Nationalism’s Appeal

There were at least three reasons for the upsurge of nationalism in Asia. First and foremost, nationalism provided the most effective means of organizing anti-imperialist resistance both to direct foreign rule and to indirect Western domination. Second, nationalism called for fundamental changes and challenged old political and social practices and beliefs. As in Russia after the Crimean War, in Turkey after the Ottoman Empire’s collapse, and in Japan after the Meiji Restoration, the nationalist creed after World War I went hand in hand with acceptance of modernization by the educated elites. Modernization promised changes that would enable old societies to compete effectively with the world’s leading nations. Educated elites thus used modernization to contest the influence and power of conservative traditionalists. Third, nationalism offered a vision of a free and prosperous future, and provided an ideology to ennoble the sacrifices the struggle would require.

Nationalism also had a dark side. As in Europe (see “The Growing Appeal of Nationalism” in Chapter 24), Asian nationalists developed a strong sense of “we” and “they.” “They” were often the enemy. European imperialists were just such a “they,” and nationalist feeling generated the will to destroy European empires and challenge foreign economic domination. But, as in Europe, Asian nationalism also stimulated bitter conflicts and wars between peoples, in three different ways.

First, as when the ideology of nationalism first developed in Europe in the early 1800s (see “The Growing Appeal of Nationalism” in Chapter 24), Asian (and African) elites were often forced to create a national identity in colonies that Europeans had artificially created, or in multiethnic countries held together by authoritarian leaders but without national identities based on shared ethnicities or histories. Second, nationalism stimulated conflicts between relatively homogeneous peoples in large states, rallying, for example, Chinese against Japanese and vice versa. Third, nationalism often heightened tensions between ethnic or religious groups within states, very much like what occurred in the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires before 1914. In nearly all countries there were ancient ethnic and religious differences and rivalries. Imperial rulers of colonial powers (like the British and French) and local authoritarian rulers (like the Austrian emperor, the Russian tsar, and the Chinese emperor) exploited these ethnic and religious differences to “divide and conquer” the peoples in their empires. They favored one ethnic or religious group over another or used a police or army unit formed from one group to put down rebellion by another group. Such tactics enabled the imperial power to keep the people divided as they fought among themselves rather than uniting against their rulers. When the rigid imperial rule ended, the different national, religious, or even ideological (Communists versus capitalists) factions turned against each other, each seeking to either seize control of or divide the existing state, and to dominate the enemy “they” within its borders. This habit of thinking in terms of “we” versus “they” was, and still is, a difficult frame of mind to abandon, and these divisions made it difficult for nationalist leaders to unite people under a common national identity.

Nationalism’s appeal in Asia was not confined to territories under direct European rule. The extraordinary growth of international trade after 1850 had drawn millions of Asian peasants and shopkeepers into the Western-dominated world economy, disrupting local markets and often creating hostility toward European businessmen. Moreover, Europe and the United States had forced even the most solid Asian states, China and Japan, to accept unequal treaties (see “The ‘Opening’ of Japan” in Chapter 26) and humiliating limitations on their sovereignty. Thus the nationalist promise of genuine economic independence and true political equality with the West appealed as powerfully in old but weak states like China as in colonial territories like British India.