Abstract:

Ferdinand von Richthofen, a famous German geographer and geologist, had four years’ field investigation in China from 1868 to 1872.The publication of his research has provided references and platforms for western countries to understand more about China, especially the terms as “the Silk Road” coined by him has been widely used. Even though his academic contribution to geology and geosciences of China has been well recognized, the significance of Richthofen’s research in human&economic geography from contemporary perspective has not been well addressed yet. Firstly, this paper analyzes the political, economic and cultural backgrounds of Richthofen’s field investigation in China, which include political power expansion of Germany outside Europe, economic prosperity and technological revolution in Western Europe, academic orientation of higher education in Europe, religious and cultural communication between the East and the West, and the struggled situation of China at that time. Based on the documentaries related to Richthofen’s travel in China, the second part outlines his routes and contents of each investigation, which involved in cities opened to foreign countries as commercial ports and cities playing important roles as trade centers along “the Silk Road”. In his travel diary, Richthofen analyzed the locational change of main hub cities, including Hankou, Jiujiang, Wuhu,Zhenjiang,Guangzhou,Shantou,Ningbo etc., and recorded transaction networks of main commodities related to agricultural and manufacture products. In the third part, the significance of Richthofen’s research in human & economic geography from contemporary perspective is summarized, listed as regional and locational analysis, flow and network analysis, regional differentiation and human-territory relationship analysis, institutional and cultural analysis. Some classic thoughts in contemporary Economic Geography such as spatio-temporal correlation, regional differentiation and spatial connection can be abstracted from Richthofen’s research. This indicates that Richthofen is both a geologist and a geographer with interdisciplinary thinking, which deserves to be highly evaluated. It finally suggests that regional cooperation based on mutual understanding and cultural communication might be in the core of the successful implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative within related countries, which still needs more efforts to be put into. With cultural communication and bilateral cooperation between countries alongside the Belt and Road, economic integration to a higher level is expected to be achieved in the future.

Key words: Richthofen, The Belt and Road Initiative, human & economic geography, regional cooperation, cultural communication

摘要：

德国著名的地质学家和地理学家李希霍芬关于中国的研究成果打开了近代西方国家认识和了解中国的窗口,他命名的“丝绸之路”得到中外学者的广泛认同并沿用至今。国内学界对李希霍芬学术贡献的评述聚焦于他对中国地质和地球科学的贡献，但对其研究成果的人文-经济地理学价值尚缺少深入的总结。本文分析李希霍芬到中国考察的国内外政治经济和文化背景，以《李希霍芬中国旅行日记》为基础文献，梳理李希霍芬于1868~1872年间在中国的历次考察路线和主要考察内容，以及与中国古“丝绸之路”相关的考察计划；从当代人文-经济地理学视角总结分析了李希霍芬对中国研究的学术价值和贡献，如区位分析、“联系”与“流”的分析、农业地域差异分析、人地关系分析、制度与文化因素分析等；最后提出李希霍芬在中国的考察研究对当今“一带一路”建设研究及人文-经济地理学界的启示。

关键词: 李希霍芬, “一带一路”倡议, 人文-经济地理学, 区域合作, 文化交流