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Transcending Boundaries: Nishida Kitarō K'ang Yu-Wei, and the Politics of Unity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2005

C. S. GOTO-JONES
Affiliation:
University of Leiden

Abstract

Boundaries were smashed and broken as modernity struck its first blows in Asia in the nineteenth century. The British and the French chipped away at the borders of China, and the USA ripped open the seal that enveloped Japan in sakoku. Imperialism, or neo-imperialism, represented a way of overcoming boundaries, of decreasing the salience of other territorial units. However, it was also a way of expanding boundaries, of projecting one's own territory and sustaining the priority of these new (modern) borders over the claims of (allegedly pre-modern) indigenous peoples. Boundaries themselves began to take on a distinctly modern persona–and they were the property of the modern, Western powers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
2005 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The author would like to thank the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, where this paper was written as a visiting scholar. I would also like to thank Rana Mitter, of Oxford University, whose advice and patience was invaluable in the early stages of this research.