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4 - Ancient China

from Part i - The Politics of Ethnicity, Nationhood, and Belonging in the Settings of Classical Civilizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2023

By
Yuri Pines
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Through much of the twentieth and well into the twenty-first century, scholars in China and in the West debated the nature of Chinese nationhood. In the West, the once dominant view was promulgated by Joseph R. Levenson and like-minded scholars, who depicted Chinese identity in terms of “culturalism,” that is belonging to a universalizing and inclusive civilization, defined by a common Confucian culture. A concept of national identity conceived in ethnic or racial terms was considered a modern phenomenon, closely related to China’s entrance into the world of nation-states.1 In the last decades of the twentieth century, though, this view was criticized by scholars who demonstrated the existence of traits of exclusive ethnocentric Chinese identity back in the past. Some went as far as to postulate racism as pertinent to Chinese civilization from its earliest stages.2

Keywords

ChinaChuethnicityinclusivityHanQinregional identities“Sino-barbarian” dichotomyZhou
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 76 - 95
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

Further Reading

Chittick, Andrew, The Jiankang Empire in Chinese and World History: Ethnic Identity and Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Cosmo, Nicola, Ancient China and its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).Google Scholar
Di Cosmo, Nicola, “Ethnography of the Nomads and ‘Barbarian’ History in Han China,” in Foxhall, Lin, Gehrke, Hans-Joachim, and Luraghi, Nino (eds.), Intentional History: Spinning Time in Ancient Greece (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2010), 299–325.Google Scholar
Goldin, Paul R., “Steppe Nomads as a Philosophical Problem in Classical China,” in Sabloff, Paula L. W. (ed.), Mapping Mongolia: Situating Mongolia in the World from Geologic Time to the Present (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2011), 220–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wai-yee, Li, “Anecdotal Barbarians in Early China,” in van Els, Paul and Queen, Sarah (eds.), Between Philosophy and History: Rhetorical Uses of Anecdotes in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017), 113–144.Google Scholar
Pines, Yuri, “Beasts or Humans: Pre-Imperial Origins of Sino-Barbarian Dichotomy,” in Amitai, Reuven and Biran, Michal (eds.), Mongols, Turks and Others (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 59–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pines, Yuri, “Chu Identity as Seen from its Manuscripts: A Reevaluation,” Journal of Chinese History, 2/1 (2018), 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poo, Mu-chou, Enemies of Civilization: Attitudes toward Foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shelach, Gideon, and Pines, Yuri, “Secondary State Formation and the Development of Local Identity: Change and Continuity in the State of Qin (770–221 BC),” in Stark, Miriam T. (ed.), Archaeology of Asia (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 202–230.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tackett, Nicolas, The Origins of the Chinese Nation: Song China and the Forging of an East Asian World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Shao-yun, The Way of the Barbarians: Redrawing Ethnic Boundaries in Tang and Song China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019).Google Scholar

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