User:Madalibi/Social Darwinism in East Asia

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See also: Social Darwinism

Shaped Pan-Asianism and nationalism in the the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in East Asia.

Social Darwinism was the first Western intellectual theory to make a strong impact on China.[1]

Background of rapid social change, political unrest, and foreign encroachment.

Was a crucial intellectual movement with cross-regional ramifications, since East Asian intellectuals traveled between countries and read and translated each other's works. The cross-regional ramifications of social Darwinism in East Asia can be illustrated by Vietnamese Phan Bội Châu's History of the Loss of Vietnam (Việt Nam vong quốc sử), which Phan wrote and published in Japan under the encouragement of Liang Qichao, an exiled Chinese intellectual, and which was later widely read in Korea, first in classical Chinese, and then in vernacular Korean translation.[2]

The common point of East Asian Social Darwinism was the emphasis on the interests of the group above those of the individual. This was taken as the pre-requisite of a successful national struggle. In East Asian countries, Social Darwinism provided intellectuals with a powerful tool to understand why their nation either had fallen or was in danger of falling to more powerful nations. Thinkers thought that the west had temporarily proven its superiority in the "struggle between races," but that it could be overtaken through emulation. Starting in the 1920s, however, other intellectuals started to criticize Social Darwinian ideas, arguing that they were exploitative for the masses, and could lead to collaboration with imperialist powers in the name of progress.

Enthusastic advocates used Darwinian to support their own agendas, which spanned from authoritarian statism to cooperative socialism. Eugenicists, laissez-faire economists, and advocates of a strong state all found Spencerian ideas attractive.

Translations and reinterpretations[edit]

"Because East Asian interpretations of Spencer's thought often downplayed its relentless determininism in favor of a more optimistic voluntarism, social Darwinism as the Vietnamese received it also presented a path to national revival.... This recasting of the transcendent power of the human will allowed East Asian reformers and, later, their Vietnamese counterparts to look past the deterministic and impersonal socio-historical forces fundamental to Western conceptions of social Darwinism and formulate a voluntarist Darwinian prescription for social evolution."[3]

Japan[edit]

Soon after the beginning of the Meiji reforms in 1868, Japan created institutions modeled after European universities.[4] On the year of its foundation in 1877, Tokyo Imperial University invited American zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse (1838–1925) to teach modern biology.[5] From 1877 to 1879 and again in 1882 and 1883, Morse disseminated Darwin's new evolutionary theories in Japan through both formal classes and public lectures.[6] Morse's lectures were transcribed and translated by Ishikawa Chiyomatsu (1861–1935), who published them as Animal Evolutionism (Dōbutsu shinkaron 動物進化論) in 1883.[7] On Morse's initiative, the young Ernest Fenollosa (1853–1908) was invited to teach political science, philosophy, and economics at the university in 1878.[8] Fenollosa gave a central place in his teaching to Herbert Spencer's ideas, of which he was very fond.[9]

Social scientist and dean of Tokyo University Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916) heard Morse's lectures and was attracted to the social implications of Darwin's ideas.[10] He had supported the Freedom and People's Rights Movement in the 1870s, but after the Meiji government suppressed it, Katō used Social Darwinian doctrines to argue that the interests of the group should be put above those of individuals.[11] In his New Theory of Human Rights (Jinken Shinsetsu 人權新說; 1882), he advocated strengthening the Japanese state to make it the "fittest."[11] He has been called "the leading social Darwinist in Meiji Japan."[12]

Korea[edit]

Social Darwinian ideas were introduced to Korea in the 1880s by intellectuals who had studied in Japan.[13] Their first two proponents were Yu Kil-chun (1856–1914) and Yun Chi-ho (1864–1945), who both went to Japan in the spring of 1881 as members of Eo Yun-jung's (어윤중, 魚允中; 1848–1896) Courtiers' Observation Mission (조사 시찰단, 朝士視察團) the Korean royal court dispatched to observe the Meiji reforms.[14] Both adopted Social Darwinism in different ways, Yun from a Christian point of view, and Yu by integrating ideas of struggle into his Confucian worldview.[15] In early 1883 Yu Kil-chun wrote Treatise on the Main Tendencies of the World [Segye daese pyeon, 세계대세편, 世界大勢編] and a Treatise on Competition [Gyeongjaengron, 경쟁론, 競爭論] both of which were imbued with Social Darwinist ideas.[16] However, these works remained unpublished.[17] Influenced by the thought of Katō Hiroyuki, Yu understood "state, nation, and race as social organisms" that struggled with other nations for survival.[13] Yu and Yun did not manage to popularize Social Darwinism in Korea.[17] Yun mentioned such ideas in editorials published in The Independent (1896–1899), but not enough to disseminate these ideas widely.[17]

Liang Qichao was first mentioned in the 15 February 1898 issue of the Journal of Great Joseon's Independence Club (Daejoseon Tongnip Hyeophoe Hoebo, 大朝鮮獨立協會會報), a monthly published in classical Chinese by the Independence Club (1896–1898).[18] An eloquent editorial "On Patriotism" that Liang wrote for the Qingyibao (清議報) – a magazine he edited in Yokohama from December 1898 to December 1901 – was published in its original classical Chinese in the moderate Hwangseong Sinmun in March 1899, and in vernacular Korean in the Tonging Sinmun in July of the same year.[19] Until 1906, few of Liang's other writings were translated. From 1906 to 1910, however, Korean monthly journals run by academic societies published 33 of his texts, mostly in mixed Chinese and Korean scripts.[20] Many of these articles were selected from Liang's newspaper articles and editorials that he wrote between 1896 and 1898 – which had been made available by the publication of his Yingbingshi wenji in Shanghai in 1902 – when his thinking was less seeped by Social Darwinian ideas than it later would.[21]

Social Darwinian ideas became popular among Korean intellectuals starting with the publication of Liang Qichao's Selected Writings from the Ice-Drinker's Studio (Yinbingshi zhuanji) in 1904 (?).[17] Liang's works, many of which were translated into vernacular Korean, became the most popular source of information on Social Darwinism for Korean intellectuals in the first decade of the twentieth century.[22] After 1910 the Japanese colonial government banned Liang's works as "potentially subversive."[22] As a rising number of Koreans—especially Christian converts and students in Japan—mastered Western languages and Japanese, they started to read European and American works in the original or in Japanese translation.[22]

China[edit]

Social Darwinian ideas were first introduced into China by Yan Fu's (1854–1921) translation of Thomas Huxley's Evolution and Ethics (1893) as Tianyan lun 天演論 ("On Evolution") in 1898.[23] In this short work, Huxley had criticized Herbert Spencer's application of an evolutionary logic to human ethics. Yet because Yan Fu was primarily concerned with the wealth and power of the Chinese nation, he tried "to find in the Darwinian cosmos prescriptions for human behavior."[24] Throughout his translation, Yan inserted his own defense of Spencer's ideas against Huxley's points.[25] He used Huxley's pamphlet to convince his readers of the unity of mankind rather than a world radiating around Confucian civilization.[26] Yan thus committed himself to the social values implicit in Darwinism.[27] These values were of course revolutionary to China.[28]

Yan's translation was to be "his most resounding success" and had a "resounding impact" on young Chinese thinkers of the turn of the century, who were attracted by the "strident slogans of social Darwinism" and by the book's concern for "self-strengthening and the preservation of the race."[29]

Vietnam[edit]

Social Darwinism arrived in Vietnam "around the end of the nineteenth century" through Chinese writings, notably those of Chinese reformers Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao.[30] A movement for "Eastern study" encouraged Vietnamese youth to study in Japan, where they also got into contact with Chinese works that promoted social Darwinian ideas, as well as the ideas of Japanese thinkers who had led their country to rapid modernization in the past decades.[31][clarification needed]

As in other East Asian countries, the doctrine's portrayal of national struggle caught the imagination of Vietnamese intellectuals, notably revolutionaries Phan Chu Trinh (1872–1926) and Phan Bội Châu (1867–1940).[32] Far from seeing Social Darwinism in fatalistic terms, they used it to understand "the rules of the game by which nations who sought to survive had to play."[33] Spencer's critique of traditional society gave these reformers tools to understand why Vietnam was dominated by France and how they could get out of this predicament.[31]

The Civilization of New Learning (Van minh tan hoc sach), an anonymous manifesto that launched the Vietnamese Reform movement in 1904, was the first Vietnamese document to mention Herbert Spencer.[34] Deploying "Spencerian rhetoric" and themes typical of Chinese and Japanese reformers, this pamphlet sharply criticized Vietnamese society's failure to innovate, yet remained optimistic about the future, proposing to emulate the achievements of the West as a way to get rid of French colonialism.[35] This spirit shaped much of the activities of Vietnamese reformers.[36] In 1905 one of these reformers, Phan Bội Châu, met with Liang Qichao in Tokyo, where they discussed the plight of Vietnam.[37] Saddened to hear how Vietnam had fallen to France, Liang encouraged Phan to write about this loss.[37] The result was Phan's History of the Loss of Vietnam (Việt Nam vong quốc sử), which Liang published in his journal Xinmin Congbao later in 1905.[38]

Check sources in Marr 1981, survival of the fittest: 61, 92, 103, 107, 117, 118, 213, 233-34, 255, 256, 273, 321, 414; pp. 128 (Nguyen An Ninh attacks SD), 128-29 (SD fails to condemn oppression), 315-16 (Marxism-Leninism oppose SD); Tran Huu Do relies on: 127, 289-90; Vietnamese collaborators employ: 294-95; perceived differently from European variety: 297-302 (includes bourgeois Vietnamese interpret); Vietnamese uncomfortable about: 317, 414, 415. Herbert Spencer: 256, 316, 317n, 356.

Relevant links: Duy Tân hội

Translations[edit]

Timeline[edit]

Year Japan Korea China Vietnam
1870s
1880s
  • 1881: the Japanese translation of Edward Morse's 1877 lectures is published and brings Darwinian ideas to a broader audience.[39]
  • 1884: the first Japanese translation of Herbert Spencer's works appears.[39]
  • 1882: Yu Kil-chun (1856–1914) returns from Japan and introduces Social Darwinist ideas to Korea.[40]
1890s
1900s
  • 1904–1907: the works of Herbert Spencer and Thomas Huxley are translated into Korean.[41]
  • 1906: Phan Bội Châu's History of the Loss of Vietnam is widely read by educated Koreans; it is translated into a mixed Sino-Korean script later that year, and into vernacular Korean in late 1907.[42]
  • 1907: translation into Korean of Liang Qichao's Biography of Three Heroes who Restored Italy (意大利建國三傑傳), a work on heroes of the Italian Revolution that Liang had published in 1902 in the New Citizen.[43]
  • 1904: an anonymous pamphlet titled The Civilization of New Learning (Van minh tan hoc sach), which launched the Reform Movement, is the first Vietnamese document to mention Herbert Spencer.[44]
1910s
1920s

References[edit]

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Pusey 1983[page needed].
  2. ^ Tai 1992, pp. 21–22 (publication of Phan's book and link with Liang Qichao); Tikhonov 2010, pp. 150–51 (popularity of Phan's book in Korea).
  3. ^ Bradley 2009, p. 18.
  4. ^ Svarverud 2001, p. 108.
  5. ^ Svarverud 2001, pp. 108–9.
  6. ^ Meech 1990, p. 1 (dates); Svarverud 2001, p. 109 (rest of the information).
  7. ^ Terazawa 2005, p. 98, note 6.
  8. ^ Meech 1990, pp. 3–4.
  9. ^ Benesch 2011, p. 133.
  10. ^ Svarverud 2001, p. 109.
  11. ^ a b Huh 2001, p. 45.
  12. ^ Davis 1996, p. vii.
  13. ^ a b Shin 2006, pp. 29–30.
  14. ^ Huh 2001, pp. 41 (Yu and Yun as "the first to receive — and more deeply than other Korean contemporaries [to be] influenced by — Social Darwinism") and 43 (mission to Japan).
  15. ^ Huh 2001, p. 42.
  16. ^ Huh 2001, p. 45.
  17. ^ a b c d Huh 2001, p. 58.
  18. ^ Tikhonov 2010, pp. 19–20 (mention of Liang Qichao) and 226 (characteristics of the Journal as a publication).
  19. ^ Tikhonov 2010, p. 83.
  20. ^ Tikhonov 2010, p. 85.
  21. ^ Tikhonov 2010, p. 86.
  22. ^ a b c Tikhonov 2001, p. 81.
  23. ^ Schwartz 1964, pp. 98–99.
  24. ^ Schwartz 1964, p. 101.
  25. ^ Schwartz 1964, p. 103.
  26. ^ Schwartz 1964, p. 102.
  27. ^ Schwartz 1964, p. 111.
  28. ^ Schwartz 1964, pp. 111–12.
  29. ^ Schwartz 1964, pp. 99–100.
  30. ^ Taylor 2001, p. 12 (quotation); Bradley 2009, p. 17.
  31. ^ a b Bradley 2009, p. 17.
  32. ^ Taylor 2001, pp. 12–13.
  33. ^ Taylor 2001, p. 12.
  34. ^ Tai 1992, pp. 20–21 (launched reform movement, first Vietnamese work to mention Spencer); Bradley 2009, p. 17 (launched Vietnam's reform movement).
  35. ^ Bradley 2009, pp. 17–19.
  36. ^ Bradley 2009, p. 18.
  37. ^ a b c Tai 1992, p. 21.
  38. ^ a b Tai 1992, pp. 21–22.
  39. ^ a b c d Weiner 1997, p. 105.
  40. ^ Shin 2006, pp. 29–30.
  41. ^ Shin 2006, p. 30.
  42. ^ Tikhonov 2010, pp. 150–51.
  43. ^ Shin 2006, p. 30 (Korean translation); Tang 1996, p. 88 (date and place of original publication).
  44. ^ Tai 1992, pp. 20–21.

Works cited[edit]

  • Bradley, Mark Philip (2009), Vietnam at War, Oxford and London: Oxford University Press.
  • Benesch, Oleg (2011), "Bushido: The Creation of a Martial Ethic in Late Meiji Japan" (PDF), PhD diss., University of British Columbia.
  • Davis, Winston (1996), The Moral and Political Naturalism of Baron Katō Hiroyuki, Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, ISBN 1557290520 (paperback).  – via Questia (subscription required)
  • Huh, Dong-hyun (2001), "Forms of Acceptance of Social Darwinism by the Korean Progressives of the 1880–1890s: on the Materials of Yu Giljun and Yun Ch'iho", International Journal of Korean Studies, 2, translated by Vladimir Tikhonov: 41–63.
  • Marr, David G. (1981), Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920–1945, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0520050819.
  • Meech, Julia (1990), "Reflections on Fenollosa and the Heiji Battle Scrolls" (PDF), Orientations, 21 (9): 1–9.
  • Pusey, James Reeve (1983), China and Charles Darwin, Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University; distributed by Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674117352.
  • Schwartz, Benjamin I. (1964), In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674446518 (cloth) ISBN 0674446526 (paper).
  • Shin, Gi-wook (2006), Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy, Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804754071 (cloth); ISBN 080475408X (paperback).
  • Svarverud, Rune (2001), "Social Darwinism and China's Relationship with Korea and Japan in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century", International Journal of Korean Studies, 2: 99–122.
  • Tai, Hue-Tam Ho (1992), Radicalism and the Origins of the Vietnamese Revolution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674746120.
  • Tang, Xiaobing (1996), Global Space and the Nationalist Discourse of Modernity: the Historical Thinking of Liang Qichao, Stanford: Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804725837.
  • Taylor, Philip (2001), Fragments of the Present: Searching for Modernity in Vietnam's South, Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, ISBN 0824824172.
  • Terazawa, Yuki (2005), "Racializing Bodies Through Science in Meiji Japan: The Rise of Race-Based Research in Gynecology", in Low, Morris (ed.), Building a Modern Japan: Science, Technology, and Medicine in the Meiji Era and Beyond, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 83–102, ISBN 1403968322.
  • Tikhonov, Vladimir (2001), "Social Darwinism in Korea and Its Influence on Early Modern Korean Buddhism", International Journal of Korean Studies, 2: 65–97.
  • Tikhonov, Vladimir (2010), Social Darwinism and Nationalism in Korea, the Beginnings (1880s–1910s): "Survival" as an Ideology of Korean Modernity, Leiden and Boston: Brill, ISBN 9789004185036.
  • Weiner, Michael (1997), "The Invention of Identity: Race and Nation in Pre-war Japan", The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan, London: C. Hurst & Co., pp. 96–117, ISBN 1850652872 (cased); ISBN 1850653534 (paper).

Further reading[edit]

  • Allen, J. Michael (2001), "Ambivalent Social Darwinism in Korea", International Journal of Korean Studies, 2: 1–24.
  • Cross, Sherrie (1996), "Prestige and Comfort: The Development of Social Darwinism in Early Meiji Japan, and the Role of Edward Sylvester Morse", Annals of Science, 53 (4): 323–44, doi:10.1080/00033799608560820.
  • Howland, Douglas (2000), "Society Reified: Herbert Spencer and Political Theory in Early Meiji Japan", Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42 (1): 67–86, doi:10.1017/S0010417500002607.
  • Kim, Gi-seung (2001), "Embracing and Overcoming Social Darwinism by Confucian Intellectuals in the [sic] Early 20th Century Korea", International Journal of Korean History, 2: 25–40.
  • Sumika, Masayoshi (2013a), "Nationalism, Religion, and Social Darwinism: Nation and Religion in the Works of Kato Genchi and Liang Qichao", Journal of Religious Studies (Shūkyō Kenkyū 宗教研究), 87 (376): 1–25 {{citation}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |journal= (help).
  • Sumika, Masayoshi (2013b), "Social Darwinism and Religion: The Cross-Cultural Experiences of Liang Qichao and Nitobe Inazo", Comparative Studies on Regional Powers, 13: 185–95.
  • Nagai, Michio (1954), "Herbert Spencer in Early Meiji Japan", The Far Eastern Quarterly, 14 (1): 55–64, doi:10.2307/2942228, JSTOR 2942228.
  • Nagazumi, Akira (1983), "The Diffusion of the Idea of Social Darwinism in East and Southeast Asia", Historia Scientiarum, 24: 1–18.
  • Shimao, Eikoh (1981), "Darwinism in Japan: 1877-1927", Annals of Science, 38 (1): 93–102, doi:10.1080/00033798100200131.
  • Thomas, Julie A. (2001), Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ISBN 0520228545.
  • Unoura, Hiroshi (1999), "Samurai Darwinism: Hiroyuki Katō and the reception of Darwin's theory in modern Japan from the 1880s to the 1900s", History and Anthropology, 11 (2–3): 235–55, doi:10.1080/02757206.1999.9960914.
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