Recently, the results of the 10th Ministry of Education Outstanding Achievement Award in Scientific Research (Humanities and Social Sciences) were announced. TJNU won a total of 12 awards, ranking first among municipal universities and achieving a historic high in this award evaluation. Among them, The Evolution of European Civilization: Peasants’ Land Property by Professor Hou Jianxin was awarded the First Prize for its profound academic depth.
The Evolution of European Civilization: Peasants’ Land Property is a significant component of the final results of the Major Bidding Project of the National Social Science Fund, The Evolution of European Civilization(16 volumes). Professor Hou Jianxin served as the chief expert of the project and the editor-in-chief of the entire series, independently authoring the Volume on Peasants’ Land Property. Spanning 17 years, the project was a collaborative effort involving 11 universities and research institutions both domestically and internationally, totaling nearly 7 million words. It is the first large-scale academic work led by Chinese scholars outside the Western world to systematically and comprehensively interpret European civilization. The Evolution of European Civilization was selected for the National Key Publication Planning Project during the "13th Five-Year Plan," received funding from the National Publication Fund, was honored as one of the Commercial Press's 2025 "Top Ten Books" (Academic Category), and was selected as a released achievement at the "Academic Seminar on Studying and Implementing General Secretary Xi Jinping's 'May 17th' Important Speech and the National Historians' Outstanding Achievements Release Conference."
In the general preface of The Evolution of European Civilization, the author Transcends the traditional Hellenocentric cognitive stereotype, and originally proposing the theory of five "meta-rules" of European civilization. This reshapes the connotation and the temporal-spatial perspective of European civilization, serving as a landmark achievement in the construction of China's autonomous knowledge system for world history, and as the logical starting point for research on farmers' land rights.
From the perspective of European civilization, the Volume on Peasants’ Land Property systematically discusses the relationship between the European feudal land system and mixed land property, convincingly outlining the evolutionary trajectory of land property. The author emphasizes that land systems with clearly defined property boundaries did not exist in ancient times; ambiguous property rights were once prevalent, and Europe was no exception. From the Middle Ages to modern capitalism, ambiguous property rights were gradually replaced by clear systems—first in England, and subsequently in the majority of countries in Western, Northern, Southern, and Central Europe—realizing the transformation of modern land property rights. This work achieves important innovative breakthroughs in several aspects:
(1) From a Chinese perspective, it proposes the concept of "meta-rules" of European civilization and distills the core elements and values of European civilization. This provides inspiration for Chinese readers to better understand European history, the process of European modernization, and Chinese-style modernization.
(2) It reinterprets land property from the dimension of civilizational evolution, subverting the stereotype of the "Dark Ages."
(3) It transcends the traditional Hellenocentric cognitive stereotype, reshaping the temporal and spatial dimensions of European civilization and correcting prejudices about the origins of European civilization, thereby promoting the transformation of paradigms in China's world history and the construction of an autonomous knowledge system.
(4) It proposes the new concept of the "Manor-Village Hybrid Community," constructing a dual structure framework for Western European villages and revealing its important role in limiting the excessive encroachment by feudal lords.
(5) It presents breakthrough progress regarding the British Enclosure Movement. By applying historical materialism and data analysis, it ultimately defines the Enclosure Movement as a key link in the confirmation of land rights in Europe. It systematically compares land system reforms in Britain, France, and Germany; although their forms varied, they reached the same destination from the perspective of civilization.
(6) It offers a critique of Western civilization. From its birth, Western civilization has possessed insurmountable internal contradictions—namely, that the meta-rules did not create a pure land. The profound internal challenge facing contemporary Western civilization lies in this: once the meta-rules of civilization are detached from specific historical contexts and boundaries of action, their function may transform from a driving force for development into structural anomie. These internal contradictions are precisely the source of the West's current predicament.
The publication of the Volume on Peasants’ Land Property and The Evolution of European Civilization(16 volumes) marks a major original breakthrough by Chinese scholars in the field of European civilization research. It holds significant academic value and practical meaning for accelerating the construction of the disciplinary system, academic system, and discourse system of world history with Chinese characteristics, and for enhancing the international influence of China's autonomous knowledge system.
