Abstract: Social intellectual history conforms to historical materialism at the theoretical level, with an emphasis on the complex social structures of intellectual studies.Social intellectual history has developed the studies of the social surroundings and scholarly discourses of those historical thinkers and scholars from the pre-Qin (classical time) to modern China.Social intellectual history distinguishes itself from social cultural history besides some shared commonalities.Although both are based on cross-disciplinary studies through the perspective of social history, but the former emphasizes intellectual studies and its context, and aims at reveling the social implications of scholarship (scholarly works) from multiple dimensions.Meanwhile, social intellectual history cares for both official and private sources, and therefore it significantly expands the range of materials for intellectual studies.Even though borrowing relevant theories and methods from abroad, social intellectual history has been rooted in the Chinese academic field to transmit the achievements and heritage of traditional historiography.The theoretical self-consciousness in the studies of social intellectual history is beneficial to the constructions of “independent knowledge system” of Chinese historiography.

Key words: the social intellectual history, the traditions of historical studies, academic horizons, the historical materialism