National Studies and Global Entanglements: The Reenvisioning of China in the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

This essay examines the development of a field of study, guoxue or National Studies, that commanded much interest and prestige in the academic world of Republican China (1911–1949). The study of Chinese history and classics was traditionally associated with an esteemed genealogy, a gentry-elite background, or channels of upward mobility. In the early twentieth century, this field was profoundly transformed by global exchanges and interactions, and thus acquired new meanings in global contexts. International exchange not only came to constitute an integral part of a broad range of scientific disciplines of foreign provenance, reaching from astronomy to zoology, but even began to influence the study of the Chinese classical tradition. The very notion of a “Chinese national learning” outside of its classical tradition was in fact the result of a global system of knowledge production (Yeh 2006). Thus, the exchanges between various kinds of historical scholarship, in this instance between China, Japan, Europe (particularly France and Germany), and the United States, came to shape the study of China, in China and abroad. As a result, the development of National Studies in China took place within the framework of global academic interactions and was linked to an extended scholarly exchange between intellectuals from different nations for several decades.