Benedetto? Croce (1866-1952) is one of the few famous academic masters in Italy. He is a philosopher and aesthetician, a famous Italian literary critic and politician in the 20th century, and also a famous western historian and historical theorist. We only knew Croce was an aesthete in the past, but in fact his contribution to history was remarkable. Historical works include Theory and History of History, History as Thought and Action, History of the Kingdom of Naples,1871-1915 Italian History, and19 European History. His "all history is modern history" comes from his "Theory and History of History", so what does this often quoted sentence mean? It depends on what Croce himself says. Croce has an idea of distinguishing "chronicle" from "history". Croce said: "history is a living history, and chronicle is a dead history;" History is contemporary history, and chronicle is past history; History is mainly thought and action, and chronicle is mainly will and action. When all history is no longer thought about, but only recorded in abstract words, they become chronicles, even though those words used to be concrete and expressive. " He added: "When the development of life gradually needs it, the dead history will be revived and the past history will become the present. Romans and Greeks lay in graves, and they were not awakened until the spirit of Renaissance Europe matured again "; Therefore, the history that we regard as a chronicle now, and most of the documents that are silent to us now will be illuminated by the brilliance of new life in turn and speak again. In other words, we can't completely separate history from reality. The chronicle may be true, but it is dead. Will only be awakened when the reality needs it. This is a new life that awakens the past history. Just like when we were in War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression, we awakened the history of the anti-gold struggle in the Southern Song Dynasty, the failure of the peasant uprising in Li Zicheng in the late Ming Dynasty in Yan 'an rectification movement, and the history of the May 4th Cultural Enlightenment in the early 1980s. In short, it is the living reality that awakens the history of death.

We can further understand Croce's sentence through the historical and cultural context when he published this thought. Croce was the sworn enemy of Italian fascist Mussolini in the middle and early last century. Croce was originally a scholar working in a study, but when Mussolini dealt with the people's opposition to tyranny, he became the spiritual leader of Italian intellectuals against fascism. 1925 Written the Declaration of Anti-French and Western Intellectuals, collected signatures and published it in Le Monde, calling for resistance to fascist rule. More importantly, as a historian, he wrote such historical works as History of the Kingdom of Naples, History of Italy, and History of Europe in the 19th century, criticizing the shortcomings of the times with the spring and autumn brushwork and resisting fascist rule. In other words, Croce took the academic as a weapon and devoted himself to the struggle with reality. In this way, we can understand that his "all history is modern history" focuses on the "modernity" of history. Since Croce wants to emphasize the modernity of history, his historical works will inevitably be biased, and will inevitably highlight, omit and construct the past history in order to awaken history to serve the real struggle. It can be seen that his view of historical truth is quite different from Frank's. He did not emphasize the objectivity of historical writing, but the realistic pertinence of historical writing.

Croce's conception of history, which was later expressed by many people such as Colin Wood, is regarded as a humanistic conception of history.