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    The 'Awakening' of China: A History of Western Concepts of China in the Early 20th Century
    The 'Awakening' of China: A History of Western Concepts of China in the Early 20th Century
    The 'Awakening' of China: A History of Western Concepts of China in the Early 20th Century
    Ebook59 pages46 minutes

    The 'Awakening' of China: A History of Western Concepts of China in the Early 20th Century

    By Edwin Poon

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    The 'Awakening' of China: Western Concepts of China in the Early 20th Century' explores the reasoning behind the concept of "China's Awakening" at a time when China was weak, divided and dominated by western imperialism. Battered by the Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, the fall of the Qing, the descent into warlordism and then formation of the shaky foundations of a republic in the 1920s, he seems strange that China's was seen as 'awakening' by the West. This book however, seeks to explain this phenomenonand weaves it into a narrative to the early 20th Century American Progressive Movement and later that of the British Left.

    This book is a reprint of a dissertation submitted as part of the fulfilment of the completion of a history undergraduate degree at Oxford University.

    ----"China is the theatre of the greatest movement now taking place on the face of the globe...It promises nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest of empires.... Her present greatness and her future prospects alike challenge admiration .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEdwin Poon
    Release dateOct 22, 2016
    ISBN9781370854103
    The 'Awakening' of China: A History of Western Concepts of China in the Early 20th Century

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      Book preview

      The 'Awakening' of China - Edwin Poon

      An Invented Tradition? Western Concepts of China's 'Awakening' in the Early 20th Century

      By Edwin Poon

      Copyright 2017 Edwin Poon

      Smashwords Edition

      Introduction: China's 'Awakening' - The Power of a Construct

      China is the theatre of the greatest movement now taking place on the face of the globe...It promises nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest of empires…. Her present greatness and her future prospects alike challenge admiration. [1]

      The author of this passage, Dr W.A.P Martin, was just one of several authors who enthusiastically proclaimed an ‘awakening’ of China in the early-20th century. Yet it seems counterintuitive that there would be commentators who spoke optimistically about the future great strength of China at the turn of the century - a time when it had recently suffered successive humiliating defeats to the western powers and even its own neighbour, Japan. This view is even more surprising considering the widespread anti-Chinese sentiment evident in popular culture in the West. In particular, the outbreak of anti-foreign violence during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 served to significantly tarnish the image of China in foreign eyes.

      In this thesis, therefore, I will attempt to address the prima facie problem of the existence of an optimistic foreign conception of China during her struggle with foreign imperialism. There had always existed a wide spectrum of foreign perceptions of China, ranging from the virulent Sinophobia to intense Sinophilia. My argument is that the proclamation of China’s awakening in the early 20th century was principally advocated by a Sinophilic group of predominantly Anglophone commentators, who built upon late-19th-century foreign discourse about China and appropriated it to support their own agendas. While many foreigners may have held China in contempt during a period of its humiliating capitulation to foreign imperialism, it also attracted sympathisers - a minority group first of American evangelical missionaries and later British left-wing activists in the late-19th and early-20th century that differed from prevailing foreign perceptions and empathised with China's plight. I will analyse the notion of an awakening of China as a product of a specific contemporary combination: a favourable environment to incubate the concept, enthusiastic historical agents to synthesize and disseminate the idea, and watershed events to ignite and transform the meaning of the concept in its dissemination. The fulfilment of these conditions was a mutual feature underpinning manifestations of the 'awakening' of China concept both at the turn of the century, and in the 1920s. During both these periods, the 'awakening' of China was proclaimed to a selected audience in the US and Britain receptive to such a notion, by a group of agents who had an incentive to propagate such an idea and following an event or series of events that were considered sufficiently pivotal to justify the rhetoric. Therefore, delineating the analysis through these ‘tripartite criteria’ will help to elucidate the reasons for the existence of the awakening concept at a particular point in time and reveal its reinvented nature.

      I argue that at the turn of the century, the enthusiastic advocates of the notion of China’s awakening were American missionaries, whom I identify as the key players in the synthesis of the Chinese 'awakening' concept at the turn of the century. After the Boxer Rebellion, they perceived a pivotal change in climate and events, which finally allowed them to harness and exhibit their zeal towards China, as well as celebrating manifestations of their perceived success. This was facilitated by the Progressive Movement taking place in the United States from the 1890s to the 1920s, which provided the favourable environment for sympathetic commentaries on China’s reform and modernisation. The contemporary evangelical awakening and Progressive Movement taking place in America had profound effects on the notion of a Chinese ‘awakening’. The sense of American Exceptionalism and ‘Manifest Destiny’ supposedly imparted a uniquely selfless perspective

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