|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Nationalism in Asia
| Article
# : |
19267 |
|
|
Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
|
| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
6,267 Words |
| Author
: |
Selig S. Harrison
Selig S. Harrison, a senior associate of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, has specialized in South
Asian affairs and American policy problems in Asia for forty
years as a foreign correspondent and author. He served as AP
correspondent in New Delhi from 1951 to 1954, returning as
South Asia bureau chief of the Washington Post from 1962 to
1965, and Northeast Asia bureau chief from 1968 to 1972. A
former managing editor of the New Republic, he has served as
senior fellow in charge of Asian studies at the Brookings
Institution, senior fellow at the East-West Center, and
professional lecturer in Asian studies at the Johns Hopkins
University School of Advanced International Studies. |
By and large, American policy in Asia since World War II has rested on the implicit assumption that nationalism is a passing phenomenon destined to wane in strength as the colonial past recedes and as modern technology releases ever more powerful transnational forces. Zbigniew Brzezinski has been a proponent of this view, contending that, in the "technetronic era" of satellite communication and jet aircraft, nationalism remains "a principal object, but no longer the vital subject, of dynamic processes" and is progressively diluted as it becomes increasingly anachronistic.
This nationalism is seen implicitly in European terms. It is loosely equated with the concept of self-determination and identified, in particular, with the search for linguistic and ethnic self-determination that came to its climax in Europe during the nineteenth century.
But a concept of nationalism restricted by the narrow confines of European experience is only superficially relevant to the developing countries today and is peculiarly blind to the character and power of nationalism in Asia. To be sure, the experience of Europe has not been uniform. In France, Germany, and Italy, self-determination was achieved through a process of unification, while in the Balkans self-determination came with the disintegration of the multilingual Austro-Hungarian Empire. Still, in both cases, nationalism arose within a relatively limited political universe in which European peoples were seeking to redefine their identities in relation to each other. By contrast, nationalism in Asia has emerged in a complex global environment. It comes as a response to inequities of wealth and power that are more severe and more pervasive than those of Europe in earlier centuries and are also reinforced by basic racial divisions between Asia and the North American-European-Soviet West.
The continuing strength of nationalism in Asia cannot be adequately understood solely in terms of the desire to assert linguistic, cultural, or ethnic identity as such. This desire goes together with an urge to find political foci of identity and self-respect that can provide relief from the inferiority feelings generated by white, Western dominance. In the first stages of this search, language, culture, or ethnicity may define the horizons of identity, but nationalism frequently finds more satisfactory realization in a larger unity. Sub-nationalism, nationalism, and regionalism are all expressions of the same hunger for a reordering of world power relationships.
Paradoxically, as contact with the West
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
