(New Historiography) refers to a new historical trend of thought that sprouted at the beginning of the 20th century and developed unprecedentedly in the 1950s and 1960s, aiming at opposing the traditional historiography represented by Frank, and refers to the update and change of this "new historiography" in the last decade or two. Objectivist historiography thought against Ranke School was initiated by German philosophers Dilthey and Vendel Ban at the end of 19, but it was French scholars Si Miao, Henry Bell, George Lefebvre, American scholars Robinson and Beard who really advocated new historiography in historical practice. Their common feature is that they advocate extensive development in the field of historical research, cooperate with branches of social sciences and humanities, emphasize the explanation of historians, and attach importance to the relationship between history and reality, that is, the role of history. However, before 1930s, the concrete research results of new historiography were rare.

What really makes the theory and practice of new historiography a trend is the French yearbook school (see this article). The publication of the Yearbook of Economic and Social History 65438-0929, as its name implies, is not only a sign of the birth of yearbook school, but also a sign of the birth of new historiography. It shows that the new historiography opposes the narrow diplomatic and political history and advocates a concept of "overall history" Bloch added "society" to the title of the yearbook precisely because the word can contain the whole history, and "history is the history of the whole society". The first generation of scholars' research on geographical history and feudal social history, the second generation of scholars such as Bob Rodale's research on the Mediterranean, and the third generation of scholars such as Raduri's Mondayou are all representative works of overall historiography. Under this premise, the ontology of new historiography regards history as a science about people and their past, that is to say, it is a science and a special science. This determines that it not only recognizes the subjectivity and relativity of historical understanding in epistemology, but also tries to avoid the interference of ideology and even historical philosophy. It strongly opposes Toynbee's macro-historiography and advocates solid research from first-hand materials. In methodology, on the one hand, it advocates "problem history", that is, first ask questions, then put forward assumptions around the problems and determine research methods; On the other hand, it advocates multidisciplinary cooperation, that is, absorbing the theories and methods of other adjacent disciplines, such as psychological history, quantitative history, structural history, geographical history, historical anthropology, etc., which are the products of this holistic or comprehensive methodology. It should also be pointed out that Marxism attaches importance to theoretical generalization (such as exploring laws) and emphasizes that ideas such as class, people and economic factors are increasingly influencing historical research, which also constitutes an integral part of new historiography.

However, in the past 10 years, the new historiography, which broke the Frank dogma and developed, was in danger of becoming a new dogma because it overemphasized the analytical methods and measurement methods of sociology. Some people of insight in the field of history began to change their course, so a kind of "new narrative history" appeared: "The subject of history turned from the environment around people to the people in the environment; The problem of historical research has shifted from economy and population to culture and emotion; The disciplines that influenced history changed from sociology, economics and demography to anthropology and psychology. The object of historical research shifts from group to individual; The way to explain historical changes has changed from linear single-factor causality to interrelated multiple causality; The method is from group measurement to individual sampling; The organization of historical materials is from analysis to description; The nature and function of history have changed from science to literature. " (Laurence Si Tong's Revival of Narrative Historiography is quoted from Historical Theory 1989,No. 1 Issue, pp. 33-34) This is a kind of "new" old historiography, in order to change the boring history caused by numerical analysis and the dogmatic history that only pays attention to broad structure and ignores living individuals.