{"id":1681,"date":"2020-02-28T16:24:20","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T16:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/?p=1681"},"modified":"2020-02-28T23:16:50","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T23:16:50","slug":"unifying-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/2020\/02\/28\/unifying-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Unifying the World?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The text I have chosen to base my upcoming project proposal on is perhaps the most bizarre, ambitious work I have ever come across in my two and a half years of studying history at the university level. Its title: Datong Shu,<\/em> or, The Book of Great Unity.<\/em> It was published posthumously in 1935, seven years following the death of its author, the Chinese intellectual and statesman Kang Youwei (1858-1927). Historically, he is most well-known for his intellectual works and his leadership of the Qing Dynasty\u2019s Hundred Days\u2019 Reform (1898), which sought to modernize China along national, cultural, political, and educational lines. The movement ultimately failed, as it was quashed by reactionary elements in the Qing court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Kang Youwei (1858-1927), Qing intellectual and statesman, author of Datong Shu<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Reportedly,\nKang refused to publish Datong Shu<\/em> despite urgings to do so on the basis\nthat its ideas were too ahead of its times. Upon reading parts of Laurence G.\nThompson\u2019s translation of the work, it\u2019s easy to see why. The book imagines and\npredicts a future in which the world is unified into a \u201cOne World,\u201d a utopian \u201cGreat\nUnity\u201d in which all of the sources of humankind\u2019s sufferings are rendered\nobsolete. As put by Kang, \u201cThe Way of One World is [the attainment of] utmost\npeace-and-equality, utmost justice, utmost jen<\/em> [a term that loosely\ntranslates to \u201cgoodness\u201d], and the most perfect government. Even though there\nbe [other] Ways, none can add to this.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What, according to Kang, must be abolished in order to achieve the One World? The \u201cnine boundaries\u201d that represent \u201cthe sources of all suffering.\u201d[2]<\/a> According to Kang, these boundaries cause humans to suffer due to the obligations that they place on them. They are nation (national borders), class, race, sex, family (and its relationships), occupation (private ownership), disorder (unjust law), kind (the separation of humans from animals), and suffering itself (as it provokes further suffering). Essentially, Kang\u2019s Datong Shu <\/em>imagines a global utopia that links all of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entirety of Datong Shu <\/em>is based upon the idea that what constitutes \u201cright\u201d and \u201cwrong\u201d is dependent on if and how they contribute to human happiness. Kang maintains this idea throughout Datong Shu,<\/em> and this results in truly radical, utopian ideas that would be considered as such even in our day and age. For instance, he proposes the destruction of the family unit, given how it obligates its members to defer to and support one another. He reimagines marriage as a series of one-year contracts of alliance that may be signed between two people. Men and women are not to be differentiated from each other, and all of humanity is to eventually coalesce into one great global race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fact that such sentiments were espoused by a 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> century Chinese scholar are even more confounding. While the Datong Shu <\/em>is based upon radical interpretations of classical Chinese thought (and perhaps slight Western intellectual influences), Kang espouses a global, universal vision of the world throughout. Miraculously, he speaks of a Great Unity and a One World in a time when European powers dominate the Earth and subjugate its vast subaltern populations. While it is arguable that Kang imagines a Chinese-inspired<\/em> global vision in Datong Shu,<\/em> he ultimately thinks in terms of the global. He thinks transnationally as well; key aspects of his description of a One World government involve dividing up the Earth into equal geographic sections for administrative purposes and the global abolishment of political borders, complete with all of their restrictions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve\nyet to properly imagine the historical questions I need to ask of this work,\nlet alone an answer to the ever-pervasive \u201cso what\u201d question Konrad Lawson\ndrove into my head last semester: \u201cwhy does this matter?\u201d However, in Datong\nShu<\/em> I see that there is quite a lot to be analyzed, especially through the\npractice of global intellectual history. In their important 2013 work on Global\nIntellectual History,<\/em> Moyn and Sartori propose a number of paths that may\nbe adopted by the global intellectual historian. One takes its starting point\nby defining the \u201cglobal\u201d as a \u201csubjective category used by historical agents.\u201d[3]<\/a> In other words, the\napproach considers how historical actors themselves perceived the idea of the\nglobal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps\nmy research will go down this path. Wish me luck.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/a> K’ang Yu-Wei and Laurence G. Thompson, trans., Ta T’ung Shu <\/em>(New York, 1958), p. 72.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid.,<\/em> p. 74.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[3]<\/a> Samuel Moyn and Andrew Sartori, \u201cApproaches to Global Intellectual History\u201d in Moyn and Sartori, eds., Global Intellectual History, <\/em>pp. 4, 16-17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The text I have chosen to base my upcoming project proposal on is perhaps the most bizarre, ambitious work I have ever come across in my two and a half years of studying history at the university level. Its title:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5wNtZ-r7","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1688,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions\/1688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/transnationalhistory.net\/doing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}