边疆研究在今日多学科视野下已经取得了快速的发展,边疆学也日益引起学界重视,一个新兴学科发展到这个时候就需要我们认真分析此前已有的国外研究中国边疆的经验,以扩大视野.本文以6本域外研究中国边疆的原著为对象进行文本分析,从中辨析民族志、区域史、历史主义、修正派历史、社会史和情报分析研究等等方法的长短得失.由此,也对目前边疆研究提出更高要求,不断更新已有的研究成果,借鉴可取的研究思路,突破历史的"定论",用创新的、前沿的研究方法对边疆进行更广泛深入的探索,但同时也应结合我国边疆历史发展的具体情形,对国外研究要进行主动回应和批判性反思.
Borderland research has made quick progress with the help of interdisciplinary approaches. Borderland studies as a new discipline has also aroused the concern of the Chinese academia.Thus,it is high time that we summarized the research findings on China's borderlands by foreign scholars to broaden our research vision.This paper gives a textual analysis of six works on China's borderlands by foreign scholars,and points out their strengths and weaknesses in terms of research methodologies like ethnology,regional history,historicism,revisionist historicism,social history and information a-nalysis.It concludes that the Chinese borderland studies faces more opportunities and challenges, which awaits new research findings and approaches as well as new breakthroughs in the established methodologies.At the same time,it is necessary to give a quick reponse to their studies with some critical reflections and a consideration of the true historry of China's borderlands.