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A Case Study of Historiography of Event: ‘1840’-A Significant Year for the Incorporation of China
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1978; MacFarquhar, 1980: 71; Metzger, 1977: 149; Morishima, 1982; Sun, 1993: 215, 217).
Classically, the tradition-modernity ideal-typical polarities were also applied to interpret the economic development and social transformation in various societies, including modernized ‘latecomers’ in the Sinic world of East Asia. These tradition-modernity ideal-typical polarities were elaborated as: undifferentiated homogeneity-differentiated heterogeneity (Spencer), Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft (Tönnies), status-contract (Maine), mechanic solidarity-organic solidarity (Durkheim), sacred-secular (Becker), primary group-secondary group (Cooley), agrarian-industrial, and pattern variables (Parsons), etc.
According to Levy, a latecomer’s traditional social structures can be dissolved by a ‘universal social solvent’-exogenous modernization (Levy, 1972). When a latecomer encounters with carriers of modernization (no matter through trade, military conflict, economic assistance, missionary, or cultural and educational exchange, etc.) she would be challenged immediately by superior modern technology and science. The resistance, acceptance, and introduction of modern technology and science would cause disintegration of a latecomer’s traditional society and culture, like what happened to China, and require further introductions of modern institution and legal system, modern market mechanism, and modern cultural value, etc. (especially European/American ones) to form a new functional integration of Parsons’ structural imperatives (economic, social, political, and cultural ones) of a latecomer’s society.
As Wittfogel and Eisenstadt pointed out, there only existed the cyclical and ‘secondary’ social change but never happened the permanent and ‘primary’ one in traditional China (Wittfogel, 1958; Eisenstadt, 1963). The Chinese economy merely expanded to an incredible size and would approach Mark Elvin’s ‘high-level equilibrium trap’ at the end of the nineteenth century if there were no exogenous impacts from the Western countries. Chinese modernization was an exogenous modernization, which brought about permanent instead of cyclical social change. China encountered with modernity in the form of various impingement of the West.
An exogenous modernization could be a ‘defensive modernization’ (C. Blake’s term), such as Chinese and Japanese modernization. The challenge of Western ‘strange technology’ manifested by British gunboats knocked the door of Chinese Empire in the 1840s and 1850s, and pushed what W. W. Rostow called the ‘reactive nationalism’. The response had developed through three stages. The first response was the Western Affairs Movement (yanwu yundong)/the Self-strengthening Movement (zichang yundong) of the technical level. The second response was Reform and the Chinese Republic, modernization of the institutional level. The third response was the New Culture Movement of the behavior/ideological level, which contributed to the introduction of the ideologies of liberalism and radicalism/socialism into China.
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1978; MacFarquhar, 1980: 71; Metzger, 1977: 149; Morishima, 1982; Sun, 1993:
215, 217).
Classically, the tradition-modernity ideal-typical polarities were also applied to
interpret the economic development and social transformation in various
societies, including modernized ‘latecomers’ in the Sinic world of East Asia.
These tradition-modernity ideal-typical polarities were elaborated as:
undifferentiated homogeneity-differentiated heterogeneity (Spencer),
Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft (Tönnies), status-contract (Maine), mechanic
solidarity-organic solidarity (Durkheim), sacred-secular (Becker), primary
group-secondary group (Cooley), agrarian-industrial, and pattern variables
(Parsons), etc.
According to Levy, a latecomer’s traditional social structures can be dissolved by
a ‘universal social solvent’-exogenous modernization (Levy, 1972). When a
latecomer encounters with carriers of modernization (no matter through trade,
military conflict, economic assistance, missionary, or cultural and educational
exchange, etc.) she would be challenged immediately by superior modern
technology and science. The resistance, acceptance, and introduction of modern
technology and science would cause disintegration of a latecomer’s traditional
society and culture, like what happened to China, and require further
introductions of modern institution and legal system, modern market mechanism,
and modern cultural value, etc. (especially European/American ones) to form a
new functional integration of Parsons’ structural imperatives (economic, social,
political, and cultural ones) of a latecomer’s society.
As Wittfogel and Eisenstadt pointed out, there only existed the cyclical and
‘secondary’ social change but never happened the permanent and ‘primary’ one
in traditional China (Wittfogel, 1958; Eisenstadt, 1963). The Chinese economy
merely expanded to an incredible size and would approach Mark Elvin’s ‘high-
level equilibrium trap’ at the end of the nineteenth century if there were no
exogenous impacts from the Western countries. Chinese modernization was an
exogenous modernization, which brought about permanent instead of cyclical
social change. China encountered with modernity in the form of various
impingement of the West.
An exogenous modernization could be a ‘defensive modernization’ (C. Blake’s
term), such as Chinese and Japanese modernization. The challenge of Western
‘strange technology’ manifested by British gunboats knocked the door of Chinese
Empire in the 1840s and 1850s, and pushed what W. W. Rostow called the
‘reactive nationalism’. The response had developed through three stages. The
first response was the Western Affairs Movement (yanwu yundong)/the Self-
strengthening Movement (zichang yundong) of the technical level. The second
response was Reform and the Chinese Republic, modernization of the
institutional level. The third response was the New Culture Movement of the
behavior/ideological level, which contributed to the introduction of the
ideologies of liberalism and radicalism/socialism into China.
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