China
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
China
（Inventing the nation / series editor: Keith Robbins）
Arnold, 2001
- : hb
- : pb
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National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies Library (GRIPS Library)
: pb50001655,
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Description and Table of Contents
- Volume
-
: hb ISBN 9780340741337
Description
Every rule invites an exception as proof of itself, and if nation states were invented as a result of the rise of nationalism as an ideology in the 19th century, China seems at first sight just such a handy exception. Pre-modern China already had the features of a nation state: a common language, culture and bureaucracy. What occurred, the argument runs, was not the invention of a nation but a transition between "culturalism" (a sense of China as the centre of civilization) and nationalism. This study is a robust rebuttal of that view. Nationhood was invented for China in ways inflected by its experience of imperialism and colonialism but otherwise similar to those that occurred elsewhere. The early 19th century found Chinese people of all classes with a strong sense of identity focused around the state. During the course of the century, a series of military defeats created widespread awareness of the world of nation states. Elite modernising responses to this threat led to a division between popular nationalism and elite modern nationalism.
At the centre of modern nationalism lay the political parties that had arisen in the early 20th century and that by the 1920s had succeeded in dominating the processes through which the nation was being imagined and invented. The politicized nation they created then spread from the coastal cities to the rural interior through propaganda, Japanese invasion and the deep penetration of the post-1949 communist state.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 A common culture: the Manchu Empire. Part 2 Constructing a modern nation - the world of nation states: the creation of modern nationalism
- ethnicity and modernity in the 1911 revolution
- nation, modernity and class. Part 3 Nationalism and imperialism - the growth of nationalism as an ideology: nationalism and the party state
- war, nationalism and identity
- state building and nation building. Part 4 The emergence of alternative nationalisms?.
- Volume
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: pb ISBN 9780340741344
Description
Both Western historians and Chinese nationalists have argued that from early times China had the features of a nation state: a common language, culture, and bureaucracy. This argument is important not only because it affects our understanding of how nations are constructed but also because Chinese nationalism is today a vital ingredient in both the domestic politics of the People's Republic of China and the international relations of East Asia. This book argues that China as it exists today was invented through the construction of a modern state. It describes the attitudes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Chinese towards identity and ethnicity and how these interacted with the structure of the state. It then describes the development of a new culture as part of the efforts to build a modern nation state that could resist the Western imperial powers. Finally it describes how, during the course of the twentieth century, this new culture tied to modern nationalism has been spread from the cities into rural China. The book argues that China has not been an exception to the process of the invention of nations.
Instead, its differences arise from the complexities of the relationship between nationalism and imperialism. Moreover, the role of imperialism was not limited to Western empires: the Manchu Qing empire played quite as significant a role in the construction of the modern Chinese nation state as did imported European ideologies.
Table of Contents
- Part 1 A common culture: the Manchu Empire. Part 2 Constructing a modern nation - the world of nation states: the creation of modern nationalism
- ethnicity and modernity in the 1911 revolution
- nation, modernity and class. Part 3 Nationalism and imperialism - the growth of nationalism as an ideology: nationalism and the party state
- war, nationalism and identity
- state building and nation building. Part 4 The emergence of alternative nationalisms?.
by "Nielsen BookData"