In our daily history teaching process, many students often confuse various reasons in historical events, such as the root cause and direct cause of the Sino-Japanese War. The main reasons for War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression's victory are the subjective and objective reasons for the failure of the Boxer Rebellion. If you don't understand the connotation and classification of various reasons of the incident, you will often have no way to start when analyzing the reasons, or confuse the reasons, which makes the correct rate of doing the problem very low. Here, we will analyze and discuss the connotation and classification of the causes of historical events, hoping to help students learn.
The classification of the causes of historical events is characterized by diversity and complexity. If we analyze events from different angles, there will be different reasons. In the process of daily history study, we often encounter the following kinds.
1, the root cause and direct cause of historical events
The root cause refers to the root cause or the most essential reason that causes things to change. Among many factors that affect the development of history, things with inevitability play a decisive role in the historical process. This factor is the objective existence of history, which is independent of people's subjective will and reflects the requirements of objective historical laws. Generally speaking, it can be analyzed and discussed from the perspectives of productivity and production relations, economic base and superstructure, class nature and main contradictions affecting historical things.
When we learn about British bourgeois revolution, American War of Independence, German reunification and Meiji Restoration in the teaching of world history, we can find that their fundamental reason is the development of capitalist economy, while the old system and old ideas have hindered its rapid development, that is, with the change of economic base, it is required to establish a corresponding superstructure. In other words, the contradiction between productive forces and production relations, economic base and superstructure is the fundamental reason for social change and development in these countries. Another example is the Revolution of 1911, the Second Revolution, the movement to protect the country and the movement to protect the law. These movements, which are directly related to the national bourgeois revolutionaries in China, are the fundamental reasons for the failure of the bourgeois revolutionaries. This is analyzed from the class nature. Historical materialism holds that the class and political party of historical figures not only have a profound impact on historical events, but also can delay historical events.
Corresponding to the root cause is the direct cause, that is, the specific cause. Direct cause refers to the direct factors that lead to the occurrence of events, and refers to the reasons that directly promote the development of things and directly contribute to their occurrence. It is often a superficial phenomenon, and the fuse of the event is usually the direct cause. It plays a catalytic role in the process of historical events. Paying more attention to the development of things is an accidental factor. For example, the root cause of the Opium War is that the development of British capitalism needs to turn China into its commodity dumping market and raw material producing area, which is the inevitable result of the development of commodity economy. The direct cause of the Opium War was the Sino-British conflict triggered by the anti-smoking movement, which was only an excuse for Britain to launch the war of aggression against China and was an accidental factor in the development of historical events.
2. Subjective and objective reasons of historical events.
The subjective cause of historical events refers to the subjective consciousness of individuals, classes, political parties and other reasons. Objective reasons refer to reasons that exist outside people's consciousness and are independent of people's consciousness. It is a specific and unchangeable factor in the historical process. The former belongs to the cause of self-awareness, that is, human factors. The latter is the reason why it exists independently beyond human will. The development and change of history is the result of the interaction of subjective and objective factors. For example, the objective reason for China's defeat in the Opium War was that Britain's comprehensive national strength was strong. Britain is an advanced capitalist country with advanced science and technology, excellent weapons and equipment, and a powerful modern navy. It is inevitable to defeat the Qing Dynasty, which is an objective factor beyond our control. The subjective reason is that the Qing Dynasty was completely backward in politics, economy and military affairs.
Generally speaking, historical events with a person, a class, a political party and a group as the main body often use subjective and objective reasons to analyze the reasons for success or failure. It should be noted that this method cannot be used if there are multiple major historical events. For example, when analyzing the reasons for the victories of China and War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, since War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression is a national war of resistance based on the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, involving many subjects such as the Kuomintang, it is impossible to determine which one is more subjective.
3. Internal and external factors in historical events.
Internal cause refers to the internal contradiction in the development process of things, which is the basis and the first reason for the existence and development of things, and it determines the basic direction of the development of things; External cause is the external contradiction of the development of things, and it is the condition and secondary reason for the existence and development of things. The influence of external factors on the development of things can only play a role through internal factors. Generally speaking, the analysis of a country's social changes is often combined with internal and external factors, such as the crisis in Tokugawa era in Japan. The internal cause is the gradual disintegration of feudal economy and the gradual formation and initial development of capitalist relations of production. As the foundation of the Tokugawa era, the middle and lower samurai became the backbone of the Tokugawa era; The broad masses of working people oppose feudalism. The external cause is the economic invasion of the United States and other western capitalist countries, which makes the national crisis unprecedented. Another example is that the internal cause of the disintegration of the Soviet Union is that the Soviet Union itself has fallen into a serious political and economic quagmire, while the peaceful evolution strategy and conspiracy activities of western countries are the external causes of its disintegration.
4. The primary and secondary causes of historical events.
The main reason refers to the factors that play a leading role in many reasons, but sometimes there is more than one such leading factor. Internal factors, root causes, subjective reasons and other decisive reasons are called "main reasons", and those that do not belong to the main reasons are secondary reasons. But the general examination questions only ask you the main reason of a historical event. For example, the main reason for War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression's victory was (1) the establishment of the anti-Japanese national united front led by the Communist Party of China (CPC) based on the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. (2) The soldiers and civilians in the anti-Japanese base areas behind enemy lines established under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC). (3) the Communist Party of China (CPC) adheres to the comprehensive anti-Japanese line. (4) War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression of the Kuomintang government on the frontal battlefield. (5) China War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression has received strong support from patriotic overseas Chinese and people all over the world. These reasons should be regarded as the main reasons, but the first reason should be the "most important reason". Can also say
In a word, we must not be dogmatic and rigid when doing the questions about reasons in the history test paper, and we must not treat historical events in a formulaic way. Instead, we should seriously study and analyze the types of reasons in historical events, and then combine the reality of specific historical events to analyze which types of reasons are more appropriate, reasonable and convincing. Only by using historical knowledge flexibly can we master knowledge and improve our ability.