shows obvious differences from Western and Central European regions. Of course, from the perspective of Poland's urban architecture and people's lifestyle, it is very similar to its neighboring country Germany, proving that the latter should be their reference object for modernization.During the meeting in Poznan City, the city center was undergoing large-scale renovations, with the ground on the roads being dug out and roadblocks everywhere, making it very inconvenient to walk. Due to this, some hotels and restaurants have also closed down. Seeing this situation, I thought to myself: If the number of participants in this conference is as old as two to three thousand, then this medium-sized city may not be able to resist it. I later learned that what caused these inconveniences was related to the outbreak of the epidemic. Poznan City originally planned to start renovations in the city after the 2020 General Assembly was scheduled to be held, but the delay caused by the epidemic has caused these two things to collide. Overall, Poland and Eastern Europe have relatively slow economic development and are incomparable to Western Europe's neighbors. In the early modern era, Poland was still known as a wealthy agricultural power and could export its agricultural products to its neighbors. However, the development of the world economy was mainly driven by industrialization, and Poland and even Eastern Europe were not good at this. As mentioned above, Poznan City is a historical and cultural city, not an industrial city. A more famous thing in the area is the "St Martin's croissant". Unlike the common croissants, this Poznan famous product is a dessert with fillings, made of poppy seeds, vanilla , almonds, jujube kernels, fig and raisins. It is quite delicious. From its historical perspective, it seems that it can also indirectly indicate that the Catholic culture advocates helping the public and despises the tradition of making money by individuals. St. Martin was originally a soldier of Ancient Roman , and was kind and charitable. He once tore his coat into two and distributed half to a poor man so that he would not get frozen in the snowstorm. It is said that he dreamed of Jesus that night, who put on the half-left coat and said to him, "I'm wearing your clothes." After St. Martin's death was canonized, and Europeans held St. Martin's Day in honor of him, because it was celebrated in November of the harvest season, which was somewhat similar to Halloween or Thanksgiving. At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a bishop in Poznan City pity the poor and suggested that the local sweets shop make this croissant, which was purchased by the rich on St. Martin's Day and given free of charge to the poor. This croissant later became a local specialty, which also seemed to be in line with Poland's image as a country based on agriculture.
Poznan famous product: St. Martin Croissant
The above content seems a bit nagging, but my purpose is to use this to illustrate the history and current situation of Eastern Europe, which is obviously different from Western Europe and North American societies, so it is necessary for us to "regionalize" Europe in terms of understanding. Eastern European scholars are also highly vigilant about Western academic and cultural hegemony. Domanska's speech at the opening ceremony of the conference represents to a certain extent the position of many people in the Polish historical community. Her speech was titled "Wondering about History in Times of Permanent Crisish", which is a bit difficult and sensational, because the "long-term crisis" here can also be translated as "permanent crisis". She also did not define for the audience what she called a "long-term crisis" or "permanent crisis" meant. Many listeners can probably guess that Domanska wants to say that the era we were in and before us had encountered various challenges: war, conflict, killing, discrimination and hatred, and the challenges of unprecedented environmental deterioration. The main theme of her speech was to point out that although the process of history itself gave us many explanations, people do not attach great importance to the lessons of history. She repeated this sentence in her speech, saying that it may be derived from Buddha, Lao Tzu or a Zen warn. I translate it here as: "a teacher comes, when you are ready", which means that when you want to learn, the teacher can teach you. The meaning of Domanska is easier to understand, that is, although history makes people wise, many people still ignore the functions of history to this day. In her speech, she also repeatedly reiterated that the thoughts of many Western philosophers in modern times have largely shaped our world, such as anthropocentric , western-centric , historicism, scientism and secularism , but it is necessary to reflect on them now.To this end, she called for "epistemic disobedience" in order to seek " localization " for knowledge exploration. She also quoted a slogan from her colleague who died shortly and a professor of art history at Adam Mickiewicz University, Piotrowski (1952-2015), “provinces of the world unite!”. Needless to say, this sentence imitates the last sentence of " Communist Manifesto ": "The proletarians of the world unite." Domanska undoubtedly means that all people outside the West should unite and seek their own, "local" knowledge structure. As a result, she explained her identity to the audience at the beginning of her speech: she was a Slav and a native of Poznan, and welcomed everyone in this capacity. ("Opening Ceremony," XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences, Poznań 2020/2022, 37-46.)
Domanscar's speech is relatively dramatic in language expression, but she regards herself as a "non-Western" Eastern European scholar, and appears in her own opinion based on her long-term experience of following Western historical theories, emphasizing the need for "localization" of knowledge, which made many participants tend to agree. Another speaker at the opening ceremony of the conference was Olufunke Adeboye from Nigeria , director of the Department of History and Strategic Studies, the largest University of Lagos in the country. From a practical perspective, Adboya tells the current historical crises in African universities (short of funds, reduced student numbers, uneven teacher quality, etc.). Her work unit is called the Department of History and Strategic Studies, which has indirectly reflected this tendency (when she spoke to me privately, she also acknowledged the idea of this name, one of the purposes of which is to attract more funds and students and demonstrate the practicality of historical research). Adeboya also emphasized that African historical research is often square and Western historical theories, because those fashionable theories are far from the actual historical research and teaching of African countries. ("Opening Ceremony," XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences, Poznań 2020/2022, 3-21.)
During the conference, I was interviewed by Dawid Rogacz, assistant professor of philosophy at Adam Mickiewicz University. He was ambitious and energetic. He recently published the book "Chinese Philosophy of History", which summarized the historical thinking of China from ancient times to the 18th century, and also participated in the organization "Sources of Historical Methodology in East Asia and Europe" Special discussions by East Asia and Europe. As an Sinology worker, Luo Jiaxi emphasized his Eastern European position more clearly in the interview. When I mentioned the slogans posted by the Poznan Airport, his reaction was that Poznan should probably express "the Eastern style and the Western energy." He gave many examples to illustrate that in terms of thinking habits, behavior and cultural traditions, although the Poles are in Europe, their style of acting is more like Oriental or East Asian.
made in Europe blue and white porcelain pots
Back to the beginning of this article, Chakrabati proposed "localizing Europe", which was originally intended to question the universality advocated by European Enlightenment thinkers, pointing out that Western thinking and cultural traditions have their special historicity. His reminder and argument not only recognizes the huge role and influence of modern and modern West in shaping the contemporary world, but also points out that people and cultures in non-Western regions need to be constantly dialogue, discussion and exchanged with them (Chakrabati once said to me that he published "Localization of Europe", which is regarded as an anti-Western person, but he said that he is actually an "internationalist" - internationalist. His familiarity with Western academic classics is undoubtedly a proof).However, as an Indian scholar, Chakrabati may have paid more attention to the interaction between Europe and Asia, but in fact, the so-called East and the West, Europe and Asia are culturally relative concepts; just as Asian culture has its own diversity (such as the big difference between India and China), European culture also has obvious "regionality". Judging from my experience in attending the conference, only through continuous collision and exchange between different cultures can we gain a more realistic and accurate understanding. Due to epidemic prevention, many Chinese historical workers were unable to attend the meeting in person. I sincerely hope that from now on, the exchanges and discussions between historical research groups and personnel in various countries will continue and deepen for a long time. The writing of this article expresses this wish in the hope of resonance among readers.
