| In late imperial times through the twentieth century, definitions of “China” and Chinese history were used to imagine strategies for world order and moral empire. In the Republican era, this coincided with efforts to create a modern nation-state. Memory of “Chinese” tributary relations with its neighbours became a key component in envisioning a regional role for the future nation—a role that simultaneously valorised national boundaries and found alternative arenas of identity by which to surmount them.; From the cessation of Qing-Choson tributary relations to the Korean War, Korea was thought to be a “mirror” in which Chinese found histories of “Chinese” empires; critiques of Western-style imperialism; and proof of the need for modernity and a nation-state. This dissertation examines the attitudes of educated Chinese—historians, journalists, travel writers, and others—towards Sino-Korean relations and the tributary diplomacy that defined its history.; In the first decades of the twentieth century, Social Darwinism and travellers' encounters with Japanese colonial modernity in Korea entered into dialogue with attempts to define Western-style imperialism, contain the Japanese threat to China, and rethink the legitimising strategies of empires. Regional history was central to that dialogue, in which tributary relations were recast as historical amity and popular will. At the same time, moral claims over Korea and Koreans became an ideologically necessary complement to advocacy of post-World War II Korean independence. With the advent of the Korean War in 1950, memory of tributary relations became a means for re-uniting the past with the present through memory of the Ming dynasty and the ideology of world communism. |
