Metaphors of Social Order in Europe,

China & Japan

Erik Ringmar,
Department of Government, London School of Economics and Political Science

All political systems need some way of assuring social order. Order guarantees peace

and physical security, but also hermeneutic stability. Only if some measure of social

order is assured will it be possible to interpret the world coherently, to plan and to act

rationally. For order to be established a way must be found of dealing with diversity,

with the coexistence of potentially conflicting ideas, project and goals. Working out

such conflicts, power will come to be distributed in a particular fashion. The problem of

social order will thus presuppose certain ways of setting a public agenda, certain ways

of determining rules and reaching decisions, and a certain distribution of legitimate

authority.

Metaphors are usually considered as mere matters of stylistic decoration. This is

not, however, all they are. Metaphors are also cognitive tools.1 They help us organise

the world in a particular manner. They help us make sense of the confusing multitude

of things which surrounds us by telling us not what things are but rather what they are

like. In this way the metaphors invoked or implied by a person or a society will

necessarily come to reveal a certain outlook on life.

1 The classical study is Lakoff & Johnson 1980 a good collection of articles is Johnson, 1981.

1
 This is not to deny that metaphors also have their rhetorical uses. Indeed in

politics metaphors are often tools used by elites to stifle critique and to keep people in

their places. Yet we cannot do without them and there is no true description of society

hiding beyond or behind the metaphorical language we invoke. We all need a

conception or another of what social life is like and some way of understanding of how

things fit together. In order to arrive at such understandings metaphors are inevitable.

Shared social meanings will for this reason always come to presuppose a prior

metaphorical commitment.

What for example is a state?2 Much discussed as this question has been among

historians and political scientists, it is quite impossible to say that it has a definitive

answer that the state must be one thing and that it cannot be something else. The state

has no basic essence in terms of which it conclusively can be defined.3 In order to deal

with this unsatisfactory state of affairs what we end up doing is to compare the state to

other things. Instead of talking about what the state is, we talk about it metaphorically

although we know nothing about being, we know a lot about being as.4

Metaphors have a way of simultaneously both highlighting and obscuring

aspects of reality.5 By seeing something as a certain kind of thing some argument and

some actions become available to us whereas other arguments and actions become

unavailable. In this way our use of metaphor will have profound implications for the

way in which politics is organised and carried out. This is why critics of the existing

social order often advocate alternative metaphors which allow new things to be seen and

new courses of action to open up.

2 See for example Skinner, 1989, pp. 90131.

3 Ringmar, 1996. Compare the contributions to Review of International Studies, 2004.
4 Compare Ricur, 1975, pp. 323399.

2
 Another thing to note is how metaphors are grounded in a certain culture and a

certain way of life.6 As a result they tend to vary from one society to the next and vary

also over the course of time. This is why a study of metaphors provides an excellent

research tool for intersocietal comparisons, a fact already well understood by cultural

anthropologists and some historians.7 For political scientists the comparative study of

metaphors provides a new and hitherto largely unexplored way of understanding the

similarities and differences in the way political systems are conceptualised.8

The aim of this paper is to briefly compare the metaphors used to discuss the

problem of social order in Europe, China and Japan. The ultimate goal is to understand

the roles which the political systems of these two parts of the world have accorded to

concepts like freedom, power, equality, rights, dissent or virtue. The

comparative study of metaphors provides the best way of understanding the conditions

under which such concepts become possible. To illustrate what is at stake consider the

following short list of metaphorical uses.

the state as a body

In the early modern era, the body was the predominant metaphor through which the

European state was understood.9 Originally the body metaphor had been applied to the

Church. Or to be more precise, the Church had had two bodies one temporal and one

transcendental one which human beings belonged to while still on earth and another

5 Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp. 1013 Ricur, 1975, p. 105.

6 Lakoff & Johnson, 1980, pp. 2224.
7 See an anthropological example see Fernandez, 1991 for a historical example see de Baecque,
1993/1997.
8 See however Lakoff, 1996.
9 Seminally treated in Kantorowitz,1951/1957, pp. 194232 and Gierke, 1881/1996, pp. 930.
Compare Ringmar, 2005, pp. 89101.

3
which they belonged to eternally in heaven. It was Jesus Christ who was in charge of

the eternal church and the pope who took care of the temporal. With the rise of the state

as a sovereign entity in the course of the Renaissance this corporal language was

gradually secularised and given a political application. As a result also the state came to

be given two bodies one temporal and one transcendental and its subjects were

simultaneously members of both.10 In its temporal capacity the state was made up of

various kinds of institutions staffed by officials, but the state clearly also had an

existence apart from these institutional manifestations this was the Staat guided by the

Weltgeist of history, la France ternelle, or the eternal principles enshrined in the

constitution of the United States.11

The body metaphor provides an easy and convincing solution to the problem of

social order. As the metaphor makes clear, social life and the political system are, just

like the various parts of the body, intimately related and organically unified. Each social

class corresponds to a bodily organ: the aristocracy is the arm, the clergy the heart,

and the peasants or merchants are the stomach. And naturally the king ruling over

this body politic becomes the head of state.

The body metaphor is obviously hierarchical. The organs which make up the

state have entirely different functions, ranks and importance, yet hierarchy is at the

same time a requirement for social order to be established. It is precisely because groups

and classes have different functions that they depend on each other the clergy needs the

peasants just as the heart needs the stomach. Diversity is thus not a problem but instead

a precondition for social solidarity and peace. If we all were the same after all there

10 Kantorowitz,1951/1957, pp. 20732.

11 Ringmar, 1996 compare Cassirer, 1946, pp. 24876.

4
would be no reason for us to stay together equality of status leads to isolation and

eventually to indifference and to a breakup of social life.12

In a state understood as a body, conflicts are quite inconceivable. Social groups

and classes cannot be at war with each other for the same reason that one hand cannot

fight the other or the heart rebel against the stomach. Instead all groups and classes

need and depend on one another for the proper functioning of the whole. The body

metaphor in short provides little place for politics there is nothing much for the various

members to discuss there is only one will and all decisions are taken by the head. Yet

this is not quite the same as unlimited kingship since the king in practice might have to

investigate the condition of the heart or stomach or feet before reaching a decision. If

any bodypart is in a poor state, he will naturally be forced to take this into

consideration, not for the sake of the ailing member but for the sake of the body as a

whole.

Although diversity is a requirement for social stability, divisions are an ever

present threat. Not surprisingly, political parties and factionalism have universally been

condemned by the voices of the establishment. In 18th century England, Jonathan Swift

defined a party as 'the madness of many, for the gain of the few,' and later in the same

century George Washington devoted a large part of his farewell address of 1796 to

solemnly warn his people against 'the baneful effects of the spirit of party.'13 Come to

think of it, bipartisanship is still considered a great virtue in American politics. Yet

antiestablishment groups were often equally critical of party politics. Even the most

utopian of political tracts, such as those written by the Diggers, Levellers and other 17th

12 Tocqueville, 1840/1945, pp. 10405.

13 Quoted in Hofstadter, 1969, p. 2.

5
century radicals, defined the good society as one without parties.14 The aim of their

particular party was to once and for all end all parties.

The viability of the body metaphor will thus depend on the degree to which it

recognises the demands of various social groups while at the same time limiting the

same demands to what is functionally required for the health of the body as a whole.

This is a problem when new social cleavages arise together with new political demands.

In the Middle Ages, new movements were relatively easily assimilated 'incorporated'

as it were into established bodies, and eventually all of them formed integral parts of

the universal body the body of bodies which was the Church.15 In the 20th century a

similar form of corporatism was tried both in nationalsocialist and socialistnationalist

states, but these attempts have now largely been abandoned.16 Few groups are

prepared to accept the hierarchical subordination which the metaphor imposes and few

are prepared to define their interests in terms of the interests of society as a whole.

the state as a family

The family is another popular metaphor through which the problem of social order has

been addressed. This image seems to be more widely shared between Europe and East

Asia, although the interpretations vary as a result of the considerable differences that

exist in the definitions of the family in respective parts of the world. Again we are

dealing with a metaphor which combines biological and hierarchical principles. Rulers

have often found it expedient to define themselves as fathers of the countries they rule

and their subjects as children of varying ages, genders and states of maturity. The

14 Ball, 1989, p. 163.

15 Cohn, 1970, pp. 15859.

6
father in the state as in all traditional families is the one who makes decisions fathers

know best and other family members are not supposed to question their judgement.

Order in the state is assured in the same way as order in the family.

Yet relations within a state understood as a family are quite different from

relations within a state understood as a body.17 Family bonds are not primarily

biological after all but rather social. A father is supposed to take a personal interest in

the members of his family, their wellbeing and future, and he is supposed to include

them in the decisions he makes. He is a pater and the state which has children as its

subjects is necessarily paternalistic.18 The paternalistic state thinks, plans and acts on

behalf of the people subject to it it disciplines and regulates people in order to protect

them from the unexpected, the disastrous, as well as from themselves.

Understood as a family, the state becomes a social entity rather than merely a

biological. Most obviously it comes to exist in a location which can be compared to a

home. Hence the Japanese kokka, the national home, or the Swedish Folkhem, the

home of the people.19 Understood as a home the state becomes an institution based on

genealogical membership criteria and it becomes an institution which demands our

loyalty and our sacrifices. Thus although examples of the family metaphor can be found

already in the early modern era, it becomes particularly important as a way to describe a

particularly hierarchical form of nationalism. The Japanese emperor, for example, was

never understood as father until the 1890s when military competition suddenly was

seen to require a principle according to which soldiers could be required to make

sacrifices.

16 Schmitter, 1989, pp .5473.

17 For an extensive discussion see Lakoff, 1996, pp. 44161.
18 Schapiro, 1999, pp. 71538.

7
 The family metaphor is also less stifling than the body metaphor and it provides

more room for discussions. Family members are separate individuals after all with

individual wants and aspirations. In order to accommodate this diversity, families

usually discuss things together and reach decisions through consensual methods. This

may particularly be the case in contemporary families but to some extent it has surely

always been the case, except perhaps in the most authoritarian of traditional families.20

A society modelled on a family is for that reason likely to allow a measure of debate and

even dissent. We may not like it, but we are certainly not unprepared for the fact that

family members sometimes fight or fall out.

This rhetorical connection means that changes in the definition of the family are

likely to feed back into the way the state is conceptualised. As a result the state can

come to be quite differently understood for reasons which are unconnected to political

action. This presents a hermeneutic opportunity which can be creatively explored by

oppositional groups.21 It is possible for example to see marriage as a contract freely

entered into by two equal parties rather than as a union sanctioned by god. If so, the

contract can be broken if one of the parties violates the terms of the agreement. The

political implications of this reconceptualisation are obvious and they were quickly

identified by 17th century Puritans who rebelled against the paternalistic English state.

The malleability of the family metaphor means that it can survive even dramatic

political changes. Surprisingly it has survived even in some cases where the various

family members begin killing each other. Together the brothers may for example decide

to rebel against the hierarchical implications of the metaphor and against the tyranny

19 Trgrdh, 2002, pp. 8085.

20 Lakoff, 1996, pp. 65140.
21 Walzer, 1965, pp. 18393.

8
imposed on them by the father. Killing him off may be labelled as patricide, but it is

also the foundation of a new kind of fraternity which guarantees both equality and

freedom while at the same time making sure that the political unit continues to be

closely united.22 The idea of fraternity is a powerful way of expressing an egalitarian

form of nationalism. The father may have been beheaded, but the metaphor lived on.

the state as a musical director

Although there are Japanese examples of the family metaphor dating from the 19th

century, and although the Confucian literati of imperial China certainly took a

paternalistic attitude toward ordinary people, kinship metaphors played quite a

different role in East Asia than in Europe. For one thing authority was typically

understood in personalised rather than in institutionalised terms.23 For this reason the

first question was always how to conceptualise society as a whole rather than simply the

political system.

In imperial China, as well as in feudal Japan, people were typically seen as

connected to each other through long chains of hierarchical relationships stretching from

the bottom of society to its very top. These relationships were governed by

particularistic rather than by universalistic ties. In China the emperor ruled by virtue of

a mandate of heaven, but this mandate did not give him a general right to interfere in

peoples lives. Instead it was incumbent on all Chinese, the emperors included, to first

and foremost fulfil their obligations toward their families and friends. If everyone only

maintained their respective parts of the great network which was society, the country

22 David, 1987.
23 Fei. 1947/1992, especially pp. 6086.

9
would be at peace and everyone would prosper. Much the same is true in the case of

Japan where the social structure was held together by ties connecting vassals to their

lords. Instead of relying on legal abstractions, the Japanese state was governed by

mutual obligations and feudal codes of honour.

The political question is what role the state possibly can play in a network

society of this kind. Clearly Europeanstyle lawmaking is not going to be sufficient

since there officially is no universal and homogenous realm over which politics can

exercise a jurisdiction.24 Instead the personal qualities the virtue of political leaders

and bureaucrats become crucial. Rule takes place by example rather than by decree. Or

differently put, politics becomes profoundly ritualistic. In China the most important

rituals were those concerned with the cult of the ancestors, above all the funeral rites,

but there were also rituals for marriage, baptism and the celebration of New Year, and a

long series of festive annual events. Rituals expressed the meaning of social obligations,

they provided people with concrete ways of fulfilling their obligations and assured the

filial piety of the sons, the faithfulness of the wives, and the loyalty of the subjects.

Rituals also helped define social classes and to maintain the hierarchical order of social

life.

The emperor was the person ultimately responsible for the maintenance of this

ceremonial system. It was the rituals the emperor performed that kept Earth in

correspondence with Heaven and yin and yang in balance. The metaphor which best

captures the logic of this ritualistic rule is a musical one. The emperor was like a

conductor directing a state bureaucracy made up of musicians and the people were like

24 This ignores the strong Legalistic tradition in Chinese political thought. For an overview see
Ringmar, 2005, pp. 16270.

10
dancers moving in unison to the beat of their tune.25 The social ideal was harmony

wa in Japanese, h in Chinese.26 Harmony required people to coordinate their actions

no discordant voices should be heard and no awkward movements be displayed

everyone should just lose themselves in the music:

How do we know the meaning of dancing? The dancers eyes do not

look at himself his ears do not listen to himself yet he controls the
lowering and raising of his head, the bending and straightening of his
body, his advancing and retreating, his slow and rapid movements
everything is discriminated and regulated. He exerts to the utmost all
the strength of his body to keep time to the measures of the sounds of the
drum and bell, and has no rebellious heart. All his purposes are summed
up and earnest.27

In a state organised as a musical performance adjustments will happen smoothly and by

themselves and for that reason overt repression is usually not required. Instead the

maintenance of social order is perfectly decentralised. It is above all other participants

who notice when someone sings out of tune or behaves gracelessly, and they are also the

ones best placed to apply sanctions. Usually some mild form of social disapproval is

sufficient to set the clumsy performer straight.

In a state organised in this manner politics is not something that you talk about

but instead something that you do. Politics is not about discussions and no

confrontations between opposing views are possible.28 Although the emperor has the

power to determine which music that should be played this is usually left to tradition,

and it does not really matter which tune that is chosen as long as everyone is familiar

with it and knows which parts to play. People can certainly object to the music but this

is always going to be an sthetic rather than a political judgement. Music, strikingly,

25 Pocock, 1989, p. 46.

26 It, 1998.
27 Hsun Tzu quoted in Pocock, 1989, p. 46.

11
has no contraries there is no way of contradicting a tune or a dance movement and

for that reason a state organised as a musical performance allows no space for criticism.

In a society where harmony is the highest social goal, and where carefully integrated

rituals are used to achieve it, there can be no dissent, only correct or incorrect

performances.

At the same time the musical metaphor is highly tolerant of diverging opinions.

Even if they mean entirely different things by the same notes or movements people can

still get along with each other. As long as everyone only moves as they are supposed to,

it does not really matter what they are thinking, if they are thinking anything at all, and

there is no need to monitor or control their minds as the authorities always did in

Europe.29 Instead of orthodoxy it was orthopraxy that held imperial China together

what mattered was the right movement rather than the right belief.

the state as a machine

Returning to Europe, another important metaphor popular above all from the latter

part of the 17th century onward is the image of the state as a machine.30 The reason

behind its popularity were the advances in technology made at the time and the

subsequent fascination with mechanical gadgetry of all kinds, above all clockworks. The

enlightened autocrats of 18th century Europe were particularly fond of this metaphor,

but we still invoke it in our contemporary references to, say, bureaucratic machineries,

the wheels of administration, or social engineering.

28 Jullien, 2000, pp. 11740.

29 Fei, 1947/1992, pp. 94100 Watson, 1993, p. 81.
30 For an overview see Mayr, 1986.

12
 If the state is a machine then the various parts of society become the levers,

springs and cogwheels of which the machine is constructed. As such this metaphor

comes to resemble the body metaphor since it connects the functional differentiation of

parts with the need for social cooperation. Since the components of society are radically

different from each other it is only through cooperation that they can attain their

purposes. As the machine metaphor makes clear, a refusal to put the collective interest

above the individual interest is necessarily selfdefeating. A cogwheel alone is after all

quite useless. And obviously also this metaphor is hierarchical. While some of the

components of the machine are easily replaced, others are unique and utterly crucial to

its operations.

Just as the body metaphor, the machine metaphor has no place for dissent. All

components should fit neatly with each other and any wheel that squeaks must quickly

be oiled or replaced. The implications are thoroughly repressive, and not surprisingly

the metaphor is closely associated with the attempts to restore peace after the upheavals

and civil wars of the 16th and early 17th centuries. Jean Bodins understanding of the

state was mechanical and Thomas Hobbes Leviathan is a kind of humanoid robot.31

With the help of these machines society was pacified as diversity was suppressed.32

Intermediary groups of all kinds feudal estates, corporations, brotherhoods and

religious sects were broken up and society was divided into individual units. These

atomic parts were then reunited in and through the machinery of the state.

There are nevertheless quite clear limits to the power of a machinebased

absolutism. In a political system understood through in this way the ruler becomes a

clockmaker or perhaps an engineer who oversees the operations of the machine. As

31 ibid, pp. 10405.

13
such the machine comes to work quite independently of the rulers personal will and

whims. There are laws of statecraft, similar to laws of mechanics, which also the king

has to follow in order to maintain the state in a good working order and himself in

power. As the theorists of enlightened absolutism made clear, the state and the king are

both governed by reason, and this raison dtat can at least in principle be objectively

defined and calculated.33 In this way the machine metaphor served as a check on

absolutist power. Not surprisingly the regimes where the metaphor was most popular

Prussia and Austria in particular were also the states which first granted rights to

their subjects. Fredric the Great of Prussia could even be sued by his own people.

Constitutional documents, pioneered in these Rechtstaaten, were taken as the blueprints

for the construction of the machineries of state.

the state as a cybernetic device

A shortcoming of the state understood as a machine is that it is prohibitively costly to

operate. Repressing diversity oiling squeaking wheels and replacing uncooperative

parts takes a lot of time and effort. It would be far better if people somehow could be

convinced to oil and replace themselves. A solution of this kind was chanced upon in

England in the course of the 18th century as society increasingly came to be regarded as a

selfbalancing mechanism or a cybernetic device, from kubernetes, the Greek for

governor.34

Again the origin of this metaphor is best explained by the historical context. In

England, from the end of the 17th century onward, a number of seminal discoveries and

32 Ringmar, 2005, pp. 10508.

33 Hirschman, 1977, pp. 4344.
34 Mayr, 1986, p. 195.

14
inventions were made which all demonstrated the viability of the principle of self

regulation.35 There was Newtons description of the mathematics of the planetary

system where every planet was held in place by the sun and by the actions of the other

planets, but also the governor which automatically controlled the pressure in a steam

engine through automatic feedback mechanisms and, say, the thermostat used for

regulating the temperature in chicken incubators. What these systems have in common

is the interaction of contradictory forces. In all of them a push in one direction

automatically triggers a pull in the other direction and as a result overall balance is

restored.

This is the model famously adopted by Adam Smith in his description of the

economic system as governed by an invisible hand, a metaphor he initially applied to

Newtonian cosmology the invisible hand of Jupiter in an early essay. 36 The

economic system, Smith explained, maintains itself in balance as the selfserving actions

of one party are counteracted through the selfserving actions of another party.37 The

outcome is beneficial to society as a whole since it mobilises resources and maximises

efficiency.

In the course of the 19th century the same metaphor came to be extended also to

politics.38 Also political parties can serve the public interest if they only first serve their

own interests. Competition in the marketplace of ideas is beneficial for all and dissent

is not a problem as long as it is counteracted by contradictory opinions and as long as

people are given a chance to freely make up their minds. Instead of overthrowing the

35 ibid, pp. 19093.

36 On the invisible hand of Jupiter, see Adam Smith, 1758/1982, p. 49 on the invisible hand of
the market see Smith, 1776/1981,IV:2, p. 456.
37 Hirschman, 1977, pp. 10012.
38 Hofstadter, 1969. Ringmar, 2005, pp. 12024.

15
government in some bloody coup and replacing it with a new one, the dissenters will

come to form an opposition in parliament and bide their time. The job of the opposition

is to oppose, but only loyally so, that is, within the generally accepted rules of the

political game.

As the cybernetic metaphor makes clear, people are able to settle their differences

by themselves as long as only the forces of the economic and the political system are

allowed to operate freely. Diversity is not a threat to the stability of the social order but

instead as a precondition for it the mutual antagonism of opposing interests and groups

is what keeps society in balance and at peace. Outside intervention by a balancer such

as the state risks jeopardising this selforganisation. In a society which regulates itself,

the king can be abolished and the state scaled back. This is the liberal idea of freedom,

the freedom to pursue ones own interests constrained only by other actors who pursue

theirs.

The beauty and simplicity of this metaphor obscures its demanding

requirements. Selforganisation is not spontaneous after all but is only likely to work in

an environment which already is thoroughly organised.39 Order is created only thanks

to the coercive means through which the boundaries of the system are policed and its

operations regulated. The egalitarian ethos of the metaphor is also violated by the very

different capabilities of the actors involved. Ones freedom depends on which resources

one has at ones disposal, but resource endowments are likely vary considerably from

one person to the next. And as it turns out, cybernetic systems can quite easily be

manipulated by actors with disproportionate resources. Groups who control media

39 Polanyi, 1944.

16
outlets can for example distort the interaction between political parties, and groups with

a monopoly position in a market can distort the interaction between economic parties.

conclusion

This discussion has a large number of implications, too many to be properly

summarised here. One obvious point is that the metaphors invoked to describe the

political system have varied considerably over time and between societies. Another

point, perhaps less obvious, is that this variation presents a challenge to our ability to

compare political phenomena. Without understanding the metaphorical differences and

the transformations that have occurred, no proper intercultural or intertemporal

comparisons are possible.40 After all, what is similar and what is different depends not

on what things are as much as on what they mean, and meanings are always organised

through and around metaphors. Thus basic political notions such as freedom, power,

equality, rights, dissent or virtue will come to mean quite different things

depending on the metaphorical context in which we find them. And in some contexts

the notions cannot even be identified.

As far as Europe is concerned, there is historically speaking a transition from

organic and hierarchical metaphors to cybernetic and egalitarian ones. This is the

metaphorical groundwork required by the spread of laissezfaire capitalism and liberal

political thought. Interculturally speaking the same transition takes place as the

metaphor of selfgovernance gradually has come to replace other ways of understanding

social order. And yet the cybernetic metaphor is neither entirely dominant nor

unchallenged. Compare the European welfare state which still relies heavily on family

40 Compare MacIntyre, 1984, pp. 26079.

17
metaphors, or nationalist discourses which often insist on seeing the state as a body, and

there are still plenty of social scientists around whose work often presupposes a

mechanical understanding of the state.

There are good reasons why these metaphors have not disappeared. The

cybernetic metaphor is unable to capture many aspects of social life which we generally

see as important, including a notion of community, the value of togetherness and a

sense of a common purpose. In the end most of us are content to mix our metaphors

we see some aspects of society with the help of one metaphor and other aspects with the

help of another metaphor. Those who refuse to do this those who hold on to only one

metaphor and seek to impose it on all spheres of social life come across as simple

minded fundamentalists.

In recent years the fundamentalist adherents of selforganisation have often

come to resemble a quasireligious movement, and much current political debate

concerns the relevance of the cybernetic metaphor to various aspects of social life. That

the metaphor sometimes applies seems beyond doubt but it is an urgent political task to

investigate what the limits are of this applicability. We need to know where the

metaphor is used inappropriately where it is stretched and where it eventually breaks

down and dies. Political dissenters need to investigate what the alternatives are to this

dominant language. Such an investigation of mere words is likely to have some pretty

tangible political consequences.

There is a persistent tendency to underestimate the cultural specificity of the

cybernetic metaphor. For selfregulation to work there must be a willingness on the part

of all political or economic actors to play by a common set of rules above all everyone

must accept the legitimacy of the selfbalancing device. As a result individuals and

groups must develop a set of double loyalties, they must simultaneously be loyal to their

18
own point of view and to the system in which their interaction with others takes place.41

For such an outcome to become a realistic possibility the various social groups must feel

that they have a stake in the system that it sometimes at least works to their advantage.

Whenever this is not the case selfregulation will lose legitimacy. An economic or a

political system which constantly favours certain groups will eventually come to be seen

as unjust. If such a double loyalty does not exist on its own, it takes a strong state that

can provide the preconditions for it. Selfregulation in the end is only possible in a

system which itself is formed through political action selves must be constituted before

they can be autonomously organised.

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Minnesota Press, 1981)
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1980)
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Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)
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21

Rethinking Early
East Asian History
By Charles Holcombe
Asia and National Identities
There may be Asian-Americans in the United States, but as Ronald
Takaki shrewdly commented, there are no Asians in Asia, only peo-
ple with national identities, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indi-
an, Vietnamese, and Filipino.1 Asia is simply too enormous, span-
ning the better part of the entire Old World, and too diverse, to serve
as a very meaningful label. In fact, according to Robert Marks, on
the eve of the American Revolution, in 1775, Asia produced about
80 percent of everything in the world.2 Moreover, Asia is a con- particular nation, such as China or Vietnam. This tendency may even
cept of Western origin unfamiliar to many of the people who actual-
ly lived there. As both word and idea, Asia, is a legacy of the
ancient Greeks. In East Asia there was absolutely no pre-modern
native equivalent term. 3 Even within Europe, John M. Hobson
argues, it was not until the eighteenth century that a vision of a dis-
tinctive Western Civilization descended in a continuous line from
Ancient Greece and fundamentally different from the Oriental Other,
first began to be imagined.4 Certainly pre-modern East Asians did
not think of themselves as Asians.
Yet they did not necessarily think of themselves exactly as Chi-
nese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese in the fully modern sense
either. There is a fairly broad consensus among specialist scholars,
There may be Asian-Americans in the United States, but as Ronald Takaki shrewdly
commented, there are no Asians in Asia, only people with national identities,
such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian,Vietnamese, and Filipino.
however counter-intuitive it may seem to a popular audience, that
the phenomena of nation-states and nationalism emerged only in rel-
atively recent times. Nationalism began in Europe, and, perhaps
especially, in Europes overseas colonies struggling for indepen-
dence in the Americas (including, notably, the future United States).5
The nationalist contagion then spread to East Asia in the late nine-
teenth century. It might plausibly be argued, therefore, that prior to
roughly 1900, few people in East Asia held precisely our familiar
modern national identities either.6
So how did pre-modern East Asians conceive of themselves? For
many, their self-identifications must have been primarily local: with
village or region. But East Asia is also truly one of the worlds most
ancient centers of civilization. If educated pre-modern Chinese were
inclined to imagine their standards of civilization were universal (not
unlike the attitude of some Americans today towards the supposedly
universal appeal of our culture and ideals), concepts equivalent to the
country or state had already appeared in China thousands of years
ago.7 It is deceptively easy to project modern images of the nation
back into the primordial past in East Asia. Who can deny that China
is a very old country? The problem comes when we begin to ponder
the multitude of Chinese countries that existed in the past.
Rethinking Our Notions of Asia
From that initial Bronze Age center of civilization in what we
now call China there emerged a broadly shared East Asian vocabu-
lary for conceptualizing identity. This is a point that scholars who
specialize in tracing the modern origins of nationalism in East Asia
may not themselves sufficiently appreciate. Not only do such schol-
ars commonly approach the subject from a present-day perspective,
but, paradoxically, they generally do so already packaged within the
box of the nation, as studies of nationalism within the context of a
be especially strong in the study of an East Asian region where the
(national) languages necessary for serious research require intensive
specialized training. The modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and
Vietnamese languages are very different from each other, and serve
to draw sharp, often nearly impermeable, disciplinary barriers
between scholars who study the different East Asian cultures.
Languages and Historical Understanding
In pre-modern times, however, the situation was somewhat different.
There was, to a significant extent, a single common written language
in use throughout all of East Asia, which we call literary, or classi-
cal, Chinese. This was the language of the Confucian classics, the
East Asian version of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and of the majority of
all serious writing in China until the early twentieth century.8 Within
China, this language long enjoyed a near monopoly of written com-
municationmore so, for example, than Latin ever did within the
Roman Empire, where Greek still commanded much prestige, and
other alternatives such as Syriac and Coptic coexisted.9 Beyond
China proper, literary Chinese was also initially almost the only
written language in use everywhere else in East Asia. Even the stan-
dard native Japanese name for Japan itself, Nihon, was apparently
chosen during the seventh century for the meaning of the Chinese
characters, with which it is still today normally written: ,
origin of the Sun.10
To be sure, new ways of writing the different Japanese, Korean,
and Vietnamese spoken languages did gradually develop, but, even as
late as the nineteenth century, literary Chinese was still very much the
prestige language of writing in Korea and Vietnam. Even in more
remote Japan, the last catalog compiled for the Shgunal library in
18641866 still contained some 65 percent Chinese material.11 Since
then, literary Chinese has been rejected or abandoned everywhere,
even in China itself, and replaced by modern national vernaculars.
For many modern East Asians, much of the written record of their
own past has truly become a foreign country.
9
 While Chinese archeologists have been slow to embrace the Out of Africa
theory of human origins, within China it is now fashionable to emphasize
the multiple origins of Chinese civilization.
My emphasis here on the widespread pre-modern importance of
the Chinese written language may seem offensively Sino-centric,
and derogatory to the other East Asian cultures. For perspective,
recall that in Western Europe prior to 1500 some three-quarters of all
books were still published in Latin.12 Yet the European sense of
national dignity appears unimpaired by the tremendous weight of
Europes Greco-Roman heritage. And, if Latin may be pronounced a
dead language today, the same could also be said of literary Chi-
nese. In fact, in modern times, Japanese has been more influential. A
stream of Japanese vocabulary itemsoften newly minted as trans-
lations of such exotic Western words as telephone, nation, or
communismwere imported from Japanese into the Chinese lan-
guage beginning in the late nineteenth century.13 The present-day
Peoples Republic of China is no more identical to the Han dynasty
of Emperor Wu than todays Italy is to the Rome of Augustus.
Rather than some unchanging and permanently static China, mod-
ern Chinese history has been punctured repeatedly by profound revo-
lutionary ruptures, some of which have involved language itself.
To be sure, however, even the modern spoken and written Chi-
nese languages, though much reformed in the twentieth century, are
clearly still incarnations of the same 3,000-year-old archaic language
that appears on the most ancient inscriptions discovered by archeolo-
gists in China. This remarkable linguistic and literary continuity
forms the spine of an enduring Chinese cultural continuum. Further-
more, Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world
today, which can hardly be said of Latin. But, I would submit, that if
there has been continuity, there has also been much change in
Chinas past. Even ancient China was far from static.
Different Chinas
If the quintessentially Japanese sport of sumo wrestling existed in
China a millennium before it did in Japan,14 and if many institutions,
ideals, and cultural practices of pre-modern East Asia originated in
what we call China, it is also true that it was a different China then.
The spread of Chinese influences also naturally provoked counter-
reactions and innovations everywhere, helping to stimulate the gener-
ation of unique local cultures. This is how the process of globalization
works. Even when expressed in literally the same language, the result
could sometimes still be surprising, and nascent nationalistic tenden-
cies often naturally flared up. Consider, for example, the notorious
case of the Japanese embassy to China in 607, whose (Chinese-lan-
guage) credentials were, from the Chinese point of view, presumptu-
ously addressed from the Son-of-Heaven in the place where the sun
rises to the Son-of-Heaven in the place where the sun sets.15 That is,
from the equal (if not actually superior) Emperor of Japan to the
Emperor of China, the land of the setting sun.
The genesis of Chinese civilization itself is hardly more pristine
than that of other East Asian civilizations. Indeed, all nations and
ethnicities must originate somehow, and the larger and more central-
ly located the community, the more likely it is to be a complex
hybrid, and the more preposterous talk of cultural or ethnic purity
becomes. Against messy historical truth, however, there often stands
a powerful emotional need for a more shining, permanent, idealized
identity. Citing an aphorism from Ernest RenanForgetting, I
10 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA Volume 11, Number 2
would even go so far as to say historical error is a crucial factor in
the creation of a nation; thus the progress of historical studies is
often a danger for national identityTony Judt comments that
Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history con-
tributes to the disenchantment of the world. Most of what it has to
offer is discomforting, even disruptive . . . .16 Of course, uncritical
popular history commonly serves instead a comforting (if also some-
times covertly sinister) agenda. As the fraudulent Wizard of Oz
explains succinctly in the current Broadway hit musical Wicked,
Where I come from, we believe all sorts of things that arent true
we call it . . . history.17
The once heated debate between proponents of the diffusion
theory of the origins and spread of civilization, and those who
favored the idea of more local native origins, seems to have been
resolved now in an unexpected way: by DNA.18 The compelling
genetic evidence suggests that all human beings came originally
from Africa, and settled the planet only relatively recently, within
the last hundred thousand years or so.19 Globalization, then, has been
part of the human story from the beginning, and there are no true
permanent natives anywhere, except, possibly, somewhere in
Africa. For the rise of the historical world civilizations, an overly-
simplistic opposition between alternative diffusionist or autono-
mist models has been challenged by a more nuanced conception of
an ongoing process of dialectical interaction.20 While Chinese arche-
ologists have been slow to embrace the Out of Africa theory of
human origins, within China it is now fashionable to emphasize the
multiple origins of Chinese civilization.21
China was first unified into a single centralized country by the
Qin dynasty in 221 BCE, but the extent to which it thereafter long
remained internally very much a multi-ethnic empire is not often suf-
ficiently appreciated. By the fourth century CE, as imperial unity
shattered, an astonishing ethnic and cultural complexity reasserted
itself. In the roughly four centuries of division (220589 CE)
between the two great unified Han and Sui empires, there were some
thirty-five identifiably distinct states or dynasties in China, many of
which had non-Chinese rulers. This figure does not include certain
small autonomous communities, such as that of the Di people at Mt.
Chouchi, in southern Gansu, which survived independently for more
than two hundred years during this era.22
Liu Xueyao calls this the period of most intense social change
since the dawn of Chinese history. His data suggests that one short-
lived dynasty (Former Zhao) established in north China after 304
may have had a population that was as much as one-third non-Chi-
nese.23 According to Wolfram Eberhards tabulation, 42 percent of
some 5,550 persons mentioned as living under the Northern Wei
dynasty (386534 CE) in the standard sources (which presumably
over-represent the ruling non-Chinese ethnicity) were not Chinese.24
Tamura Jitsuz calculates that there may have been as many as nine
or ten million non-Chinese people in north China during the fourth
through sixth centuries.25 For perspective, the entire population of
China in 280 was reportedly only sixteen millionalthough this
surely is an undercount, and the true number likely more than forty
million.26 All figures are suggestive rather than definitive, and all
Fall 2006

beg the question of what exactly is meant by Chinese, yet discern-
able ethnic diversity certainly existed in China during these cen-
turies.
China was also remarkably open to external cultural influences
at this time. A silver ewer unearthed from the tomb of a man who
died in northwestern China in 569 was decorated with scenes from
the Trojan wars.27 James Watt remarks upon the overwhelming
influence of Central Asians on the plastic arts of sixth-century north
China.28 An early sixth-century Northern Wei prince is said to have
possessed dozens of crystal, agate, glass, and red jade drinking ves-
sels that were all from the western regions, as well as horses from
as far west as Persia (although the prince is mentioned explicitly for
his extravagance, and must have been exceptional).29 In the south,
stone pillars at several sixth-century Chinese royal tombs closely
resemble those of ancient Greece.30 A sixth-century bowl from
Tashkent, together with some Persian coins, were discovered in
extreme southeast China.31 And, by the end of the sixth century, the
Indian Buddhist scriptures were reportedly more prevalent among
ordinary Chinese people than the supposedly native Chinese Con-
fucian classics.32
Average seasonal temperatures seem to have grown colder dur-
ing the third to sixth centuries. The frontier between farmers and
pastoralists moved south, and an age of population movement and
migration began.33 As is well known, these (same?) migrations had a
dramatic impact on the Roman Empire in the west after about 370.34
Within China, ethnic complexity and intermixing was not limited to
the northern pastoral zone; in the rice-growing south, a majority of
the population may still have been identifiably non-Chinese aborigi-
nal peoples at this time.35 These aborigines, together with older Chi-
nese settlers, were now joined by large numbers of refugees from the
war-ravaged north. Some even claim that the legitimate Chinese
imperial line was relocated south (to what is now Nanking) at the
start of this age of Northern and Southern dynasties, yet the second
emperor of this transplanted Chinese lineage, Jin Mingdi (r.
323326), was reported to have had a yellow beard, allegedly inher-
ited from his semi-nomadic mother.36 The patterns of interaction
were indeed complex.
The age was one of such cultural and ethnic ferment that the
distinguished scholar Edward Schafer has wondered whether the
very concept of China simply did not exist, except as an alien fic-
tion.37 Not only is the word China a foreign coinage, notes Lydia
Liu, but even such roughly comparable native terms as Zhonghua
and Zhongguo have never achieved a stable, definitive meaning in
indigenous discourse either.38 (This, despite the fact that Zhongguo
is today probably the closest Chinese-language equivalent to our
English word China, and Zhonghua is the term officially used for
China in the names of both the modern Peoples Republic and the
Republic of China.)
The reunified China forged by the Sui and Tang dynasties at the
end of the period of division, after 589, was in many ways a substan-
tially new and different China.39 Even in the matter of collected liter-
ature, some 38 percent of the books in the Tang imperial library, at
its peak, were reportedly Tang-era productions.40 According to
Samuel Adshead, before the sixth century, continuity of political
form was no more characteristic of China than it was of the West,
but the Sui and Tang dynasties then so successfully imposed their
new unified imperial model that, by the eighth century, China had
Rethinking Our Notions of Asia
achieved a multiple preeminence similar to that of the United States
today, and at least the illusion of a succession of essentially similar
dynasties governed by cyclical processthe so-called dynastic
cyclewas established.41 Many internal ethnic distinctions were
also beginning to disappear through cultural intermixing, although
peoples in more inaccessible parts even of central China might long
maintain notable cultural differences.42 What we call China had
now been more-or-less permanently established, and it long
remained the most developed country in the world.
The Genesis of East Asian Nations
It is tantalizing to notice that, in one of the most influential studies of
the phenomenon of nationalism ever published, Benedict Anderson
identified a combination he labeled print-capitalism as being cru-
cial to the generation of a modern sense of national identity. This is
interesting because the technology of printing was pioneered in China
long before the age of modern nationalism. In 932, for example, offi-
cial printed editions of the Nine Confucian Classics were ordered
carefully prepared, based on texts of older stone inscriptions. 43
Acknowledging this fact, Anderson explained the belated emergence
of nationalism in China as being due to the absence of capitalism,
the essential other half of his equation.44 But, from late Tang times,
China actually enjoyed a flourishing, highly commercialized, and
largely unregulated private economy. To be sure, any incipient capi-
talism was limited to the accumulation of capital for commerce and
loans, not industrialization. Chinas precocious early development
should not be fantastically exaggerated. Still, with the spread of vil-
lage schools, printing, and an increasingly homogenous social and
material culture (including, for example, the spread of tea drinking
from a southern peculiarity to empire-wide popularity), from late
Tang times, a relatively cohesive Chinese identity may have begun to
take shape, possibly exhibiting a foretaste at least of some character-
istics of an embryonic print-capitalism.45
The period roughly surrounding the Tang dynasty in China also
marks the beginning of the historical trajectories that would shape all
other major modern nations of East Asia. The story is told that a vis-
iting Japanese monk (Kkai, 774835) was inspired by the example
of educational establishments in Tang China to convert a Japanese
mansion into a school in 828.46 Since formal education in East Asia
was still primarily rooted in Chinese-language texts, the vibrant cul-
tural interaction of this period gave birth to an international aristo-
cratic culture with certain common features. The glories of Tang
poetry, for example, were as much admired in contemporary Korea
and Japan as they were in China.47 Yet, as David Pollack adds, the
Japanese invariably seemed to find the most profound significance
of Chinese culture far from where the Chinese themselves would
ever have thought to seek it.48 Divergent national cultures active-
ly awakened from this encounter.
Pollack gives, as examples of this offbeat Japanese appropria-
tion of Chinese material, the usage of the Chinese script to record
native Japanese mythology, in the native Japanese language, in the
Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712 CE), and the overwhelming
Japanese preference for a particular Tang poet whom the Chinese
themselves seldom put first.49 From a slightly different angle, we
might also mention the adoption of the Chinese emperor system,
minus the critical component of a revocable mandate, and its trans-
formation into the national essence (kokutai) of Japan by the early
1900s. Or, the adaptation of a standard Chinese title for General,
11
pronounced Shgun in Japanese, into the characteristically Japanese
institution of the Shgunate.
The Japanese made something uniquely Japanese from assorted
Chinese influences, much as China domesticated Indian Buddhism,
and nomadic (specifically Xianbei) costume became the native Chi-
nese garb of the Tang dynasty and thereafter. In a subsequent twist,
early twentieth-century Chinese nationalists then complained that
this Tang-style Chinese clothing had been replaced by the barbar- NOTES
ian qipao, or banner gowns, of the foreign Manchu (banner peo-
ple) rulers of the last imperial dynasty. To further complicate the
story, these qipao then became a modern Chinese womens fashion
after the nationalist revolution of 1911. Today, some may even
imagine them to be traditionally Chinese (as some may also imag-
ine the revolutionary Mao suits to be immemorial tradition).50
Such is the human capacity to imagine and forget!
An identifiable Japan (though not yet the modern Japanese
nation-state, whose frontiers were drawn in the middle of the nine-
teenth century)51 had emerged from the mists of prehistory by no
later than the sixth century. Most of the Korean peninsula was uni-
fied under native rule for the first time, and Tang forces expelled by
676, thereby creating an environment wherein the process of the
formation of the Korean people might take an independent
course.52 The growing marginalization of what is now northern
Vietnam, increasingly overshadowed by the rise of the port at
Guangzhou (Canton), foretold Vietnams permanent independence
in 939 after more than a millennium under Chinese rule.53 Each,
thereafter, would follow separate historical pathsthough never
entirely separate.
An East Asian world was born (though none called it nor knew
it as Asian), and the nuclei of each of the modern East Asian
nations established, through mutual cross-fertilization during the
course of the first millennium CE. The present-day results are four
quite different modern nation-statesChina, Japan, Korea, Viet-
namthat still have much in common, if only the ghosts of a once
shared vocabulary. All have been further transformed by a century or
more of intensive modernization, and all are now (with the conspicu-
ous exception of North Korea) deeply enmeshed in the current web
of globalization.
Conclusion
It seems unlikely that this globalization will reduce the world to
homogenous uniformity any time soon. The lesson of history is that,
although a comprehensive metamorphosis of identity and culture is
indeed possible, within a few generations nomads can become Chi-
nese and Chinese can become nomads. For example, interactions
between established communities, while they may constrain or shape
development, need not eliminate local variation, or even prevent fur-
ther diversification. Sometimes diversification is actively stimulated
by exchange, through a sense of rivalry, desire for self-assertion, or
the simple quirks of adaptation. It is difficult to imagine any more
direct form of both biological and cultural reproduction than that of
children by their parents, yet the results can still prove surprisingly
dissimilar. Genetically, modern East Asians actually share common
ancestors with Europeans (and everyone else). Culturally, the East
Asian peoples long continued to be educated using texts written in lit-
erary Chinese, much as Western Europeans continued to read Latin.
Yet from this shared environment, in both Europe and East Asia, mul-
tiple new nations emerged. The China that produced the original East
Asian written language may have been more enduring than the Roman
12 EDUCATION ABOUT ASIA Volume 11, Number 2
Empire that bequeathed Latin on the West.54 Yet, even if we accept
the recently somewhat unfashionable proposition that the fall of the
Roman Empire really did mark a devastating rupture in the continuity
of European history,55 China, too, has changed. The changes have
been both gradual and continuous, and, on occasion, abrupt and dis-
continuous. With time, they all become tradition. n
1. Ronald T. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Ameri-
cans (revised; Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 502.
2. Robert B. Marks, The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological
Narrative (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), 81.
3. See Andrew L. March, The Idea of China: Myth and Theory in Geographical
Thought (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1974), chapter 2: The Myth of Asia.
4. John M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004), 219242, 304, 308.
5. A classic study is Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983; London: Verso, 1991). Our word
nation derives from Latin, but its meaning has changed significantly over time.
See Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1992), 9. Examples of the voluminous literature on nationalism
in East Asia include: Henrietta Harrison, China: Inventing the Nation (London:
Arnold, 2001), and Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing Japan: Time, Space,
Nation (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1998).
6. For China, see David Yen-ho Wu, The Construction of Chinese and Non-Chi-
nese Identities, The Living Tree: the Changing Meaning of Being Chinese
Today, ed. by Tu Wei-ming (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 150.
7. Jared Diamond claims that the Fertile Crescent and China were the worlds two
earliest centers of food production, from which most subsequent historical states
developed either directly or indirectly. See Guns, Germs, and Steel: the Fates of
Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 417. The standard Chinese
word for country, guo, is extremely ancient, although it probably initially
referred to a fortified stronghold, and only gradually came to designate larger
territorial states. See Cho-yun Hsu and Katheryn M. Linduff, Western Chou Civi-
lization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 268269.
8. William G. Boltz distinguishes Archaic (1,2001,000 BCE) and Pre-Classical
(1,000600 BCE) periods prior to the maturation of standard Classical Chinese.
See his Language and Writing, The Cambridge History of Ancient China:
From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. by Michael Loewe and Edward
L. Shaughnessy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 8890.
9. See Ramsay MacMullen, Provincial Languages in the Roman Empire,
Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary (1966; Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1990).
10. Tang huiyao (Institutes of Tang), by Wang Pu (961; Taibei: Shijie shuju, 1989),
99.1770, 100.1792; and Samguk sagi (Historical Record of the Three [Korean]
Kingdoms), by Kim Pu-sik (1145; Seoul: Hongsin munhwasa, 1994), vol. 1, 126
(Sillan basic annals 6).
11. Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to
the Nineteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 382.
12. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of
Printing, 14501800, trans. by David Gerard (1958; London: NLB, 1976), 249.
13. See Lydia H. Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and
Translated ModernityChina, 19001937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1995), appendices BE, and especially 292, 297, 344.
14. Charles Benn, Chinas Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 161.
15. Sui shu (Dynastic History of the Sui), by Wei Zheng (636; Beijing: Zhonghua
shuju, 1973), 81.1827.
16. Tony Judt, From the House of the Dead: On Modern European Memory, The
New York Review of Books, 52.15 (October 6, 2005): 12, 16.
17. Wonderful, A New Musical, Wicked, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz
(Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 2003), 89.
18. A single origin in the Near East, and subsequent spread by diffusion, for all
human civilization was once commonly assumed. Joseph de Guignes, for exam-
ple, explained in 1759 that les Chinois sont une colonie Egyptienne. The theory
encountered strong nativist reactions, often supported by new archeological evi-
dence, in the mid-twentieth century. For Chinese civilization especially, an
almost entirely independent origin was theorized. See David N. Keightley, Pref-
Fall 2006

ace, The Origins of Chinese Civilization, ed. by David N. Keightley (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1983), xixxx, xxviii; and Ho Ping-ti, The Cradle
of the East: An Inquiry into the Indigenous Origins of Techniques and Ideas of
Neolithic and Early Historic China, 50001000 B.C. (Hong Kong: The Chinese
University of Hong Kong, 1975), 363, 367368. As new DNA evidence
appeared, some reconsideration became necessary. It now seems most likely that
Chinese civilization was neither simply introduced by Egyptian colonists, nor
descended in pristine isolation from Peking Man (or the Yellow Emperor). Com-
mon human origins, and periodic interaction, are not incompatible with indepen-
dent local development.
19. See, for example, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Genes, Peoples, and Languages,
trans. by Mark Seielstad (New York: North Point Press, 2000).
20. Andrew Sherratt, The Trans-Eurasian Exchange: The Prehistory of Chinese
Relations with the West, Contact and Exchange in the Ancient World, ed. by
Victor H. Mair (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2006), 32, 53.
21. See Edward Friedman, Symbols of Southern Identity: Rivaling Unitary Nation-
alism, China Off Center: Mapping the Margins of the Middle Kingdom, ed. by
Susan D. Blum and Lionel M. Jensen (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press,
2002), 3233.
22. Yan Gengwang, Zhong-gu shidai zhi Chouchi shan: you dianxing wubao dao
bishi shengdi (Chouchi Mountain in Middle-Antiquity: From Typical Fortified
Community to Place of Scenic Reclusion), Yan Gengwang shixue lunwen xuanji
(1974; Taibei: Lianjing chuban, 1991).
23. Liu Xueyao, Wu-hu shilun (Essays in the History of the Five Hu [non-Chinese
Peoples]) (Taibei: Nantian shuju, 2001), 275, 330.
24. Wolfram Eberhard, Das Toba-Reich Nord Chinas: Eine Soziologische Unter-
suchung (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1949), 9.
25. Tamura Jitsuz, Chgoku shij no minzoku idki: Goko, Hokugi jidai no seiji to
shakai (The Age of Ethnic Migration in Chinese History: Politics and Society of
the Five Hu and Northern Wei Era) (Tokyo: Sbunsha, 1985), Jo ni kaete 34,
and 8990, 172. Bai Cuiqin puts the figure at roughly three million non-Chinese
immigrants into North China following the Han collapse, in Wei-Jin Nanbeichao
minzu shi (An Ethnic History of the Wei-Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties)
(Chengdu: Sichuan minzu chubanshe, 1996), 518.
26. Tong dian (Comprehensive Canons), by Du You (801; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,
1984), 7.40, note. Jin shu (Dynastic History of the Jin), ed. by Fang Xuanling
(644; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974), 14.415. For skepticism and a revised esti-
mate, see Earl H. Pritchard, Thoughts on the Historical Development of the Pop-
ulation of China, The Journal of Asian Studies, 23.1 (1963): 1617.
27. Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, eds., Monks and Merchants: Silk Road
Treasures from Northwest China, Gansu and Ningxia, 4th7th Century (New
York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), 98100.
28. James C. Y. Watt, Art and History in China from the Third to the Eighth Centu-
ry, China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200750 AD, ed. by James C. Y. Watt, et al.
(New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004), 32.
29. (Xinyi) Luoyang qielan ji (A Record of Buddhist Temples in Luoyang), by Yang
Xuanzhi (Ca. 547; Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1994), 4.308.
30. Shen Fuwei, Zhong-xi wenhua jiaoliu shi (A History of Sino-Western Cultural
Exchange) (Taibei: Donghua shuju, 1989), 117118. Luo Zongzhen, Liuchao kaogu
(Six Dynasties Archeology) (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 1994), 94, 99.
31. Boris I. Marshak, Central Asian Metalwork in China, China: Dawn of a Gold-
en Age, 5253.
32. Sui shu, 35.1099.
33. Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 3, 56, 25. Utsunomiya Kiyoyoshi,
Nanch to Hokuch (Southern Dynasties and Northern Dynasties), Chgoku
kodai chseishi kenky (1968; Tokyo: Sbunsha, 1977), 414415.
34. Kroly Czegldy, From East to West: The Age of Nomadic Migrations in Eura-
sia, Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi, 3 (1983): 25, 29, 101.
35. Zhu Dawei, Nanchao shaoshu minzu gaikuang ji qi yu Hanzu de ronghe (The
General Situation of Minority Peoples in the Southern Dynasties, and their
Blending with the Han People), Liuchao shi lun (1980; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju,
1998), 406.
36. Jin shu, 6.161.
37. Edward H. Schafer, The Yeh Chung Chi, Toung Pao, 76.45 (1990): 147149. CHARLES HOLCOMBE is Professor of History at the University of Northern
38. Lydia H. Liu, The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World
Making (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 81.
39. See Kawamoto Yoshiaki, Gi-Shin Nanbokuch jidai ni okeru minzoku mondai
kenky ni tsuite no tenb (Views Regarding the Study of Ethnic Questions in
Rethinking Our Notions of Asia
the Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties Era), (Dai 1-kai Chgoku shigaku
kokusai kaigi kenky hkokush) Chgoku no rekishi sekai: tg no shisutemu to
tagenteki hatten, ed. by Chgoku Shigakkai (Tokyo: Tokyo toritsu daigaku shup-
pankai, 2002), 611. Pak Han-je, Huzu de Zhongyuan tongzhi yu Bei-Wei de jun-
tianzhi (Ethnic Hu Rule over the Central Plain and the Equitable Fields System
of Northern Wei), in ibid, 629.
40. Cheng Dengyuan, Zhongguo lidai dianji kao (A Study of Chinese Books
throughout the Ages) (Taibei: Shunfeng chubanshe, 1968), 193.
41. S. A. M. Adshead, Tang China: the Rise of the East in World History (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), x, 30.
42. Sui shu, 31.897. See Cheng Youwei, Nanbeichao shiqi de Huai, Han, Manzu
(The Huai and Han [River Valley] Man Peoples of the Northern and Southern
Dynasties Period), Zhengzhou daxue xuebao: zhe she ban (2003.1).
43. Wu-dai huiyao (Institutes of the Five Dynasties), by Wang Pu (922982) (Taibei:
Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1968), 8.96.
44. Anderson, 44, n. #21.
45. Liu Haifeng, Tang-dai jiaoyu yu xuanju zhidu zonglun (A Summary of Tang
Dynasty Educational and Selection Systems) (Taibei: Wenjin chubanshe, 1991),
4648. Naba Toshisada, Tdai shakai bunkashi kenky (Studies in Tang Dynasty
Social and Cultural History) (Tokyo: Sbunsha, 1974), 7071, 8889. Seo
Tatsuhiko, Chka no bunretsu to saisei (The Breakup and Regeneration of
China), Iwanami kza: sekai rekishi 9; Chka no bunretsu to saisei, 313 seiki
(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1999), 18, 6675. See also the exposition of Miyazaki
Ichisadas ideas, and Niida Noborus rebuttal, in Gao Mingshi, Tang-Song jian
lishi biange zhi shidai xingzhi de lunzhan (The Controversy over the Character-
istics of the Era of Historical Change between Tang and Song), Zhan hou Riben
de Zhongguo shi yanjiu (1976; Taibei: Mingwen shuju, 1987), 107110, 112. On
tea, see Qiu Tiansheng, Tang-Song biangeqi de zheng-jing yu shehui (The Politi-
cal-Economy and Society of the Tang-Song Transitional Era) (Taibei: Wen jin
chubanshe, 1999), 115; and Feng shi wenjian ji (A Record of what Mr. Feng
Heard and Saw), by Feng Yan (Ca. 800; Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958), 6.46.
46. Ienaga Sabur, ed., Nihon Bukkyshi: kodai hen (A History of Japanese Bud-
dhism: Antiquity) (Tokyo: Hzkan, 1967), 201.
47. Aritaka Iwao, Tdai no shakai to bungei (Tang Dynasty Society and Literary
Arts) (Tokyo: Dai-Nihon ybenkai kdansha, 1948), 283.
48. David Pollack, The Fracture of Meaning: Japans Synthesis of China from the
Eighth through the Eighteenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986), 4.
49. That is, Po Ch-i (Bai Juyi, 772846).
50. Liu Xueyao, Xianbei shilun (Essays in Xianbei History) (Taibei: Nantian shuju,
1994), 256259; and Wu-hu shilun, 302. For the qipao, see Edward J. M. Rhoads,
Manchus & Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early
Republican China, 18611928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000),
15, 255; and Sherman Cochran, Transnational Origins of Advertising in Early
Twentieth-Century China, Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in
Shanghai, 19001945, ed. by Sherman Cochran (Ithaca: Cornell University East
Asia Program, 1999), 44. On the Mao suit, consult John Fitzgerald, Awakening
China: Politics, Culture, and Class in the Nationalist Revolution (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 1996), 2325.
51. Morris-Suzuki, 9.
52. Ki-baik Lee, A New History of Korea, trans. by Edward W. Wagner (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1984), 71.
53. See Charles Holcombe, Early Imperial Chinas Deep South: The Viet Regions
through Tang Times, Tang Studies, 1516 (199798).
54. Mark Elvins The Pattern of the Chinese Past: A Social and Economic Interpre-
tation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973) specifically tried to address the
question of why the Chinese Empire lasted longer than the Roman.
55. For a counter-revisionist reassertion of the disruption attending the fall of Rome,
see Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2005); see also Aldo Schiavone, The End of the Past:
Ancient Rome and the Modern West, trans. by Margery J. Schneider (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2000), 2, 2426, 29, 207208.
Iowa. He is the author of In the Shadow of the Han: Literati Thought and Society
at the Start of the Southern Dynasties (University of Hawai`i Press, 1994), and
The Genesis of East Asia, 221 B.C.A.D. 907 (Association for Asian Studies and
University of Hawai`i Press, 2001).
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