Forging the Imperial Nation: Imperialism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Boundaries in China’s Longue Durée by Byung Ho Lee A dissertation submitted by partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Sociology) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee: Professor Barbara A. Anderson, Co-Chair Professor James Z. Lee, Co-Chair Professor Ronald Grigor Suny Assistant Professor Kiyoteru Tsutsui © Byung-Ho Lee 2011 To my parents ii Preface This thesis would not have been accomplished without the continuous support and encouragements of many individuals. First and foremost, I wish to thank my father, Lee Ki-dong. He is the one who has influenced me the most. As a scholar, he is a historian conducting what he calls the “microscopic analysis” of historical facts. As a father, he always gives me emotional support and is ready to answer my questions. He will be remembered as an aloof intellectual and monk-like figure, who abstained from secular pleasures and kept his life simple. My mother has committed to taking care of mundane family affairs. They supported my plan to study abroad and have shared the hardship of getting a Ph.D. in a foreign country. This thesis is dedicated to them. Naturally, I have had casual conversations with my father on the relationship between sociology and history. He has often suggested that sociologists can benefit historians with the following analogy: “We historians are working ants. You sociologists should feel free to utilize our time-consuming efforts. But we expect you to generate a general social theory that would guide us. You must avoid a simple ‘copy-and-paste’ method that appears in historical works done by ‘bad’ sociologists. Historians won’t appreciate it.” By keeping his advice on the desirable division of labor between sociologists and historians in mind, I have wished to create my own way of generalizing historical complexities through sociological frameworks. Before I came to Michigan, however, I never realized how hard it would be and how long it could take. I was an isolated and wild student for the first few years in the program. My anxiety for the right thesis topic led me to pursue various theoretical and methodological approaches. At last, I found the dissertation topic which, in the beginning, seemed exceedingly exciting but overwhelming. One of the first pieces of advice given to me by Professor James Z. Lee was to read Chen Pan’s annotated collation of the Chunqiu Dashibiao iii (Table of major events during the Spring and Autumn period) by Gu Donggao (1679- 1757). When I first read this seven-volume set written in literary Chinese, I was neither aware of how this text mattered for my research nor convinced that it should matter to sociology at all. The more I thought about it, however, I grew confident that we cannot genuinely understand virtually any aspect of Chinese society without first understanding its ancient origins and enduring continuity through change. What is more, in the final stage of thesis writing, I began to realize that this study can be regarded as a partial fulfillment, not just of my degree but of my father’s wish. These feelings have driven me to pursue this difficult project. In retrospect, rather than elegize my years at Michigan with a triumphalist narrative, I humbly admit that this thesis is the tentative product of inner tension between self-confidence and self-disappointment. My gratitude also goes to the members of my committee. I was fortunate enough to organize a ‘dream team’ in that the major research topics of all four members have something in common with my work. Their in-depth understandings of my thesis topic probably made them raise the bar, which in turn led to significant revisions and made my argument more persuasive and robust. James Z. Lee invited me to pursue Chinese studies and provided me with a general idea of my topic. He constantly gave me emotional encouragement as well as rigorous comments on my evolving work. One of his most significant interventions was correcting my mistaken interpretation of the nature of ethnic relations in China. I once cited the following sentence from James Legge’s translation of the Analects : “The Master was wishing to go and live among the nine wild tribes of the east.” James was suspicious about the term “wild” and immediately checked the original passage in front of me. His suspicion was correct. There was no expression equivalent to the word “wild.” Until then, I tended to uncritically accept the misleading idea of a pejorative ‘ethnic’ stereotype of non-Sinitic aliens dated back to the age of Confucius. Barbara A. Anderson shared her first-hand knowledge and experience on the questions of non-Russian and non-Han minorities. This broadened my intellectual horizons immensely. iv She also helped me to frame my argument in a more sociological way and corrected my initial inclination to particularize China as a unique case, a tendency that has been deeply seated in the sinological tradition. Ronald G. Suny, a renowned expert on the ethnic relations of imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, always gave me an invaluable insight into the question of empire and nation. His suggestion of the concept of imperial nation gave me the title of my dissertation. Tsutsui Kiyoteru, who has done research on the minority questions in Japan, gave some efficient suggestions. I am also indebted to other professors inside and outside Michigan. I am grateful to Kamachi Noriko who instructed me: “Don’t be a wild and untrained graduate student.” On several occasions, she cordially invited me and other students to have dinner. Cameron Campbell at UCLA was an informal external reader who carefully reviewed my chapter drafts. Barry Sautman, Ma Jianxiong, Cheng Siu-woo, and Xie Xiaohui at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology helped me shape my understanding in an interdisciplinary manner. The late professor Ananda Rajah at the National University of Singapore offered a course on ethnic relations and nationalism, which was my first serious encounter with the topics that I decided to devote my intellectual career. I also would thank all the members of the Lee-Campbell Group who provided me with encouragement as well as advice over the last five, especially three, years. The research for this dissertation was supported by the Sociology Department, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan as well as the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. They granted generous financial assistance for dissertation writing and several research trips. The Chinese Language Scholarship offered by the government of the People’s Republic of China supported my stay in Beijing for one year. Thanks also to my friends: Evgeny Alexandrovich, Jan Brughmans, Chen Shuang, David Flores, Marco Z. Garrido, Hwang Sun-Jae, Ito Asei, Lei Ya-Wen, Alwyn Lim, Long Yan, Lionel Pousaz, Saruya Hiroe, and Jomo Smith. My special thanks to Shin Su-Jin who has significantly changed me into a more optimistic person. v Table of Contents Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………... ii Preface ………………………………………………………………………………… iii List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………… . viii List of Tables ……………………………………………………………………………. ix Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………… x Chapter One Introduction …………………………………………………………… 1 1. Prefatory Remarks ……………………………………………………………… 1 2. The Approach of the Dissertation ……………………………………………… 7 a. Imperial Settings ……………………………… …… ……………… 7 b. National Identity…………………………………………………… 13 c. Ethnic Boundaries ………………………………………………… 16 d. Methodological Sinology ………………………………………… 21 3. Outline of Chapter Organization ……………………………………………… 22 Chapter Two The Historical Sociology of Empire: A Weberian Account ………… 31 1. Ambiguous Categories: Empire, Colonial Power, and Nation ………………… 31 2. Four Institutional Foundations of the Historical Empire ……………………… 35 a. Societal Hierarchy ………………………………………………… 35 b. Patrimonial Officialdom …………………………………………… 36 c. Frontier Feudalism ………………………………………………… 39 d. Universal Emperorship …………………………………………… 42 3. The Imperial Nation in the Empire-Nation Continuum ……………………… 45 4. Privileged Minorities: A Conceptual Oxymoron? ……………………………… 51 Chapter Three The Dialectics of Ethnic Boundaries in China …… ………… ……… 56 1. A Heritage of Ethnic Mixing in China ………………………………………… 58 2. Duality of Ethnic Boundaries in Chinese History ……………………………… 63 a. Boundary Making under the Conquest Dynasties ………………… 65 b. Boundary Clearing under the Native Dynasties …………………… 67 3. Three Major Phases in the Formation of Ethno-Political Boundaries ………… 71 a. The Formative Phase ……………………………………………… 71 b. The Expansionary Phase …………………………………………… 74 c. The Post-Imperial Phase …………………………………………… 79 Chapter Four Imagined Boundaries: Ethnic Boundary-Making and State-Building... 85 1. The Genealogy of Ethnocentrism in Chinese History ………………………… 86 a. The Topoi of the Hearts of Birds and Beasts ……………………… 86 vi b. Ephemeral Process of ‘Othering’ ………………………………… 93 2. Prejudice without Discrimination ……………………………………………… 94 3. Center and Periphery in State Formation ……………………………………… 98 a. The Construction of We-group Identity in Early China …………… 98 b. Making Ethno-Territorial Boundaries …………………………… 105 c. Ethnic Governance in the Frontier ……………………………… 108 4. Separate and Unequal under the Conquest Dynasties ………………………… 116 5. Today: Separate but Equal …………………………………………………… 124 Chapter Five Imagined Commonalities: The Origins and Development of China’s