The change in historical thinking from Zhang Xuecheng to Qian Mu is asserted in this paper as shift from an exemplary to a genetic one. This change is rooted in the radical social changes that the people experienced around the turn of the 20^(th) century. Taking the approach of a conceptual history, I try to reconstruct a process, how the conceptual elements of the traditional exemplary historical thinking lost their validity and at the same time the genetic historical concepts emerged.