{"id":3959,"date":"2014-04-19T14:12:39","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T14:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/?p=3959"},"modified":"2014-04-19T14:12:39","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T14:12:39","slug":"manchuria-the-hidden-face-of-east-asian-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/2014\/04\/19\/manchuria-the-hidden-face-of-east-asian-civilization\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchuria: The Hidden Face of East Asian Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manchuria: The Hidden Face of East Asian Civilization\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n

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We tend to overlook the importance of Manchuria in East Asia. It is the case of a country that was so successful that it put itself out of business and literally disappeared as a cultural and political entity.<\/p>\n

Manchuria was the most powerful nation in the region in the 17th century with a remarkable administrative organization the rewarded those with talent and vision and a powerful vision for the region. And yet today, the Manchurian language is unknown to all but a few specialists and even then is a dead language. Even more striking is the fact that few, if any, \u00a0would identify themselves as “Manchu” today. Basically everyone has become Chinese. What happened in the process of modernity and of nation building, the transformation of Asian civilization that led to the complete destruction of Manchurian identity? I think therein lies the answer to many of our questions about the civilizations of China, Japan and Korea and some hints as to what is to come.<\/p>\n

We can think of Manchuria as the\u00a0\u00a0inspiration for much of the administrative and strategic culture of East Asia in the 17th and 18th centuries. When Chinese think back on what was Chinese imperial power at its height, they are inevitably thinking about the reigns of Kangxi and Qianlung. For that matter the decor in Chinese restaurants, the traditional furniture and vases that we see in hotels and in the Chinoiserie across Europe is product of exactly that period of Manchu rule. You could say that the first conception of modernity in East Asia started with the \u00a0exposure of China and Korea to the military culture of Manchuria inthe 1620s. Modern administration and military efficiency in East Asia was learned from the Manchu model. Even if the Koreans detested the Qing Dynasty of the Manchus, they never the less learned from it. \u00a0Many\u00a0many Chinese went over to the Manchu side in the late Ming.\u00a0It was in a sense the institutional equivalent of Samsung for the 17th century, an all-powerful organization (the eight banners administrative system) perfectly organized and unstoppable–a contrast with the weak Ming.<\/p>\n

There\u00a0 were scholars like Phillip Kuhn at Harvard who had some proficiency in Manchu, but still limited. Increasingly scholarship is based on Chinese texts–almost meaningless in the early Qing when the Manchu texts were far more central to governance.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem of locating the Manchurian impact in East Asia results from unstated influence.\u00a0\u00a0For example, you might say that there is hardly a trace of North Korea to be found if you walk around in South Korea. And that fact\u00a0is true in the simplest sense. But South Korean culture evolves and grows today \u00a0in opposition to what Pyongyang is, or what Pyongyang \u00a0is imagined to be. There never need be any overt communication\u00a0or\u00a0sophisticated dialog between the North and South, but what they do is always linked together. Such was the case in Manchuria as well. Although Korea or Japan may not have spoken much about Manchuria, they were profoundly aware of its institutional and cultural power.<\/p>\n

If we look at Japan during the Meiji Restoration of 1867. The argument made for the political and institutional reforms of the time was that Japan should restore the “tenno” to the status he enjoyed before the Shogun (head general) took that authority away in the pre-modern period. Yet what happened was that\u00a0Meiji \u00a0was made institutionally an “emperor” \u00a0as opposed to a tenno\u00a0who had governed previously as more of a high priest than the head of an empire. The model for the emperor at that time is commonly suggested to be European powers like England and France, but if you look at the consolidation of power and the structure of \u00a0Meiji Japan, it\u00a0was based more upon the models for administration\u00a0offered by the Manchu emperors Kangxi and Qianlong (of the high Qing in the 17th and 18th centuries) than anything in the West or in Japan’s history. Oddly, at the very moment that the Qing power waned, the Japanese adopted that authority for themselves under the guise of “modernization.”<\/p>\n

It does not stop there. England\u00a0adopted the civil service system, which would power the new British \u00a0imperial global system, in the 1870s, at precisely the moment that such a system had ceased to function effectively in China. But the British proposals for civil service refer very explicitly to the Chinese origins of this system. That is right, England took the skeleton required for running an imperial system from China, the country it was in the process of turning into a semi-colony after the Opium Wars. We can see that process as a form of\u00a0cultural “king killing.” As the old civilization loses its symbolic power, the best parts are selected by others.<\/p>\n

I suggest that Korea risks having its own civilization disappear like that of Manchuria. Although Manchuria had so much impact on the administrative culture of China, Manchuria as a unique cultural identity has vanished. No one speaks Manchu and few identify themselves with that cultural tradition. It is in a sense Manchuria was\u00a0completely absorbed\u00a0\u00a0in other cultures\u00a0and\u00a0has ceased to have a ready identity.<\/p>\n

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Also, in the case of Japan, imperialism in China was articulated through the support of a modern Manchu state, an attempt to create by fiat the Manchu Kingdom that had lost its support. We can see the tragedy of Pu-i\u00a0in the Japanese effort \u00a0to make use of the Manchu imperial past. It was part of the expansion into China, but that was linked to the adoption of Manchu governance as part of modernization.\u00a0But I wonder whether the fascination with Manchuria had a bit to do with Japanese admiration for this non-Chinese tribe that had so well digested Chinese bureaucratic culture and so effectively modernized its military in the 17th century. It is in this sense that Manchuria is the hidden civilization of modernity.<\/div>\n

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Manchuria: The Hidden Face of East Asian Civilization\u00a0   We tend to overlook the importance of Manchuria in East Asia. It is the case of a country that was so successful that it put itself out of business and literally disappeared as a cultural and political entity. Manchuria was the most powerful nation in the …