Prasenjit Duara

Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future

Crisis of Global Modernity

Prasenjit Duara offers the first systematic account of the relationship between the nation-state, nationalism, and the concept of linear history. Focusing primarily on China and including discussion of India, Duara argues that many historians of postcolonial nation-states have adopted a linear, evolutionary history of the Enlightenment/colonial model. As a result, they have written repressive, exclusionary, and incomplete accounts. The backlash against such histories has resulted in a tendency to view the past as largely constructed, imagined, or invented. In this book, Duara offers a way out of the impasse between constructionism and the evolving nation; he redefines history as a series of multiple, often conflicting narratives produced simultaneously at national, local, and transnational levels. In a series of closely linked case studies, he considers such examples as the very different histories produced by Chinese nationalist reformers and partisans of popular religions, the conflicting narratives of statist nationalists and of advocates of federalism in early twentieth-century China. He demonstrates the necessity of incorporating contestation, appropriation, repression, and the return of the repressed subject into any account of the past that will be meaningful to the present. Duara demonstrates how to write histories that resist being pressed into the service of the national subject in its progress—or stalled progress—toward modernity.

Questioning Narratives of Modern China

Rescuing History from the Nation

Brings together the most cutting edge thinking by major historians of decolonization to create a groundbreaking study of a subject central to recent global history.

Perspectives from Now and Then

Decolonization

In this powerful and provocative book, Prasenjit Duara uses the case of Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in northeast China from 1932-1945, to explore how such antinomies as imperialism and nationalism, modernity and tradition, and governmentality and exploitation interacted in the post-World War I period. His study of Manchukuo, which had a population of 40 million and was three times the area of Japan, catalyzes a broader understanding of new global trends that characterized much of the twentieth century. Asking why Manchukuo so desperately sought to appear sovereign, Duara examines the cultural and political resources it mobilized to make claims of sovereignty. He argues that Manchukuo, as a transparently constructed 'nation-state,' offers a unique historical laboratory for examining the utilization and transformation of circulating global forces mediated by the 'East Asian modern.' Sovereignty and AUthenticity not only shows how Manchukuo drew technologies of modern nationbuilding from China and Japan, but it provides a window into how some of these techniques and processes were obscured or naturalized in the more successful East Asian nation-states. With its sweepingly original theoretical and comparative perspectives on nationalism and imperialism, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary history.

Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern

Sovereignty and Authenticity

Andrew Sartori

Viren Murthy

A COMPANION TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of “the global” – in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of “the global” as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought. Complementing A Companion to Western Historical Thought, this book places non-Western perspectives on historiography at the center of discussion, helping scholars and students alike make sense of the discipline at the start of the twenty-first century.

A Companion to Global Historical Thought

"In the erudite essay that opens this forum, Prasenjit Duara turns to both indigenous thinkers and the premodern past for tools with which to think about Asia in a global age. Contemporary modalities of regional exchange – ‘weakly bounded, network-oriented, pluralistic, multitemporal’ – chime with earlier patterns of cultural circulation without state domination, giving rise to a prophetic vision of ‘Asia Redux’. This attempt to capture the contours of a (re)-emergent region was calculated to provide. And what a debate it kicks off. Wang Hui resolutely reframe imagining Asia as a political project on a world-historical canvas. Tansen Sen greatly complicates the map of intra-Asian commercial exchange in earlier times; Amitav Acharya outlines five competing conceptions of Asia in the domain of international relations alone.; Barbara Watson Andaya teases out the paradoxical way in which regional religions make clashing claims about Asian unity; and Rudolf Mrazek asks, what of the Asia that bleeds? what of exploitation and its spawn, the inglorious ‘built-ends’ of the global economy? The reward for those who read this collection straight through is a thrillingly cacophonous conversation about how to grasp Asia in our time.” —Karen E. Wigen, Stanford University “Will a re-emergent Asia extend the violent rivalries and inequalities of Western-dominated empires, nations and capital? Or can Asia somehow draw on a relatively more peaceful past of maritime trade, interlinked religions and circulations beyond states to think and make a very different sort of region and world? Prasenjit Duara and his interlocutors define this vital debate on Asia’s future through illuminating reflections on its recent and deep past. A touchstone for anyone concerned with a future shape of an inter-connected Asia newly possessed of wealth and power” —Engseng Ho, Duke University

Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times

Asia Redux

Chinaâe(tm)s history tends to be studied from a national perspective only. The Global and Regional in Chinaâe(tm)s Nation-Formation attempts to train our eyes to see the picture of China less as a self-contained entity, a "geobody", than as part of a broader set of global and regional processes; from the "outside-in". It covers the major historical problems of China in the twentieth century, namely imperialism, nationalism, state-building, religion and the role of history Part I views imperialism and nationalism in China from the perspective of global and regional circulations and interactions. It also examines the changing role of history over the twentieth century from the same perspective. Part II focuses on how myth, religion and Chinese conceptions of society and polity are re-shaped by external influences and forces, as well as how these internal practices themselves shape the external impact. Part III is a comparative section, examining how global processes become unique developments in China. The Global and Regional in Chinaâe(tm)s Nation-Formation is an ideal resource for anyone studying Chinaâe(tm)s history, society and culture.

The Global and Regional in China's Nation-formation

A COMPANION TO GLOBAL HISTORICAL THOUGHT A Companion to Global Historical Thought Edited by Prasenjit Duara, Viren Murthy, and Andrew Sartori A Companion to Global Historical Thought provides an overview of the development of historical thinking from the earliest times to the present, directly addressing issues of historiography in a globalized context. Questions concerning the global dissemination of historical writing and the relationship between historiography and other ways of representing the past have become important not only in the academic study of history, but also in public arenas in many countries. With contributions from leading international scholars, the book considers the problem of “the global” — in the multiplicity of traditions of narrating the past; in the global dissemination of modern historical writing; and of “the global” as a concept animating historical imaginations. It explores the different intellectual approaches that have shaped the discipline of history, and the challenges posed by modernity and globalization, while illustrating the shifts in thinking about time and the emergence of historical thought. Complementing A Companion to Western Historical Thought, this book places non-Western perspectives on historiography at the center of discussion, helping scholars and students alike make sense of the discipline at the start of the twenty-first century.

Arun Bala

The European 'dark ages' in the millennium 500 to 1500 CE was a bright age of brilliant scientific achievements in China, India and the Middle East. The contributors to this volume address its implications for comparative and connective science studies.

Comparative and Connective Perspectives

The Bright Dark Ages

China’s history tends to be studied from a national perspective only. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation attempts to train our eyes to see the picture of China less as a self-contained entity, a "geobody", than as part of a broader set of global and regional processes; from the "outside-in". It covers the major historical problems of China in the twentieth century, namely imperialism, nationalism, state-building, religion and the role of history Part I views imperialism and nationalism in China from the perspective of global and regional circulations and interactions. It also examines the changing role of history over the twentieth century from the same perspective. Part II focuses on how myth, religion and Chinese conceptions of society and polity are re-shaped by external influences and forces, as well as how these internal practices themselves shape the external impact. Part III is a comparative section, examining how global processes become unique developments in China. The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation is an ideal resource for anyone studying China’s history, society and culture.

Prasenjit Duara

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