248. ASIANISMS: REGIONAL COOPERATION AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN 20TH CENTURY ASIA
248.
Title : ASIANISMS: REGIONAL COOPERATION AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN 20TH CENTURY ASIA
Institution : Asia Initiative at the International University of Bremen
Chair : Paul H Kratoska
Convener : Harald Fischer-Tine
Discussant : Marc Frey
Panel Abstract:
Historians have emphasized in recent decades that the concept of Asia was invented by the West. Nonetheless, during the course of the 20th century it has been filled with concrete meaning. State elites, intellectuals, non-governmental organizations and other historical actors from the arbitrarily labeled region repeatedly rallied under the Asian umbrella for varying purposes. The political ideologies subsumed under the heading Pan-Asianism - remarkably popular in the period between 1920 and 1950 - represent only one of the many forms of expression of such an Asianist approach. As early as in the late 19th century, Indian and Japanese intellectuals had posited the existence of a common Asian culture that was distinctively different from the materialist West. The need to emancipate themselves from a perceived Euro-American (or communist) hegemony in various fields continued to be one of the most momentous motivations for the emergence of Asian collaboration and transnational identity building. The establishment of Asian Games in 1949, the founding of macro-regional organizations like ASEAN or SAARC, the debate on Asian values and their effect on the economy in the 1990s, are only some particularly striking examples. However, Asianisms have always existed in tension with nationalist and regionalist or even imperialist aspirations. This became especially evident in the case of the problems raised by the presence of huge Chinese and Indian Diasporas in various South East-Asian countries. On another level, the appropriation of South-East Asia as Greater India that was advocated by a certain current in Indian nationalism in the 1930s to foster Asian integration or the Japanese rhetoric of an Asian sphere of prosperity during WW II were barely disguising the hegemonic claims of the respective countries. Moreover, the legacy of Japanese occupation has also been considered one of the major obstacles for a more far-reaching Asian integration. It is only recently that attempts at constructing a common Asian past have begun. The proposed panel brings together scholars of history, anthropology and Asian Studies interested in the various dimensions of such indigenous appropriations of the concept of Asia. It tries to explore the specific historical constellations as well as the economic, cultural and political imperatives that made it seem opportune to resort to a macro-regional frame of reference rather than to a national or micro-regional one. At the same time, it also seeks to elucidate the existing tensions with alternative frameworks of identity and the limitations of visions of Asian solidarity.
Participant:
Nicola - Spakowski
Paper Title : Constructing the history of a potential future „East Asian history“ as a new
field of research in Chinese historiography
Abstract :
Inspired by recent political developments (ASEAN + 3, the East Asian summit of December 2005) and debates on the possibility of an East Asian Union Chinese historians have started to explore the history of East Asia as a region and especially the continuities and discontinuities of East Asian regional integration and cooperation. Contributions to this new field of historical research basically take two directions: they either focus on long-term cultural commonalities as a basis of integration or on the political conflicts that shaped East Asian history in the 20th century as an obstacle to integration. Whereas the first strand of discussion has nationalist undertones and tries to legitimize a leading role of China in a future East Asian Union, the latter engages in transnational (China, Korea, Japan) dialogue and cooperation and rather works towards the construction of a transnational memory. The paper aims to characterize these various efforts and trace their links to broader Chinese and international debates on regionalism, the rise of East Asia and Asias place in global history.
Sunil - Amrith
Paper Title : Asianism and Cosmopolitanism
Abstract :
My paper will contrast official, state-centred visions of ‘Asianism' which proliferated after 1945 - which tended to reify race, community and the relations between nations - with the more fluid cosmopolitan practices which arose from lived experience in Southeast Asia's urban centres.
Harald Fischer-Tine
Paper Title : ‘Young Asia' or ‘Greater India'? - Indian Nationalists and their Diverging Visions
of Pan-Asian Unity (c. 1905-1940)
Abstract :
In the period between the end of the Russo-Japanese War 1905 and the outbreak of World War II, Indian politicians and nationalist thinkers promoted the idea of Asian solidarity in distinct and sometimes even contradictory ways. On the one hand, leading intellectuals like Rabindranath Tagore posited a shared ‘Asian culture', based on a common spiritual and non-violent outlook of the ‘peoples of the East' which supposedly distinguished them from the technologically advanced but morally degenerated nations of the West. Spokesmen of a more assertive, ‘muscular' Hindu nationalism, on the other hand, rather invoked India's past glory as colonizer and highlighted her allegedly overwhelming cultural influence on vast parts of Asia. Interestingly, the proponents of this vision of a ‘Greater India' often tried to portray the South Asian labour diaspora in various Asian countries as the ‘foreign legion of India', thereby further underscoring their claims to a future Indian ascendancy over the area. A third current of Pan-Asianism stressed in turn the modern and secular forces of ‘Young Asia' and saw the main challenge of an Asian federation in the combined contestation of ‘Euro-American' economic, military and intellectual hegemony. The aim of the paper is two fold: First, it will provide an in-depth analysis of the main strands of Pan-Asianist discourse in India during the heyday of the independence movement, flesh out the motives of their proponents and explore the political strategies they triggered. Secondly, it will further an understanding of these diverging visions of Asian integration by contextualising them both in the wider framework of competing nationalisms in India and in the shifting global political and intellectual constellations of the time. It has often been overlooked by historians that at least some ‘Asianism' have not only political and cultural aspects but also an economic dimension. This paper will examine the history of commodification of timber and mobilization of labour with special reference to the interaction between Japanese and Chinese transnational corporate networks in Southeast Asia. Focusing on the regional development of the plywood industry since the 1960s, this paper looks chronologically at the historical encounters in which transnational capital and commodity chains have been formed in the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. The issues at stake are the synergy between Japanese and Chinese entrepreneurship and the emergence of the culturally specific "Asian" capitalist forms in the process of corporate globalization. This study attempts to link an exploration of the macro-level business symbiosis with an analysis of micro-level ethnographical realities in Southeast Asia and aims to tactically blur the epistemological boundary between Southeast Asia and East Asia by bringing them closer together in a single analytical arena.
Noboru Ishikawa
Abstract :
It has often been overlooked by historians that at least some ‘Asianismsâ€TM have not only political and cultural aspects but also an economic dimension. This paper will examine the history of commodification of timber and mobilization of labor with special reference to the interaction between Japanese and Chinese transnational corporate networks in Southeast Asia. Focusing on the regional development of the plywood industry since the 1960s, this paper looks chronologically at the historical encounters in which transnational capital and commodity chains have been formed in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The issues at stake are the synergy between Japanese and Chinese entrepreneurship and the emergence of the culturally specific “Asian†capitalist forms in the process of corporate globalization. This study attempts to link an exploration of the macro-level business symbiosis with an analysis of micro-level ethnographic realities in Southeast Asia and aims to tactically blur the epistemological boundary between Southeast Asia and East Asia by bringing them closer together in a single analytical arena.
