Rebecca E. Karl

A very theoretical approach to early Chinese nationalism. Karl’s sees two competing strains of “statism” and “ethnonationalism". Without dismissing the influence of the western model on Chinese intellectuals, she argues that the momentous events taking place around the world also had a major impact. Chinese intellectuals read news about events such as the Boer War, the Spanish-American War, reforms in the Ottoman Empire and the decline of the Russian empire and realized that the imperialistic aggression was not particular to China. These intellectuals, who would lead the nationalist movements into the twentieth century, were radicalized by the resistance to western imperialism elsewhere. Their ideas of national identity and an effective state were influenced as much from Turkey and South Africa as from the writings of the west. In the end, the state that China established was on the western model, but it had a sense of interconnectedness to what would later become known as the third world.… (meer)