Empire seems to be a word that seems a little far away from today, but today we are still on the extension line of the empire. According to Zhao Dingxin, a history professor at the University of Chicago, every step of the emergence and development of the nation-state in modern times is a product of imperial politics: both the French Revolution and the American War of Independence were realized in the process of resisting imperialism, which gave birth to the earliest nationalist movement in modern history; The Third Reich of Germany and Austria-Hungary pulled the world into the quagmire of World War II; After the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of emerging nation-states emerged, forming the third wave of nationalism, which was also the product of imperial politics. Imperial thinking still affects political operation and state relations.
When we talk about empires in history, we are not only referring to the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire and the Ottoman Empire on ancient land, but also to the modern maritime empire, which has a far-reaching impact on the historical development process and developed by relying on marine trade. It can be said that an imperial history is half a history of human civilization. Although the empire has different forms, it also has its own core characteristics. It presents the characteristics of diversified internal governance models, multi-ethnic mixed residence and dependence on cultural identity and imagination. At the same time, it has a unique set of guidelines for border governance and geopolitics.
In contrast to the empire, it is a nation-state formed since modern times. It is often based on a clear boundary and a homogeneous internal governance system, but the operation of the nation-state undoubtedly encounters various challenges. Today, looking back at the long-standing imperial model in human history, maybe we can get some lessons from it.
What have we forgotten in the historical writing of the traditional imperial era? When we open different perspectives, what enlightenment can we get from the imperial era? A few days ago, Peking University Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences held a forum on “History of the Imperial Age from the Perspective of History, Sociology and Anthropology”, inviting scholars from three majors to explore various possibilities of looking at the imperial age and discover different pictures of the empire. This forum is the third in a series of forums on “Dialogue: the History of China from a Multidisciplinary Perspective” in Peking University.
When people find that the clear social science boundaries formed in modern times are unable to cope with the complex systemic problems in modern society, different disciplines are looking for the possibility of exchange and mutual learning. Wang Qisheng, a professor of history in Peking University, mentioned that in recent years, history has extensively absorbed the research methods of various disciplines, enriching and breaking through the existing cognition. At the same time, social science has also undergone a historic turning point, and scholars in various fields of humanities and social sciences have begun to enter the historical field and seek a theoretical framework from history.
The center and the border can be transformed into each other, and the interior of China is full of other elements.
The relationship between the Central Plains and nomadic people is an enduring topic in the history of China. In the 8th century BC, nomadic peoples formed in the border areas of Europe and Asia, and spread to the whole world. They entered northern China in the 4th-5th century BC and settled down in the form of tribal alliance. Zhao Dingxin mentioned that these decent people are facing very severe pressure to survive-the population of nomadic empire is only 1% of that of agricultural empire, and the climate is not as suitable as that of agricultural area. The research shows that if the annual average temperature is reduced by 1 degree Celsius, the farming cycle of nomadic vegetation in the north will be shortened by 2 months, and it is difficult to store crop seeds in this area because of the low temperature. Therefore, the huge ecological pressure faced by nomadic people forced them to invade the south continuously and compete with the agricultural empire for thousands of years.
In the past historical writing, the border threat of nomadic empire and its entry into the Central Plains were often regarded as an occasional break in the continuous Chinese civilization, and more attention was paid to its domestication and sinicization of the Han nationality. The research on the history of the New Qing Dynasty, which has been rising since the 1990s, focuses on describing the uniqueness of nomadic people and their role in shaping the Qing Empire. The researchers believe that the court centered on the royal family in Aisingiorro embodies “Manchu characteristics” in all aspects, such as Manchu imitating and drawing lessons from many Mongolian factors, including the creation of characters and the establishment of defense courts, fully absorbing the essence factors provided by Mongolia in military aspects, and establishing the Manchu-Mongolian military alliance, so the Manchu customs of food, clothing, housing and transportation are popular among Han Chinese. Tian Geng, an assistant professor of sociology in Peking University, pointed out that the cultural relationship between rural areas and nomadic areas is not only one-way absorption and assimilation, but also nomadic people have their own unique cultural system, which has an impact on the Central Plains.
Hou Xudong, a professor in the history department of Tsinghua University, believes that if this perspective is applied to the general starting point of watching the frontier and the discussion of civilization is added to the traditional perspective of imperial history, the situation will be very complicated-the frontier often shows more diverse and complicated relations than the core area. Zhao Bingxiang, a professor at the School of Social Studies of China University of Political Science and Law, pointed out that the so-called frontier may not always be the frontier. If the southeast of China is put into the framework of the world, it is definitely not a frontier-the clans here immigrated to all parts of the world long ago, which shows a very strong world historical feature. The same is true in South China. As a channel for exchanges between the mainland and overseas, Guangzhou has close trade and interactive relations with Southeast Asia and even the world. On the contrary, it has a loose relationship with the capital Beijing, forming its own unique cultural system.
Therefore, as Zhao Dingxin said, the relationship between the center and the border of the Chinese Empire cannot be simply summarized by the words “center” and “edge”, and the two can be transformed into each other. When the core area is weak, the border area may become the ruler of the core area of the next dynasty. In the book China’s Inland Frontier in Asia, Latimer shifts the imperial perspective from the Han society in the mainland to the interactive situation in Asia centered on the Great Wall, and discusses the correlation between China and the outside world. If inland Asia is the starting point, the Central Plains has become the edge. Because of this, perhaps when dealing with the internal diversity of China, we need to adopt the attitude mentioned by Wang Hui when commenting on Latimer, “Beyond the historical narrative of the Yellow River center, which is dominated by agriculture, beyond the historical narrative of the canal or Jiangnan center, which is dominated by cities, trade and agricultural economy, and beyond the historical vision based on political system and national boundaries.
China’s Inland Frontier in Asia.
Translated by Latimer Tang Xiaofeng
Jiangsu People’s Publishing House 2017-2
In the traditional writing of imperial history, the marginal areas are often regarded as barbarians with poor culture. Because of this, when archaeologists excavated Sanxingdui site and Liangzhu site in Sichuan and Zhejiang in the 20th century, people were amazed at the splendid civilization that once existed on the edge of traditional China. Historian Wang Mingke once analyzed how the marginal culture was submerged in the historical evolution in the article Historical Archaeology-Amazing Archaeological Discovery-On the Structure and Symbol in Historical Narration, and pointed out that local elite intellectuals kept clinging to the Central Plains culture in the process of myth writing, intentionally or unintentionally leaving the local narrative behind.
But in fact, if we go deep into the ethnic groups in remote areas, we will find that the culture contained therein is colorful. Wang Mingming, a professor of sociology in Peking University, said that China in the imperial period had already had contact with many foreign civilizations, and all the elements of the Eurasian civilization system collided and merged with the internal Confucianism and Taoism systems here. Take the western part of China as an example, many religions coexist in this area, and many religious variants in the world have found their own fields of communication here. Therefore, it can be said that the interior of the Chinese empire is full of elements of the other, and the regions of the Chinese world have their own characteristics. From the perspective of the frontier, we can find more history of the meta-empire.
The history of daily life is a question about the existence of all people.
In the historical writing of the Chinese Empire in the past, “Kings and princes” is a well-deserved theme. Under the influence of the concept of “not writing books”, although historians have long proposed to attach importance to the writing of “practical application” and “economy, politics and education”, it is still difficult to really see these elements in traditional history books. In the historical traditions of the East and the West, grand historical issues have long been the main line: in modern times, the West has emphasized the writing of national history and political history, and in the historical research of China in the 1950s and 1960s, it was also popular to talk about five golden flowers (the staging of ancient history in China, the form of feudal land ownership in China, the peasant war in feudal society in China, the germination of capitalism in China, and the formation of the Han nationality). After the reform and opening up, with the popularization of popular culture and the introduction of western social science research paradigm, academic circles pay more and more attention to the history of daily life, turn to narrative history and daily history, and look for another possibility to rewrite the history of imperial times.
Wang Qisheng believes that social science attaches importance to normality and stable structure and mechanism; History, on the other hand, tends to pay attention to the abnormal conditions of history, especially the great changes. One word that is often mentioned is the “turning point”. Hou Xudong said that history should shift from paying attention to changes to paying attention to people’s daily lives and “things”. Historian Yang Guorong once pointed out the philosophical significance of “things” in his book Human Action and Practical Wisdom. “Things” are all kinds of human activities in a broad sense, including both “action” in China’s philosophy and “practice” in Marxist tradition. Starting from the above ideas, Hou Xudong believes that we need to take people as the leading role and go to the historical world through the description of the relationship between people and things. He particularly emphasized that the people referred to here are not limited to ordinary people, but also include rulers; And daily life is bigger than life itself. It refers to repetitive activities with exact goals, including the work of elite people and “daily rules”. Therefore, in fact, the history of daily life is an inquiry into the existence of all people.
The wisdom of human action and practice
By Yang Guorong
Life, Reading and Knowledge Sanlian Bookstore 2013-6
Some scholars believe that the bottom people in traditional society are aphasia, and the traditional event-centered historical writing method hides many possibilities. Regarding this point of view, Zhao Dingxin thinks that the problem of aphasia at the bottom of China society was serious before the Tang Dynasty, but it improved after the Tang Dynasty, so we can’t generalize the traditional society. Zhao Bingxiang is worried about the tendency of overcorrection. If we put too much emphasis on the study of the periphery of China’s history and the inner other of the lower class, he may be unable to cope with the basic problems of China’s history and China society.
Wang Mingming questioned the expression of “the bottom class”: In ancient China, which group of scholars, peasants, workers and businessmen could be regarded as the bottom class, and the emperor might have been transformed from this group. Lv Xinyu, a communication scholar, once pointed out in his research that the appearance of the word “bottom” in China has its specific historical background. It is a word that appears with the marketization, social differentiation and the rise of popular culture in the 1990s. So we can’t simply apply today’s analytic hierarchy process to explain the historical reality. Wang Mingming went on to point out that we may not simply talk about elites or civilians, but should jump out of the simple causal relationship of factors and adopt a multi-center perspective to understand them at a deeper level.
This question actually refers to the more fundamental question of how we look at history. Liu Zhiwei, a professor of history at Sun Yat-sen University, believes that the way of thinking of ancient people was constructed by political views, political logic and political motives at that time, while modern people’s care, cognitive styles, concepts and words were deeply influenced by modern social changes and social theories. Therefore, when discussing ancient and modern issues, we have different perspectives and ways of thinking in understanding the world, and we need to pay attention to the faults and differences. Hou Xudong believes that this includes two ways of looking at history, namely “timely” and “hindsight”. He mentioned that it is easy for us to infer history with hindsight, and the cycle of ups and downs in history that we often say is the product of hindsight. But at the same time, what we really want to ask is how the protagonists of the historical era observe current events from their forms, personalities and experiences after entering the historical scene.
Is it out of date to look back at the imperial era now? Wang Mingming believes that monarchy can be regarded as a historical understanding and historical method. It is related to the universal existence of human beings, and how this existence condition frames the behavior mode of human beings is related to the generation and rise