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Rethinking Early East Asian History

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Rethinking Early East Asian History Rethinking Our Notions of “Asia” Rethinking Early East Asian History By Charles Holcombe “Asia” and National Identities From that initial Bronze Age center of civilization in what we There may be Asian-Americans in the United States, but as Ronald now call China there emerged a broadly shared East Asian vocabu- Takaki shrewdly commented, “there are no Asians in Asia, only peo- lary for conceptualizing identity. This is a point that scholars who ple with national identities, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indi- specialize in tracing the modern origins of nationalism in East Asia an, Vietnamese, and Filipino.”1 Asia is simply too enormous, span- may not themselves sufficiently appreciate. Not only do such schol- ning the better part of the entire Old World, and too diverse, to serve ars commonly approach the subject from a present-day perspective, as a very meaningful label. In fact, according to Robert Marks, on but, paradoxically, they generally do so already packaged within the the eve of the American Revolution, in “1775, Asia produced about box of the nation, as studies of nationalism within the context of a 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- be especially strong in the study of an East Asian region where the ly lived there. As both word and idea, “Asia,” is a legacy of the (national) languages necessary for serious research require intensive ancient Greeks. In East Asia there was absolutely no pre-modern specialized training. The modern Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and native equivalent term.3 Even within Europe, John M. Hobson Vietnamese languages are very different from each other, and serve argues, it was not until the eighteenth century that a vision of a dis- to draw sharp, often nearly impermeable, disciplinary barriers tinctive “Western Civilization” descended in a continuous line from between scholars who study the different East Asian cultures. Ancient Greece and fundamentally different from the Oriental Other, Languages and Historical Understanding first began to be imagined.4 Certainly pre-modern East Asians did In pre-modern times, however, the situation was somewhat different. not think of themselves as “Asians.” There was, to a significant extent, a single common written language Yet they did not necessarily think of themselves exactly as Chi- in use throughout all of East Asia, which we call literary, or classi- nese, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese in the fully modern sense cal, Chinese. This was the language of the Confucian classics, the either. There is a fairly broad consensus among specialist scholars, East Asian version of the Buddhist Tripitaka, and of the majority of 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 all serious writing in China until the early twentieth century.8 Within the phenomena of nation-states and nationalism emerged only in rel- China, this language long enjoyed a near monopoly of written com- atively recent times. Nationalism began in Europe, and, perhaps munication—more so, for example, than Latin ever did within the especially, in Europe’s overseas colonies struggling for indepen- Roman Empire, where Greek still commanded much prestige, and dence in the Americas (including, notably, the future United States).5 other alternatives such as Syriac and Coptic coexisted.9 Beyond The nationalist contagion then spread to East Asia in the late nine- China proper, literary Chinese was also initially almost the only teenth century. It might plausibly be argued, therefore, that prior to written language in use everywhere else in East Asia. Even the stan- roughly 1900, few people in East Asia held precisely our familiar dard “native” Japanese name for Japan itself, Nihon, was apparently modern national identities either.6 chosen during the seventh century for the meaning of the Chinese So how did pre-modern East Asians conceive of themselves? For characters, with which it is still today normally written: , many, their self-identifications must have been primarily local: with “origin of the Sun.”10 village or region. But East Asia is also truly one of the world’s most To be sure, new ways of writing the different Japanese, Korean, ancient centers of civilization. If educated pre-modern Chinese were and Vietnamese spoken languages did gradually develop, but, even as inclined to imagine their standards of civilization were universal (not late as the nineteenth century, literary Chinese was still very much the unlike the attitude of some Americans today towards the supposedly prestige language of writing in Korea and Vietnam. Even in more universal appeal of our culture and ideals), concepts equivalent to the remote Japan, the last catalog compiled for the Sh¬gunal library in country or state had already appeared in China thousands of years 1864–1866 still contained some 65 percent Chinese material.11 Since ago.7 It is deceptively easy to project modern images of the nation then, literary Chinese has been rejected or abandoned everywhere, back into the primordial past in East Asia. Who can deny that China even in China itself, and replaced by modern national vernaculars. is a very old country? The problem comes when we begin to ponder For many modern East Asians, much of the written record of their the multitude of Chinese countries that existed in the past. 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 would even go so far as to say historical error is a crucial factor in the Chinese written language may seem offensively Sino-centric, the creation of a nation; thus the progress of historical studies is and derogatory to the other East Asian cultures. For perspective, often a danger for national identity”—Tony Judt comments that recall that in Western Europe prior to 1500 some three-quarters of all “Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history con- books were still published in Latin.12 Yet the European sense of tributes to the disenchantment of the world. Most of what it has to national dignity appears unimpaired by the tremendous weight of offer is discomforting, even disruptive . .”16 Of course, uncritical Europe’s Greco-Roman heritage. And, if Latin may be pronounced a popular history commonly serves instead a comforting (if also some- “dead” language today, the same could also be said of literary Chi- times covertly sinister) agenda. As the fraudulent Wizard of Oz nese. In fact, in modern times, Japanese has been more influential. A explains succinctly in the current Broadway hit musical Wicked, stream of Japanese vocabulary items—often newly minted as trans- “Where I come from, we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true— lations of such exotic Western words as “telephone,” “nation,” or we call it . ‘history.’”17 “communism”—were imported from Japanese into the Chinese lan- The once heated debate between proponents of the diffusion guage beginning in the late nineteenth century.13 The present-day theory of the origins and spread of civilization, and those who People’s Republic of China is no more identical to the Han dynasty favored the idea of more local native origins, seems to have been of Emperor Wu than today’s Italy is to the Rome of Augustus. resolved now in an unexpected way: by DNA.18 The compelling Rather than some unchanging and permanently “static” China, mod- genetic evidence suggests that all human beings came originally ern Chinese history has been punctured repeatedly by profound revo- from Africa, and settled the planet only relatively recently, within lutionary ruptures, some of which have involved language itself. the last hundred thousand years or so.19 Globalization, then, has been To be sure, however, even the modern spoken and written Chi- part of the human story from the beginning, and there are no true nese languages, though much reformed in the twentieth century, are permanent “natives” anywhere, except, possibly, somewhere in clearly still incarnations of the same 3,000-year-old archaic language Africa. For the rise of the historical world civilizations, an overly- that appears on the most ancient inscriptions discovered by archeolo- simplistic opposition between alternative “diffusionist” or “autono- gists in China. This remarkable linguistic and literary continuity mist” models has been challenged by a more nuanced conception of forms the spine of an enduring Chinese cultural continuum. Further- an ongoing process of dialectical interaction.20 While Chinese arche- more, Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world ologists have been slow to embrace the “Out of Africa” theory of today, which can hardly be said of Latin. But, I would submit, that if human origins, within China it is now fashionable to emphasize the there has been continuity, there has also been much change in multiple origins of Chinese civilization.21 China’s past. Even ancient China was far from static. China was first unified into a single centralized country by the Different Chinas Qin dynasty in 221 BCE, but the extent to which it thereafter long If the quintessentially Japanese sport of sumo wrestling existed in remained internally very much a multi-ethnic empire is not often suf- China a millennium before it did in Japan,14 and if many institutions, ficiently appreciated.
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