Abstract：

Historical document is not a central question in the works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.Yet both have left ample and significant discussions about the topic.They have pointed out that historical materialism is key to collect,document and utilize historical documents.They attached much importance not only to the form but also to the content of historical documents.They discovered concrete methods,criticized the fallacies and harms resulted from faulty conceptions of history,and emphasized social subjectivity of historical documents and dialectical process of historical conceptualization.As to citation style,Marx and Engels rejected the so-called“false citation issue”raised by some bourgeoisie scholars,and established the principle of dialectical unity of form and content in citation,which is still illuminating for us.

Published on Historiography Bimonthly, Issue 2, 2021.