중국의 내셔널리즘 형성과 량치차오의 역사인식

Abstract

This essay aims to examine the historical awareness of Liang Qichao, with focus on the formation of Chinese nationalism from the late 19th century the early 20th century. After the failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform, Liang devoted himself to the nation-building project through writing the periodical essays, and had become the most influential political journalist. Consequently, Liang played a significant role in the formation of Chinese nationalism at the turn of the 20th century. Embarking on the project of nation-building, Liang Qichao paid special attention to the force of history. So, during his exile in Japan, Liang wrote New History, launching attacks on traditional historiography and enthusiastically calling for a ‘new history’. In New History from the very beginning, he emphasized that history is the origin of patriotism. He proposed to write a new history, namely national history, to replace the traditional dynastic history. The historical awareness of Liang Qichao shows us the intimate relationship between the nationalism and the evolutionary history. In Liang’s belief, the China needed to come up with the social Darwinism of the survival of the fittest to be rich and strong again. To that end, he purposed to make a nation as the subject of the linear history, and to promote the idea of ‘new citizen’. Most of the contemporary Chinese intellectuals, as Duara points out, “sought to narrate their history in the linear, teleological mode and thus performatively propel Chinese history into the progress of universal History.” It is lamentable that history is still medium for the production of the nation in nation-states supporting the concept of a competitive Darwinian world.