摘要
本世纪上半叶,中国近代地理学有了飞跃性的发展。被当时地理学者誉为"地理学之极峰"、"地理学的最终目的"的区域地理学更为突出。该文通过中国学者在区域地理学的理论探讨、方法研究,以及专区研究等方面的工作,分析了中国近代区域地理学的特色以及在世界区域地理研究中的地位。
China's modern geography developed by leaps and bounds in the first half of this century. Regional geography,which was then praised by Chinese geographers as 'the peak of geography', was more prominent. The development of regional geography during this period was manifested in 3 aspects: (1) The theories of regional geography were constantly introduced to China through translations, studying abroad and scientific investigations. After the Opium Wars (1840—1842), large numbers of Western works on geography were translated into Chinese or introduced into China. With the coming of the 20th century, more and more translations introducing modern geographic ideas of the West appeared. The translated books before the 1920s are substantial in content with respect to regional geography, but the majority of them are popular science works mostly translated indirectly from Japanese and lack theoretical content. From the 1920s to the 1930s, Chinese scholars, who returned from Europe or USA, introduced modern geographic ideas of the West directly to China and promoted the spread of theories on modern regional geography in the country. Some Chinese scholars also noticed the differences of research methods between China and the West, which was favourable to the progress of modern regional geography in China. (2) Under the influence of the theories of modern regional geography, theses and books on regional geographic theories, methods and regional research mushroomed. 'Region'became one of the geographic terms used most frequently after the introduction of modern geography to China. It can be seen from the explanation of Chinese scholars that modern Chinese regional geography includes nature, humanity, society and economy and their interrelationship, and is featured by studying the relations between human and natural environments. (3)Investigations aimed at exploiting regional resources multiplied. Investigating the natural and cultural environments of many regions of China's Mainland, Chinese geographers scored great successes and put out a lot of outstanding investigation reports. Lastly, this paper points out that modern Chinese regional geography has an important position in the world geographic history. Compared with Western regional geography in the same period, Chinese geographers made some major contributions as follows: (1) They realized that synthetic regional research was the core of geographic researches; (2) They emphasized the study on the relationship between human and natural environ-ments in rgeional research; (3) Chinese scholars inquired deeply into the principles of regional division and their regional divisions of China's Mainland filled in the gaps in the world' s regional divisions. At the same time, the paper calls attention to the fact that modern Chinese regional geography wasn't ripe in some aspects, just as they neglected historical analysis in regional researches.
出处
《自然科学史研究》
CSCD
1997年第2期174-182,共9页
Studies in The History of Natural Sciences
