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World History's Eurocentric Moment? British Internationalism in the Age of Asian Nationalism, c.1905–1931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2019

Chika Tonooka*
Affiliation:
Pembroke College, Cambridge
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

This article examines a particular moment in the twentieth century when a burgeoning internationalist movement in Britain in the wake of the First World War coincided with growing nationalist activities in the non-European world, notably in Asia. It explores the intellectual implications of this juncture through the lens of two prominent British internationalists, G. P. Gooch and H. G. Wells, who were central figures in a series of discussions on “world history” that emerged in Britain around this time. Through a close study of their world-historical visions, the article demonstrates how the sequence of Asian nationalist “awakenings” (first in Japan, then after 1905 in India and China) was interpreted by British liberals as evidence of mankind's universal progress towards a uniform (Western) modernity. The effect of burgeoning Asian nationalism, in other words, was ironically to reinvigorate a highly Eurocentric liberal account of world order. The article builds on this analysis to consider the broader implications for our own present intellectual engagement with the world-historical challenge of Europe's Eurocentric past.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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References

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79 Partington, “H. G. Wells and the World State,” 236. Wells's endorsement of tutelage was compatible with his anti-imperialism, the latter being an objection to the competitive acquisition and exploitation of colonies by individual nations. The form of colonial development Wells advocated was one of “empire pooling” in which colonial possessions were to be administered directly by a federal commission (cf. the league's Mandates system) for the benefit of both the colonial inhabitants and the former imperial rulers.

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91 Ibid., 112.

92 Ibid., 121.

93 Ibid., 93–4; 95–102; 121.

94 Ibid., 97–8.

95 Ibid., 105–6; 111–12; 118.

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101 Tetsuo Furuya, “Ajia shugi to sono shūhen” (Asianism and Its Environs), in Furuya, Kindai nihon, 47–102, at 91–2.

102 e.g. Kenkichi Kodera, “Dai ajiashugi ron” (Treatise on Greater Asianism) (Tokyo, 1916). For an overview of Japanese pan-Asianism see Saaler, Sven, “Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Overcoming the Nation, Creating a Region, Forging an Empire,” in Saaler, Sven and Koschmann, J. Victor, eds., Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History: Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders (London, 2007), 118CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Paradoxically, the effect of this growing Japanese pan-Asianism was to undermine the possibility of a regional solidarity, as the discourse of a “common destiny” was increasingly conflated by Japanese Asianists with a self-appointed Japanese “mission,” and viewed with suspicion in other parts of Asia as a legitimating tool for Japanese expansion.

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108 Ibid., 16.

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110 Ibid., 96.

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117 Ibid., 689.

118 Ibid., 686.

119 Ibid.

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129 Dickinson, Essay on the Civilisations, 84.

130 Ibid., 84–5.

131 Ibid., 85.

132 Ibid., 85–6.

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137 Gooch, “The Lesson of 1914–1934,” 519.

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139 A report of a major conference on world citizenship teaching held at the Guildhall in 1935 noted that the “outstanding impression” was the “stress laid by speaker after speaker on the unity of civilisation.” “The Guildhall Conference on Teaching World Citizenship,” Report of a conference convened by the Education Committee of the LNU, held at the Guildhall, London, 31 May and 1 June 1935 (LNU, 1935), LNU 7/32, 10; see also “History Teaching in Relation to World Citizenship” (LNU, 1938), LNU 7/13. The years 1925–32 represented the peak success of the LNU movement, after which it suffered from national and international pressures. Elliott, “The League of Nations Union,” 137. The Education Committee of the LNU was made independent and reestablished as the Council for Education in World Citizenship in 1939 to rid itself of the image of being a political propaganda organization. Birn, “History Teacher as Propagandist,” 22.

140 Carr, Twenty Years’ Crisis; see also Wight, Martin, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Wight, Gabriele and Porter, Brian (London, 1996)Google Scholar.

141 I am invoking Frederick Cooper's ironic reformulation of Wolf's, Eric Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982)Google Scholar in Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.