Gries / 2
and the seizing of Hong Kong and Macao all refer to the “Century of Humiliation” (bainian guochi)
from the mid-19
th
to mid-20
th
centuries, a period that begins with defeat in the First Opium War,
and the ceding of Hong Kong to the British in 1842. When it ends, as we shall see, is less clear.
Major wars in the period include the two Opium Wars of 1840-42 and 1856-60, the Sino-Japanese
“Jiawu” War of 1894-95, the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, the “War of Resistance against Japan” of
1931/37
2
-1945, and (for some) the Korean War of 1950-53.
THE PAST IN THE PRESENT
What impact does this past “Century” have on Chinese nationalism today? More broadly,
what is the relationship between the past and present day nationalisms around the world?
One common view holds that the past determines the present. For instance, the Kosovo
conflict of 1999 was frequently depicted as “intractable” because of Muslim–Christian enmity
dating back to the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 (610 years earlier!), when the Muslim Turks defeated
the Christian Kingdom of Serbia. In this view, Muslim–Christian conflict today is, therefore,
inevitable.
Such “pastism” is also prevalent in studies of China. For instance, in his 1992 The Tyranny of
History, W.J.F. Jenner similarly asserts that “China is caught in a … prison of history.” The weight
of the past, it seems, is particularly heavy in China. Jenner pessimistically predicted, incorrectly it
turns out, that the “Party is over.”
3
Neither the CCP nor Chinese Civilization could last long; the
weight of the past was simply too great.
Another widespread view maintains precisely the opposite: it is historians and nationalists
writing in the present that determine the past. Eric Hobsbawm has argued that national histories
are “invented.”
4
Nationalist historians render complex pasts into Manichean “histories” pitting a
good “us” against an evil “them.”
5
As Elie Kedourie noted over 40 years ago, “Nationalists make
use of the past in order to subvert the present.”
6
In this view, it is not the Battle of Kosovo itself
that has causal weight. Instead, it is the skillful manipulation of the Battle by present day
nationalists like Slobodan Milosevic that best explains the Kosovo conflict.
Such “presentism” is prevalent in contemporary studies of China. Following in
Hobsbawm’s footsteps, China scholars have largely stressed how Chinese historians “invent”
histories and traditions to serve contemporary ends. Cultural critic Geremie Barmé goes so far as
to assert that “Every policy shift in recent Chinese history has involved the rehabilitation, re-
evaluation and revision of history and historical figures.”
7
In his fascinating study of the Boxer
Rebellion of 1900, historian Paul Cohen similarly highlights Chinese historians who “draw on [the
Convention