Journal of the History of Ideas
in East Asia
Since the history of ideas became an independent subject in the late 19th century, keywords, linguistics and semantic analysis have been the most potent methods. The study of the history of ideas stresses on the importance of the diachronic changes of ideas, which are inseparable from the language and the words and phrases, including the initial use of the term, and the expression, development, dissemination and the subsequent established semantic meaning and content.
The modern transition of traditional Chinese thoughts is the impact of the East met West during the 100 years from late 19th century to early 20th century, precisely 1830-1930. The entitlement or the translation of the imported implements, objects, introduced knowledge and concepts in China encouraged the invention and dissemination of new ideas and hence facilitated the modern transition of ideas and modernization in China.
New terms indicate new ideas and often imply the invention of new construct or even new grammar. Related new terms developed into paralleled clusters and gradually form a system, which also constructed the infrastructure of modern Chinese language. The history of ideas, in this sense, is to elaborate the space-time interrelations of these systems, in order to represent the origination and formation of the universal ideas and how the ideas evolved with associated historical events.
The modern transition and the making of new ideas in modern China, Japan, Korea and other region in East Asia shares a high degree of similarity, which shows that"the history of ideas" is the key to establish an interdisciplinary, transcultural, cross-linguistic and global research to highlight the modernization of East Asia civilization.
"The Database for the Study of Modern Chinese Thoughts Project (1830-1930)"collaborates with Hanllym Academy of Science, Hallym University in co-founding the academic journal "The Journal of the History of Ideas in East Asia", in the purpose of establishing scholarships for the related subject matters of various disciplines and methods. It also encourages scholarship at the intersections of information engineering and humanities or social science research, for example, applying the computing technique to the semantics studies or text analysis. In addition to research papers, it presents the latest thoughts and methodological approaches on the history of idea, expecting to enable conversation and interaction among diverse disciplines.
Historical events are indivisibly interrelated with the invention, formation and development of ideas, it is essential to study the evolvement of ideas to depict a more comprehensive view of early modern and contemporary history from different aspects. History, politics, sociology, literature, linguistics and many other disciplines proffer the approaches to demonstrate the modern transition of ideas. Regarding the East Asia as a relatively integrated and interactive region contributes to a better understanding of modernization, forming identity and the concept of nation state of the countries in East Asia.
The Journal of the History of Ideas aims to outline the essential, interrelated and highly perplexing issues of the developing nation concept, identity and social evolvement in East Asia. The Journal focuses on "‘the evolving ideas and identities in East Asia" and integrates researches of different disciplines. Furthermore, it creates an intercontinental scholarship that encourages an interdisciplinary, transcultural, cross-linguistic and transnational conversations among diverse domains.