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Early Modern Asia Can We Speak of an ‘Early Modern’ World?

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Early Modern Asia Can We Speak of an ‘Early Modern’ World? > Comparative Intellectual Histories of Early Modern Asia Can we speak of an ‘early modern’ world? To speak of an ‘early modern’ world raises three awkward problems: the problem of early modernity, the problem of comparison and the problem of globalisation. In what follows, a discussion of these problems will be combined with a case study of the rise of humanism. Peter Burke (rationality, individualism, capitalism, distance’, it is probably best to describe ered at the end of the 15th century). Fol- The ethical wing has been discussed by and so on). the early modern period as at best a lowing the shock of the French invasion Theodore de Bary and others who note The Concept A major problem is the western ori- time of ‘proto-globalisation’, despite the of Italy in 1494, some leading human- the concern of Confucius (Kongzi) and The concept ‘early modern’ was origi- gin of the conceptual apparatus with increasing importance of connections ists, notably Machiavelli, shifted from a his followers and of ‘neo-confucians’ nally coined in the 1940s to refer to a which we are working. As attempts to between the continents, of economic, concern with ethics to a concern with like Zhu Xi with the ideal man, ‘princely period in European history from about study ‘feudalism’ on a world scale have political and intellectual encounters, politics. man’ or ‘noble person’ (chunzi) and also 1500 to 1750 or 1789. It became widely shown, it is very difficult to avoid circu- not only between the ‘West’ and the On the other side, we find the philolo- with the cultivation of the self (xiushen). accepted by the 1970s in English and larity in this kind of enterprise, defin- ‘rest’, but between Asia and the Ameri- gists. The interest in the revival of antiq- Like the Italians after 1494, some of the other Germanic languages (includ- ing the phenomenon to be studied in cas as well. uity extended to the revival of classical Chinese humanists became more con- ing Dutch). The term is contradictory European terms and then ‘discovering’ There remains the question of stand- Latin. Humanists were well aware of the cerned with politics after the shock of because historians first identified the that it is essentially European. Even ardisation, of the extent to which dif- differences between the Latin of Cicero the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644. years around 1500 as the rise of ‘moder- apparently unspecific terms such as ferent parts of the world participated and what they considered the ‘corrupt’ The philological wing, previously nity’, and only later applied the term ‘university’, ‘novel’, ‘portrait’, or ‘gram- in common trends. There was indeed a or ‘polluted’ Latin of the Middle Ages. neglected, has been studied by Ben- to the world following the French and mar’ were originally coined with the rise of a ‘world economy’ in this period, Their sense of linguistic anachronism jamin Elman. It was associated with Industrial Revolutions. European experience in mind, with the an increasing dependence of the four enabled the detection of a number the ‘search for evidence’ (kaozheng, a The problem became still more acute consequent danger of forcing Islamic continents on one another. There were of forgeries, as in the famous case of slogan equivalent to ad fontes) and led when the term was extended beyond institutions, Indian artefacts or Chinese similar trends towards political centrali- Lorenzo Valla’s exposure of the text in to an increasing sense of anachronism. Europe to Japan, China, India and so on, texts to fit a western model. sation in Europe and Asia, and a similar which the emperor Constantine alleg- The argument that part of the ‘Docu- a move to combat Eurocentrism which If comparison is risky, lack of compari- ‘general crisis’ in the middle of the 17th edly donated the region around Rome ments Classic’ was forged was made has come to appear Eurocentric. What son is even more dangerous. Take the century. Whether there were common to the pope and his successors. with increasing philological precision. dates can possibly mark the beginning case of another famous sociologist, cultural or intellectual trends in the One of the most famous representa- Again, in Tokugawa Japan there was a and end of an early modern period in Norbert Elias, and his study of what early modern world, or at least in Eura- tives of the ethical wing was Montaigne, movement called ‘the way of ancient world history? he called the ‘Civilising Process’, more sia, is a more difficult question, since whose remarks about the philological learning’ (kogaku), attempting to return In the case of America, as in Europe, exactly the rise in early modern Europe ideas are so closely tied to the languages wing reveal the distance between the to the ideas of Confucius by stripping it is difficult to deny the significance of of social pressures towards increasing in which they are expressed. The follow- two. He once made fun of a human- away neo-confucian commentaries. 1492. The rise of the three ‘gunpow- self-control (linked to the centralisation ing case study is intended as an illustra- ist sitting up at night to study: ‘do you This brief sketch of an attempt to write der empires’ of the Ottomans, Safavids of government). Elias virtually ignored tion of the problems. think he is searching in his books for a the history of three humanisms inevita- and Mughals also support an open- the rest of the world – yet similar pres- way to become better, happier or wiser? bly omits a number of important prob- ing date around 1500 (though 1350 is sures can be found in China, Japan, Java The Three Humanisms Nothing of the kind. He will teach pos- lems. Why was there more of a schol- sometimes suggested, the Black Death and other parts of Asia. This case study concerns what might terity the metre of Plautus’s verses, and arly preoccupation with humanity and having been a Eurasian rather than a There seems no third way, at least at be called the three humanisms: Italian the correct spelling of a Latin word, or philology in these three cultures than purely European disaster). On the other present, between using this western (which became European), Islamic and he will die in the attempt’. elsewhere? How different was the role hand, a number of historians of Africa apparatus of comparison and refusing Chinese. It is an attempt to deparochi- It seems illuminating to speak of of religion in these three cases? What prefer 1600 to 1500 as a turning-point. to compare at all. At the moment, to alise the Renaissance, often viewed as Islamic humanism because the Ara- would it be like to try to apply the princi- In East Asia, too, the great divide runs undertake comparison while remaining part of a triumphal story of the rise of bic keyword adab (variously translated ple of rotation? How illuminating would down the middle of the ‘early modern’ aware of the danger of Eurocentrism ‘Western Civilisation’, as well as to con- as ‘custom’, ‘manners’, ‘civilisation’ or it be to speak of kaozheng in Italy or of period. In China, the time of troubles appears to be the lesser evil. One precau- sider the links between different ele- ‘literature’) corresponds at least roughly the ulema in early modern Europe? < leading to the replacement of the Ming tion that we can take is to follow what ments in what is known as ‘the human- to humanitas. In any case, the Islamic dynasty by the Qing, in 1644, is a much might be called the principle of rotation. ist movement’. world, like Europe, drew on the classi- Suggested Reading more obvious turning-point than the That is, we can take different regions in Italian ‘humanism’ was so named cal tradition, not only in science, but in - Julia Ashtiany et al. (eds.) ‘Abbasid Belles- years around 1500. In the case of Japan, turn as the norm. Bloch discussed to the because the humanists were concerned the humanities as well. For example, Lettres (Cambridge, 1990) the term ‘early modern’ has been used extent to which Japan followed or failed with the studia humanitatis, claiming Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics were - William Theodore de Bary, Self and Society not to replace indigenous dating but as to follow a model of feudalism derived that the study of certain academic sub- well known in the 12th and 13th centu- in Ming Thought (New York, 1970). a synonym for the Tokugawa period, from France, but it is equally legitimate jects (notably rhetoric, ethics, poetry ries CE. - Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to 1600-1868. to discuss whether or not 17th-century and history) could make students more The kinship between Italian and Islam- Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Spain was a ‘closed country’ on the fully human. The humanists them- ic humanism was recognised by at least Change in Late Imperial China (Cambridge, Varieties of Comparative model of Japan in the age of sakoku, or selves were generally employed either one of the Italians. In his Oration on the MA, 1984, 2nd edn Los Angeles, 2001) History to look at the pleasure quarters of early as university teachers or as secretaries Dignity of Man, Pico, who knew a little - Donald Kelley, Foundations of Modern His- When historians of Europe speak about modern Venice or Rome, Paris or Lon- to important people. Their scholar- Arabic, quotes a man he calls ‘Abdala torical Scholarship (New York, 1970) comparison, they often begin by invok- don as western examples of the ‘floating ship was in the service of the revival of the Saracen’ to the effect that nothing - Paul Kristeller, Renaissance Thoughts and ing the French medievalist Marc Bloch, world’ (ukiyo) to be found in Japanese antiquity, whether classical or Chris- is more wonderful than man.
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