Power, culture, and national identity: The United States, China, and Japan, 1895--1920

From 1895 to 1920 the United States, China, and Japan redefined and transformed their own national identities in response to their changing positions in the world. This dissertation examines the interplay of power, culture, and empire during this key transitional period. I explore the ideology of empire in the development of national identity as China was transforming itself from a traditional empire to a modern nation, Japan was aspiring to become a modern empire, and the United States as a modern nation was debating the meaning and consequences of exerting its power abroad. The ideology of empire played a role in determining who was defined as a citizen in each of the empire-nations, definitions often based on cultural attributes that could be acquired by outsiders. The Japanese government, for example, endeavored in the Meiji period to inculcate a sense of loyalty and nationhood in the population by manipulating the emperor ideology and the meaning of national essence. I look at the often contradictory images that Americans held of the Chinese and Japanese at various junctures during this period, such as the Chinese as both hopeless heathens and promising pupils, and demonstrate that these dual images stemmed from paradoxes in Americans' own self-image. Americans were also ambivalent about Japan's power, simultaneously admiring the nation's modernization and fearing it as a potential rival, while China tried to adapt to the framework of international power politics. I argue that culture was an important element in determining how relations among these three nations were constituted. American missionary women, for instance, were agents of cultural transmission, acting as “beneficent imperialists.” Chinese women activists looked to Western, and particularly American culture, hoping to discover the source of what they perceived to be American women's social and economic power as they sought to define what it might mean to be a modern Chinese woman. Hence, power, culture, and national identity were inextricably intertwined during this transitional period. Sources for this study include Chinese and U.S. diplomatic archives, missionary letters and reports, American newspapers and popular magazines, and Chinese women's magazines.