Review and prospect of metallurgical history research in China

Compared with the ancient metallurgical history, the research of modern and modern metallurgical history in China is relatively few, only a few special studies, such as Quan Hansheng's "History of Han Yeping Company". In recent years, a group of young scholars in China have tried to study the history of modern metallurgy. For example, Fang Yibing studied the steel technology of Hanyeping Company and published monographs "Hanyeping Company and the Transplantation of Modern Steel Technology in China" (2011) and "A Comparative Study on the History of Modern Steel Technology between China and Japan: 1868-1933" (2013). Fu Jianqiu's special research on Hunan antimony industry can be studied from the Angle of social history, supplementing some modern historical materials. In addition, the publication of a number of historical records of metallurgical enterprises, such as the Annals of Anshan Iron and Steel (1994, 2011), the Century-old History of Heavy Steel (2011), the Annals of Han Yeping Company (2017), the history of metallurgical Engineering in Central South University (2012), and the History of Powder Metallurgy in Central South University (2014), The basic data have been accumulated for further research.

It is gratifying that the ancient part and the modern part of the General History of Metallurgy in China, edited by Xu Kuangdi, have been funded by the National Publishing Fund in 2015 and 2016, but the orientation is mainly popular science, and the length is small, and can not fully reflect the new progress of the research on the history of metallurgy in China in recent years from the perspectives of civilization history, social history, institutional history and environmental history.

(3) Foreign scholars pay attention to the history of Chinese metallurgy

Japanese scholars paid early attention to the history of Chinese metallurgy. In the 1920s, the results of the analysis of the alloy composition of ancient Chinese copper ware were published in the Chemical Studies of Ancient Oriental Copper Ware and Oriental Alchemy. After the 1930s, the Japanese conducted research on a large number of Chinese bronzes, such as the Chemical Study of Oriental Ancient Metals by Michino Tsuratsu, the Ancient Metal and its Metal Culture Seen from Chemistry, the Chemical Study of Oriental Bronze Mirrors by Komatsu Shigeru and Yamauchi Shuto, and the Chemical Study of Ancient Mirrors. "Chemical Composition of Four or Five Zouyi" and "Archaeological investigation of the composition of Bronze sharps" by Umehara Miji.

In the 1940s and 1950s, a group of Western scholars represented by Joseph Needham began to study the history of science and technology in China, and the history of ancient metallurgy also received special attention, such as Needham's Iron and Steel Technology in Ancient China (1958). Donald Wagner's "China's Traditional Iron Industry and Its Modern Fate" (1997) and "History of Science and Technology in China · Iron and Steel Metallurgy" (2008) can be regarded as the masterpieces of foreign research on the history of iron and steel metallurgy in China, but "History of Science and Technology in China · Non-Ferrous Metals" has not been officially published due to the continuous update of data. In addition, Noel Barnard, Robert Bagley and others have made some insightful studies on the history of Chinese bronze craft, but they are mainly limited to the research field of art history.

Robert Hartwell's research on iron production in China's Song Dynasty started the first study of Chinese metallurgical history from the perspective of economic history, but no one has followed. In recent years, the study of China's environmental history by Hark Elvin and Robert Marks has inspired a new way to study China's metallurgical history from the perspective of ecological environment.

Two, several important issues in the history of Chinese metallurgy

At present, the research of China's metallurgical history mainly focuses on the history of ancient metallurgical technology. For many years, it has taken the road of combining documentary research and archaeological investigation. The application of modern scientific and technological means to the analysis of metallurgical relics has become an important means and has achieved fruitful results. These studies are based on the patriotic interpretation of the development of the splendid and developed metallurgical technology in ancient China, most of them belong to the internal history of technological history, and the modern metallurgical history is short, "thick ancient history and thin modern history" is the norm, and there is a lack of broader economic history, social history and institutional history research, and few interdisciplinary metallurgical history research from a global perspective. There are still many places worth thinking deeply about in the history of Chinese metallurgy, at least the following important issues are worth further systematic sorting and research.

(1) The origin of Chinese metallurgy and its influence on the early formation of Chinese civilization