East Asian Views of Modern European History

Author(s): John K. Fairbank

Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Apr., 1957), pp. 527-536
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HI STORICAL
REVI EW
Vol. LXII, No. 3 April, 1957
East Asian Views of Modern
European History
JOHN K. FAIRBANK
THE interesting but unstudied question-how do Chinese and Japanese
historians view Western history?-deals with numerous double-ended
variables that depend on an almost infinite series of multivalued ambiguities.
Since Eastern historians have to base their interpretations on Western books,
this article offers only one myopic Western view of selected East Asian views
of printed Western views of modern European history. The subject is fraught
with multifocal confusion. Yet this kind of "intercultural historiology,"
seeing how one society views another, will no doubt bulk large in the com-
parative historical studies of the future. It is particularly pertinent today
when so many Asians have a Marxist view of Western history.
Mindful that one can be most certain about things least known, I offer
these definite, though obviously preliminary, conclusions: first, that one
society's view of another's history involves a problem of social or cultural
epistomology-how do the observers of one
society
learn about another? The
527
528 John K. Fairbank
answer seems to be-by finding what they seek or are capable of finding, by
noticing those things which are of interest to them or lie within their range
of interest. To take an example from European history, during the Enlighten-
ment the philosophes were delighted to see in the Chinese emperor a philoso-
pher-king who ruled in accordance with natural law without the benefit of
revealed religion. This congenial view of the Chinese despotism was made
possible partly because in the seventeenth century the Jesuit missionaries in
China had preferred to see Confucianism as a system of mere ethics com-
patible with Christian religious faith. In the same way we must assume, I
think, that Chinese and Japanese scholars today view the West according to
the way in which they have been sensitized to view it by their interests and
experience. The historical view of another society includes a large subjective
element-the viewers ask unconsciously, "What significance has that for us?"
A second conclusion is that professional historians and their textbooks,
as functioning parts of a society, reflect its degree of modernization (a term I
will eschew defining further except to call it maturity of adjustment to the
modern world). On this score, Japanese studies of Western history have been
a good deal more extensive than Chinese studies. The reasons range over a
wide gamut: from Japan's original offshore propensity to absorb foreign
culture to China's greater size and ethnocentricity and her difficulties of social
metamorphosis during the modern century of imperialist pressures and de-
struction. Whatever the complex causes of this striking contrast, China's
slower response to the modern West has left her today with rather little
alternative to the dogmatic Marxist interpretations of Western history now
being propagated from Peking, whereas Japanese historians have already
absorbed a good deal of Marxism and are rising above its simplistic trammels.
The halting growth of China's view of the West can be sketched briefly
through five phases, beginning with one of happy insouciance. Before the
first Anglo-Chinese (Opium) war of I840, imperial geographies character-
ized Europeans with charming superficiality:
Their flesh is dazzling white, they have big noses. . . . Their custom is to
esteem women and think lightly of men. Marriages are left to mutual arrange-
ment. . . . the (English) males mostly wear wool and love to drink wine.
The females, when they have not yet married, bind their waists to make them
slender. They wear disheveled hair which hangs over their eyebrows.'
1
Tung Kao, et al., comp., Huang-Ch'ing chih-kung t'u (Illustrations of the regular tribu-
taries of the imperial Ch'ing, I760), chuian i; transl. in J. K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy
on the China Coast (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), I, I2. For an example of geographical confusion,
note the quite understandable Chinese difficulty in distinguishing between Portugal, Spain,
Italy, and France, whose nationals in varying degree were called by the medieval generic term Fo-
lang-chi, "Franks," ibid., I, io.
East Asian Views of Modern European History 529
This interest in the quaint externals rather than the basic philosophy of
the Westerners persisted down to I840. Then for the first time it became
necessary to study the West in order to understand the danger it presented-
what was the secret of Western power? An early geography of I848 supplies
a preliminary answer:
England consists merely of three islands, simply a handful of stones in the
western ocean . . . an area about the same as Taiwan and Hainan. The reason for
her becoming suddenly rich and strong . . . is that in the West she obtained
America and in the East ... India. . The English stealthily encroached on the
various (Indian) states like silkworms eating mulberry leaves.2
Even after the Chinese scholar-officials recognized that they must study
the secrets of Western power, they were slow to see a pattern in Western
history. Having first ascribed Western power to gunboats and cannon, they
soon saw the origin of these contrivances in Western science and industry;
the latter must be absorbed into the Chinese state in order to preserve it.
Eventually this view was also recognized as superficial. Partly by an exten-
sion of the Confucian emphasis on "men of ability" and "human talent"
(jen ts'ai) in the political process, Chinese officialdom concluded that West-
ern power derived from political processes and institutions. In developing this
view in the i88o's, the pioneer journalist Wang T'ao was still appraising
Britain through Confucian glasses:
The real strength of England lies in the fact that there is a sympathetic under-
standing between the governing and the governed, a close relationship between
the ruler and the people [a typical Confucian ideal]. . . . The expenditure of the
British ruler is a constantly fixed amount. . . . He does not dare to eat myriads
of delicacies.... His palaces are all very simple.... The king has only one queen
and no concubine and has never had a multitude of three thousand beautiful
women in a harem.3
The appreciation of Western power as due to institutions led to a third
phase in China's view of the West, marked by the acceptance of the historical
theory of social Darwinism, survival of the fittest among nations. In the
I89o's, reformers such as K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao pointed to the
examples of declining states like India, Turkey, and Poland, or Annam,
Burma, and Korea, and also to the examples of rising states such as Russia
under Peter the Great, Prussia, Japan, or Siam. The latter were seen to be
rising because of institutional reforms. The conclusion seemed inescapable
2
Hsii Chi-yii, Ying-huan chih-lueh (A brief description of the oceans' circuit, 1850), VII,
43b; transl. in Ssu-yiu Teng and J. K. Fairbank, China's Response to the West (Cambridge,
Mass., 1954), pp. 42-43.
3
Transl. in China's Response to the West, p. 140.
530 John K. Fairbank
that China must reform her own traditional institutions, yet the efforts in
this direction (especially in I898, after I9OI, and again after i9II) all proved
ineffective in revitalizing and strengthening the Chinese state.
Not unnaturally, these attempts to learn from the Western example,
when they proved unavailing on the level of national power, prepared Chi-
nese observers for a fourth phase of disillusionment.4 This emerged par-
ticularly after the holocaust of World War I. In the 1920's, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao
as a reformer could write in retrospect: "Darwin's theory of the struggle for
existence and survival of the fittest was applied to the study of human society
and became the core of thought, with many evil consequences." Europe, he
felt, was sick from a "spiritual famine." Eastern learning (by which he meant
that of China and India) has "spirit as its point of departure, Western learne
ing has matter as its point of departure."5 Thus developed one. of the most
trenchant, persistent, and yet oversimplified criticisms of the West from an
Asian point of view.
T'he fifth phase in China's view of the Western historical process has been
the acceptance of Marxism-Leninism. It is noteworthy that in China there
was no preceding socialist movement. After I9II the Western parliamentary
model had failed to work, and in the 1920'S Sun Yat-sen and his Kuomintang
began to follow the Soviet model as a basis for organizing political power.
At the same time, while the new Chinese intelligentsia remained essentially
liberal and individualistic in outlook, a few began to accept academic Marx-
ism as a new way of organizing their view of the world, partly, I think, be-
cause of the inadequacy of Sun Yat-sen's system of ideas. Marxism-Leninism
thus became the latest phase of the Western impact on China-in effect, to
imitate Lenin's formula, Marxism in China has become the highest stage of
cultural imperialism.6
In retrospect, it would appear that the problem of China's adjustment to
4
Confucian conservatives had, of course, always found much in the West that was distaste-
ful. As one late-nineteenth-century traveler noted, "In the West, a son does not take care of
his father. . . . A wife is more honored than a husband. . . . Beautiful young girls are seeking
for males everywhere . . . the customs are as bad as that! . . . As for food, they always sip
cold water and juice. They cannot appreciate the culinary art but like butter and mutton ribs.
. . . The kinds of soup are very limited." Ibid., p. I84, quoting Yuan Tsu-chih, She-yang
knuan-chien (Personal views after travelling abroad).
5
From Liang's collected essays, written in 1920; see ibid., p. 267.
6The latest Peking periodization divides Chinese feudalism into three periods: Early (W.
Chou to Ch'in unification, ca. I000 B.C.-221 B.C.), Middle, first part (Ch'in to Sui unification,
221 B.c.-589 A.D.), Middle, second part (Sui to end of Yuan, 589-1368), and Late (Ming to
Opium War, 1368-i840). China's great civilization is thus put in the ignominious position of
having been "feudal" for almost 3,000 years, far
longer than
any
other
people in
history. See
Fan Wen-lan in Chung-kuo
k'o-hsueh-yuan
li-shih
yen-chiu-so ti-san-so chi-k'an (Bulletin of
the Third Institute of the Institute [sic] of Historical
Research,
Chinese
Academy
of
Sciences),
July, 1954.
East Asian Views of Modern European History 53I
the modern world has been so all-absorbing, the modern Chinese scholars
have been so concerned with China's immediate problems, so ethnocentric
of necessity, that there has been neither opportunity nor inclination to develop
a vigorous school of academic historical study of the West.7 A leader in
modern Chinese thought such as Dr. Hu Shih, for example, who is now
honored by violent attacks from Peking, focused his attention on the re-
evaluation of the Chinese cultural tradition. Although he did this in part
from a Western point of view, it did not involve him in a continuing and
detailed study of the West as such. His Westernizing was selective and
stressed the adaptation of Western elements to a Chinese setting as an aid
to China's cultural rebirth. Today, the Chinese Communists' study of the
West seems to be almost entirely a subjective function of their local and
international political needs.8
Japan's view of the West went through a sequence of phases somewhat
similar to China's but telescoped into a much shorter period. Already in the
eighteenth century, Japanese scholars of the "Dutch learning" were studying
the West, partly through Chinese books which were not being studied in
China at the time. The "Dutch learning" produced its first Japanese transla-
tions of Western works in the 1770's. After the reopening of Japan in the
mid-nineteenth century, Japanese scholars quickly took over a Western
world view, including the current doctrines of evolution and progress. In
the I870's, translations of Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Darwin gave them
a simple comprehensive system. Social Darwinism came into vogue in Japan
even before it did in China. The early admiration of English institutions on
the part of educators like Fukuzawa Yukichi gave way to an admiration of
Bismarck and the doctrine of the supremacy of the state. Similarly, in eco-
nomic theory the earlier doctrine of laissez faire gave way to a more Ger-
manic theory of state intervention in the economy. All these Western doctrines
became in turn subordinate to the rising Japanese nationalism.9
In the late 1920's and increasingly thereafter, many began to accept aca-
7
In contrast to the small number of Chinese historians of Western history, the Japanese
Western History Association (Nihon Seiyoshi Gakkai) as of I953 had 350 members. ne
American counterpart, the Far Eastern Association, had 750 members.
8Thus a recent volume of essays on the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95 is formally sum-
marized (t'i-yao) as showing primarily that Japan's attack was caused, supported, and urged
on by American imperialism (History Teaching Monthly, ed.,
Chung-iih chia-wu chan-cheng
ltn-chi, Peking, 1954). A documented History of American Aggression against China stresses
the "piratical" nature of American commercial-capitalist contact with China from I784 (Ching
Ju-ch'i, Mei-kuio ch'in-hua-shih, Vol. 1, Peking, I952). A history of the American war of
independence makes much of Shay's Rebellion (Hsieh-ssu ch'i-i) of I786 as a class war covered
up by capitalist historians (Liu Tso-ch'ang, AIei-kuo tu-li chan-cheng chien-shih, Shanghai,
I954).
9
See G. B. Sansom, The Western World and Japan (New York, 1950), chap. xiv.
532
John K. Fairbank
demic Marxism. (In what follows, my references are to this academic doc-
trine, Marxism as theory, rather than to its application in political action as
part of a socialist or communist movement.) This process occurred in a time
of increasing intellectual protest against the rise of militarism.
The many and diverse reasons for the acceptance of Marxist theory in
Japan may be suggested briefly under two main heads. First is the tradition
of ideological orthodoxy. Confucianism in Japan, as in China, had been an
official tool of government. By it the scholar-administrator had been taught
to think deductively from the authority of abstract principles. To some extent
also the ideology of the state, summed up preeminently in Confucianism, had
commanded an emotional adherence similar to that given religion in the
West. The state had been comparatively more dominant over the individual
and his thinking. It had regularly used history both to buttress authority and
to sanction its exercise. There was little precedent for a Western type of
historical pluralism. Thus the influence of tradition was to give Japanese
scholars a craving for a comprehensive historical scheme, an authoritative
doctrine of history. Even today Japanese teachers may be found who expect
the Ministry of Education to establish one single system of periodization for
history textbooks.
The second range of causes for the Japanese acceptance of Marxism may
be grouped under the heading of circumstance. Rapid social change by the
1930'S had produced a revolution in ideas. Old values had been overthrown
by new conditions. The modern scholar class was comparatively poor and
insecure, yet at the same time scholars were called upon to provide the in-
tellectual framework by which Japan might claim her place in the modern
world. T'hey were under pressure to achieve a unified explanation of modern
European and Asian experience, so as to, fit the Asian half of mankind into
the world. Looking at their own recent past, Japanese scholars saw the
counterpart of European feudalism, the growth of capitalism, and an im-
perial expansion, all running parallel to the example of Western history,
especially in its Marxist interpretation. In recent years, we have seen how
Chinese scholars under the Communist dictatorship have attempted to fit
China satisfactorily into the modern scene by alleging that she is now in the
"forefront" of the (Marxist) historical process; this evidently offers some
gratification after a century in which China has remained unable to fit herself
into international life on equal terms with Western countries. A similar need
was felt in Japan, even earlier, to make sense of the disasters and difficulties
of modern international life in some all-embracing terms. Finally, there is
East Asian Views of Modern European History 533
little doubt that today the spectacle of a Communist China close at hand also
continues to be a direct stimulus to Marxism in Japan.10
Through this complex mixture of traditional and circumstantial factors,
Marxism has become respectable among Japanese historians and certainly
quite popular among the student body. Yet it has many varieties and grada-
tions of influence, and leading Japanese historians remain in many ways quite
non-Marxist. Perhaps it is safe to say that Japan's degree of acceptance of
academic Marxism puts her scholars somewhere in between the Marxist and
non-Marxist worlds.
This intellectual situation is not easy to characterize, but perhaps it can
be illustrated by noting Japanese textbook treatments of four major topics in
modern European history.1"
Absolutism: This is taken tol refer not to the political theory of the ab-
solute monarchy in Europe but to a national political-economic-social struc-
ture or form of state and social order. Thus the Age of Absolutism intervened
as a separate period between decentralized feudalism and modern centralized
democracy. The absolutist form of state provided a balance between conflict-
ing feudal and bourgeois elements.12 The significance of this interpretation
for Japan lies in the fact that the Meiji period, which is fresh in memory, can
be viewed as a counterpart in Japan of the historical stage represented by
Absolutism in the West.'3
The Renaissance, Humanism, and the Reformation: These subjects re-
main comparatively neglected or subordinated in Japanese textbook pre-
sentations of Western history, partly perhaps because they have no direct
counterparts in Japanese experience and partly because cultural subjects. are
generally held secondary to those of economic and social history. There is a
tendency to decry Humanism as a merely reformist movement which leaned
10
These generalizations are derived partly from a survey by J. K. Fairbank and Masataka
Banno, Japanese Studies
of
Modern China (Tokyo and Rutland, I955).
11 For textbooks and correspondence, I am particularly indebted to Professor Teruhiko Onabe
of Ochanomizu Joshi Daigaku, Tokyo, a leader in the teaching of Western history (not responsi-
ble, however, for the inadequacies of this sketch).
12 My colleague Professor Benjamin Schwartz found, as of I954, that the discussion of
absolutism along this line by Paul Sweezy and Maurice Dobb was widely known and remarked
upon in Tokyo. See "The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism," Science and Society, Spring,
I950, pp. I34-67; also Fall, I952, pp. 3I3-45 (H. K. Takahashi); and Spring, I953, pp. I55-64
(P. M. Sweezy). For an account of the Japanese translation of the above and numerous later
articles published on this controversy, see Inoue Koji and Hayashi Kentaro, Seiyoshi kenkyli
nyi-mon (Research guide to Western history, Tokyo, I954), pp. 96-I02. For a typical textbook
explanation of absolutism, see Kamei Koko and Hayashi Kentaro, Gaisetsu Seiyo rekishi (Out-
line of Western history, rev. ed., Tokyo, I954), II, 4.
"3 Cf. Sekai rekishi jiten (Tokyo, I95I-54), V, 266-69, on Japan's modernization. This
21-volume encyclopedia of world history by many authors will seem to American readers generally
Marxist in tone, much more so than the older Toyo rekishi daijiten (Encyclopedia of Oriental
history, 9 vols., Tokyo, 1937-39).
534 John K. Fairbank
on the despots to be its patrons and provided no useful model for revolu-
tionary social change requiring force and strong leadership. Thus one text-
book divides the modern period into Ages of Absolutism, Liberalism, and
Imperialism, including under the first the geographical discoveries, t'he
Renaissance, the Reformation and wars of religion, and even the Enlighten-
ment.'4 Another hi,ghly esteemed non-Marxist textbook retains the Age of
Absolutism as a major section following the Middle Ages and subordinates
the Renaissance and Reformation to it, though excluding the Enlighten-
ment.'5
The rise of bourgeois society: In their view of this topic, Japanese text-
book writers may follow the Russian categorization according to which there
were three forms of development respectively in England, Western Europe
as typified by France, and Europe east of the Elbe as typified by Prussia and
including Russia. The rise of bourgeois society in these different regions was
distinguished by differences in the process of agrarian reform, emancipation
of the serfs, and the like. For Japan, the significance of this lies in the con-
clusion that Japan's development has been rather similar to that of Europe
east of the Elbe."6
The bourgeois revolutions in Western history are, of course, viewed in
the light of Japan's own modernization. Agrarian reform and the growth
of industrial capitalism in the West are seen as normal and healthy develop-
ments, whereas in Japan the Zaibatsu are regarded as having grown up, from
commercial capitalism, which made them more monopolistic and closer to
the state, in the unhealthy manner described in Das Kapital."7
On this general topic, great influence has been exerted by the writings of
Max Weber. Not unnaturally, American historians in Japan who prove to
be somewhat vague in their knowledge of both Marx and Weber may be
treated with that excessive politeness which bespeaks contempt.
Imperialism: Judging by Japan's experience of it over several generations,
imperialism is one of the big facts of modern times, a point often difficult for
Americans to appreciate. From an Asian point of view, no doubt, it is logical
to see modern Europe as built on colonialism and at the expense of Asian
lands. It is therefore perhaps less surprising that the Leninist theory of im-
perialism is almost universally accepted by Japanese scholars, whether or
14
Ono Mayumi, Seiy5shi gaisetsu (Kindai) (rev. ed.; Tokyo, 1953).
15
Onabe Teruhiko, Seiyo5shi gaisetsu, 2 vols. (Tokyo, 1953-55).
16
Cf. Sekai rekishi jiten, V, 266, where the Japanese form of modernization is placed between
the East European (Prussian) type and the Asian (Chinese) type.
17
Cf. ibid., IX, 20 on capitalism; also XIV, 278-80 on Japan.
East Asian Fiews of Modern European History 535
not one might characterize them as Marxist or non-Marxist.'8 This means
that many Japanese scholars will accept the technical definition that "im-
perialism" is possible only for capitalist states, not for the Soviet Union, and
possible only in the late nineteenth century or after, not in the time of Rome
or of Napoleon. Many, indeed, will go so far as to apply this sort of theory
to recent times and accept the propaganda thesis that World War II was
caused by Britain and France turning Germany against Russia,'9 or that
Japan's military aggression was caused essentially by the 1929 depression and
American economic imperialism in the Far East. World War II, in any case,
is generally traced back to the
post-1929
depression.
From this brief sketch emerge two preliminary conclusions: first, that
historians in China and Japan, since they look at the West from outside, see
its structure first and its values only later. In other words, the economic and
social order, the polity of Western states, has been of greatest interest to them
in a period when the old order has been undergoing rapid change in their
own countries. On the other hand, some distinctive Western values, things in
which Western individuals have generally reposed great value or importance,
have not been similarly felt and experienced in these Eastern countries. So
the Western historian, having an inside view and laying his greatest stress
upon the values inherited from his own past, since they are indeed his own,
may give corresponding attention to Humanism or the struggle for in-
dividual rights, while these topics may remain of less emotional concern to,
readers of history in China or Japan. Presumably the latter attach an emo-
tional value to filial piety or the history of Zen Buddhism which will mean
little to a Westerner.
A second conclusion, which I believe is basic to the further development
of this field of study, is that the historians of modern China and Japan have
felt the compulsion to achieve a system of world history capable of embracing
West and East in a single view. In this direction, Japanese historians are now
pioneering.20 In contrast, the general fraternity of historians in the West,
18
See, for example, the economic explanation of imperialism in a non-Marxist text, Kamei
and Hayashi, Gaisetsu Seiy6 rekishi, pp. 2I4-I6.
19
Sekai
rekishi jiten presents this thesis in authoritative form: see XI, I28 under World
War II; also XIII, 72 under imperialism.
20
See the volume edited by Onabe Teruhiko, Sekaishi no kan8sei (The potentialities of
world history, Tokyo, 1950), a symposium with some sixteen contributors. The following three
examples of high-school world-history texts show a more balanced world view than their Western
counterparts. Wada Sei and Yamanaka Kenji, professors emeritus of Tokyo University, devote
I40 pages each to Oriental history (China, India, Islam, etc.) and to Western history (Greece,
Rome, Europe, etc.) down to the nineteenth century and 65 pages to the contemporary world
since the rise of imperialism (Sekai shi, 3d ed., Tokyo, 1953). Three other Tokyo University pro-
536 John K. Fairbank
having previously felt little need for it, has been a bit pauperized or narrowed
because of leaving Asia largely out of account.
The result is a challenge to Western historians to avoid being culture-
bound, to maintain our historical pluralism (as a closer approach to reality
than any single doctrine will permit), yet at the same time to expand our
horizon so as to include the Asian half of human experience. Historians of
modern Europe are challenged to delve more deeply into Asian sectors of
modern history, to encompass phenomena which in many cases, often by
default, are interpreted to Asian readers only in the monocausal terms of
Marxism. Perhaps this can be done by what are called "comparative studies."
Certainly Asia will not come to be included in the Western historical
perspective through the efforts of Western "Asia specialists" alone. Grave
doubt must be thrown on the thesis that historical thought is possible only
for those who read the languages required for mastery of documentation
concerning a given subject. T'he use of Chinese and Japanese is now correctly
recognized as prerequisite for specialization in Chinese or Japanese history
from a Western point of view, but it may be argued that the mastery of these
languages, far from preparing an individual for broader comparative world
history studies of the sort here in question, may in fact obstruct his mastery
of the many-sided questions involved in such comparative work. It is a
disquieting symptom that while we have no "European specialists" in Amer-
ica who are called by that name, one still hears of "Far Eastern specialists"
among us. The latter can only be got rid of when every Western historian
takes world history as his proper horizon.
One incidental but important result of such a move will be to lend moral
support to those nondoctrinaire Japanese and Chinese historians, wherever
they may be, who are trying to bring East Asian history realistically and
without dogma into our common modern world.
Harvard University
fessors, Murakawa Kentar5, Egami Namio, and Hayashi Kentaro, make a more social-anthro-
pological approach to world-wide developments chronologically: Part I (150 pp.) through the
Mongol dynasty in China and feudalism in Europe; Part II (Ioo pp.) through the rise and
expansion of Europe, Ming and Ch'ing; Part III
(55 pp.) on the world since imperialism and
World War I (Sekai shi, 5th ed., Tokyo, 1955). Onabe Teruhiko and Nakaya Kenichi devote
8o pages to pre-modern and I6o pages to modern times (in the Japanese sense of the last five
centuries) and 135 pages to contemporary times (imperialism and after), on a world-wide basis
(Gendai sekai no naritachi [Origins of the modern world], Tokyo, 1955).