Reporter | Intern reporter Zhao Zhao reporter Pan Wenjie
Edit | Yellow Moon
In the classic film Princess Sisi, the daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, Sissi, marries Franz Joseph I of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty, and the scene of Sissi dancing with the Hungarian nobility becomes a sign of a turning point in Austro-Hungarian relations and contributes to the birth of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1867, and she is also crowned Empress of the Austrian Empire and Queen of Hungary, as well as Queen of Bohemia and Croatia. Although the film is inevitably infused with the romantic imagination of the imperial era by later generations, we can still glimpse the diverse and complex ethnic relations within the modern empire from Sissi's story, and how the imperial government "ruled the inalienable land" to cope with the pluralistic social strife.
Empires were not the antithesis of the nation-state, but the result of successful conquests, colonizations, and political maneuvers over a long period of history. In the history of the empire, whether it is the maritime colonial empires such as Britain and France, or the traditional continental empires such as Russia and Austria, they have faced a situation in which ethnic conflicts are difficult to coordinate. Zheng Fei quoted the American orientalist Irving Latimer in the book "China's Asian Inland Frontiers" to argue that the imperial border is not only the boundary between geographical areas and human society, but also represents the maximum of a social development. Intensifying political conflicts within empires, while drawing social boundaries, also "nationalized" local communities, resulting in different groups building their identities and feelings based on language, religion, and ethnicity.
Although the imperial era is long gone, its legacy of contradictions and crises still binds the modern nation-state. From early conflicts between ethnic enclaves and metropolises, to referendums, vaccine nationalism and ultra-nationalism today, many social issues are still unfolding in the form of ethnic issues. How do we understand the center and the periphery, the differences and the conflict? Will the division of nations exacerbate the politicization within the state? Do the boundaries of communities necessarily point to conflict and division rather than to bridging and uniting? To what extent can nationalism as a Western concept be borrowed and explained? Zheng Fei, a young scholar who graduated from Fudan University and now teaches at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, rethinked the historical question of "the way of imperial rule" based on comparative politics and ethnic studies. The first two volumes of his published Empire Trilogy, The Art of Empire and The Failure of Empire, provide readers with a perspective on imagining pre-modern empires in nationalist narratives.
Interface Culture (ID: booksandfun) conducted an interview with Zheng Fei in an attempt to think about how the collapse of empires helped modern nation-states avoid misplaced strategies, and to help multi-ethnic states in the 21st century understand their territories, nations, and identities, and experience the continuity between the past and reality.
01 Disagreements and conflicts are the natural norm
Interface Culture: How do you understand pre-modern empires, especially the difference between ancient and modern empires?
Zheng Fei: Owen Latimer, a well-known American orientalist researcher, said in the book "China's Asian Inland Frontiers": "The boundaries of empire are not just the boundaries that divide geographical regions and human society. It also represents the maximum of a social development. "The boundaries of ancient empires are not the same as those of modern empires. The boundaries of ancient empires needed to consider the natural resources and strategic significance of the conquered areas, as well as the existing organizational structure and military skills of the local ethnic groups; in modern times, due to the progress of science and technology and economic conditions, imperial conquest was no longer limited by geography, but it was necessary to consider the ruling problem of "legitimacy".
For example, the United States had the potential to become a new empire in the first half of the 19th century, but its actual expansion was much slower than expected, because it had to consider these questions: whether the Constitution actually allowed for territorial expansion; if so, in what form, to what extent, what conditions or restrictions, through which institutions and mechanisms were adopted; and whether the governing bodies in the new territories were subject to the same constitutional restrictions as other federal authorities Structural principles such as the extent to which separation of powers or federalism control the acquisition of territory and the manner in which it is administered, etc.
The problem here is that the integration of ancient empires often depends on some kind of personnel absorption policy, but in modern empires, it is far from enough to rely solely on personnel absorption. Whether it is the maritime colonial empires such as Britain and France, or the traditional continental empires such as Austria and Russia, they have encountered the kind of "imperial pressure" I describe in my book "The Art of Empire". Generally speaking, when the modern empire develops to a certain stage, the rulers of the empire will become more and more aware of the constraints of the center - on the one hand, the rule of the rulers of the empire in the core areas increasingly needs to rely on a set of political ideologies that are recognized or accepted by the masses; on the other hand, the people in the center of the empire will also raise the question of "who belongs to the empire" (which class, what group, and for whom the empire profits), thus making demands on the empire, asking the empire to be used by them and provide services for them. This would force the rulers of the empire to choose between the various groups of people and abandon the guards—pressures and constraints that the ancient empires would not have had.
Interface Culture: You have made several assumptions based on the study of modern empires, one of which is that "the empire-building model itself is complex, and it is not necessarily a concentric circle that regulates the periphery and community from the center of the empire." How do we understand modern empires with the help of "concentric circles"?
Zheng Fei: I love the work of the British thinker and politician Edmund Burke, who is familiar with many of his ideas about the American Revolution. For example, he once said in his discussion of the unity and unity of the country that "unity" and "consistency" are always temporary and relative, and "differences" and "conflicts" are the natural norms. If we look at the internal relations of the empire from this point of view of conflict, of course, we should first look at the political procedures to mediate and control this conflict. There are two types of center-periphery conflicts, one between regions and between communities. These two conflicts can sometimes be one and sometimes separate. The level of institutionalization of the political structure of the Empire and the way in which the community relations of the Empire are handled are intended to correspond to these two different conflicts.
The forms of empires are diverse. I quote from the Encyclopædia Britannica to explain that the status of groups and individuals on the periphery of the Empire can also be very different, with some marginalized people being able to participate in the decision-making and resource allocation of the center/headquarters of the Empire and the sovereign authorities, while others are left to the sidelines, and even openly discriminated against and exploited... For the most part, the imperial center/headquarters has centralized government, differentiated economies, and shared political loyalty, while the periphery has weak governments, dedivised economies, and highly differentiated political loyalties.
None of the four empires of Britain, France, Austria, and Russia involved in the contempt is a concentric circle of pure hierarchy, controlled from the inside out, and it seems that hierarchy and control cannot be combined. Whatever the empire, it seems that it must be coordinated by marginalized regions and communities to some extent and in some way. In traditional continental empires, such as Austria and Russia, there was usually a special preferential policy for the periphery, and in fact allowed multiple heads to stand tall. In maritime colonial empires, such as Britain and France, although the home country had greater political, economic, social and psychological advantages over the territory, it did not achieve both at the same time. The British preferred to maintain some kind of social distancing from the colonies at the cost of a considerable degree of freedom and interference on their own. The French are very controlled, but they attach great importance to political equality.
Therefore, I think that with the current research, there must be polycentricity within the empire.
Interface Culture: Wang Mingke mentioned in "The Edge of Huaxia": "When we draw a circle on a piece of paper, it is actually its 'edge' that makes it look like a circle. In the periphery of the Empire, what role did the "spatial gap" or overlapping ethnic boundaries between the various ethnic spaces play in the structure of imperial administration?
Zheng Fei: The late American sociologist Roger Gould proposed a concept in his book Identity of the Insurgents – participation identity, that is, "the social identity/identity of individuals in response to specific normative and instrumental calls in specific social protest activities." To put it simply, there are thousands of people's identities/identities, and when it comes to a specific matter, the identity/identity that touches people to act is the so-called "participatory identity/identity".
This kind of participatory identity/identity seems to be selected by individuals from different identities/identities, but in fact there is a subjective and objective filtering mechanism. Gould's explanation for this filtering mechanism is that, first, the specific struggle and conflict should be reasonably explained by the conflict between the identity/identity and the other; second, the mobilized person should perceive/experience the community represented by the identity/identity in daily social interactions. When a critical event occurs, the most perfect identity/identity that fits into the social network will generate the highest level of mobilization. From this point of view, Gould does not advocate that kind of predetermined structuralism, but rather argues that in human action, identity/identity is something that is constantly reconstructed according to circumstances and does not follow any predetermined path.
Gould's interpretation is similar to that of the Norwegian anthropologists Frederick Bass and Wang Mingke's "ethnic boundaries", both emphasizing the variability of identity, its function of distinguishing between enemies and us, and its dependence on the environment and events. Bass has pointed out in his research that the common belief in the past that racial differences, cultural differences, social segregation and language barriers are self-evident among groups of people, but rather than isolating themselves from each other like islands, it is better to say that groups collide and penetrate each other like continental plates. There are countless tiny cracks in these continental plates, and one can choose this or that crack at will as the boundary of a continent. Therefore, ethnic groups are the result of a process of self-classification. Wang Mingke also has a wonderful summary of the theory of ethnic boundaries, he believes that ethnic groups are the categories identified by its own constituent elements, and the most important reason for ethnic groups is its "boundary", rather than the "connotation" including language, culture, and ancestry. The boundaries of an ethnic group do not necessarily refer to geographical boundaries, but mainly refer to "social boundaries".
We often talk about the challenge of nationalism on the periphery of the empire to the formation of the empire, but in fact, the nationalism on the periphery of the empire is more akin to some kind of awakening of participatory identity, and it is the pre-existing conflict within the empire that gives weight to the national borders, rather than the other way around. For example, some people attribute the American Revolution to the emergence of American identity and American nationalism. In the 1760s and 1770s, the existence of this new population was already recognized (or created). But it is difficult to say whether this "American" identity conflicted with the British identity at that time. In her book Nationalism: Five Paths to Modernity, Ria Greenfield, a professor of sociology at Boston University, argues that the formation of a unique sense of Americanism has not in any way hindered the loyalty of North Americans to the English nation and its national identity, and that the two reflect not divided loyalties but loyalties in concentric circles. There is no contradiction between the two, just as there is no contradiction between a family member, a city dweller or a citizen of a country. So it was the revolutionary situation that allowed American nationalism to emerge as a tool of mobilization, not the other way around.
From this point of view, in a successful empire, the borders of all peoples should be sleeping. It was there, but it was not thought that the political, social, and economic conflicts within the empire could be explained by it.
02 There may not necessarily be an irreconcilable distinction between marginalized and central groups
Interface culture: Identity is the premise of the rise of nation-states, national, ethnic, ethnic and other words involving group division are complex and easy to produce ambiguity, how do you understand their differences?
Zheng Fei: Generally speaking, the difference between ethnic groups and ethnic groups is that ethnic groups have more political democracy, and ethnic groups are more inclined to the concept of community. In fact, we also try to avoid the use of the word nationality, to avoid politicization within the country. The so-called ethnicity is actually the result of a self-classification, which is when people realize that they have a category and can't help but invest in identifying with this category. This psychological identity and emotional commitment is enough to generate political impulses and political actions, and in the right cases, the so-called nation will emerge.
From the perspective of participatory identity, being aware of one's own category is only the first step, and you also need to be able to recognize that you are different from outsiders. They can observe that there is a great deal of social connection among their own categories, and that this social connection itself creates conflict between them and outsiders. Therefore, ethnic identification alone is not enough to generate nationalism. If nationalism is to arise, at least a second condition is needed, that is, there is a great deal of political struggle within a country, and it is universal, even the threat of fragmentation of the whole society, in which case national identity is generated.
Interface Culture: You mentioned that ethnic boundaries are discovered, so has this division of groups helped nationalists establish and strengthen borders between ethnic groups?
Zheng Fei: Judging from the Practice of the Habsburg Dynasty in using language as a criterion for differentiation, classification did play a role in strengthening social segregation in addition to awakening national consciousness. It is important to note that the classification itself is only a boundary within which ethnic groups can be observed, and that for this boundary to have political weight, it is necessary to have an environment in which people within that boundary feel at the same time in the same unfavourable political situation. At this time, they looked at each other and found that they did have some kind of social connection, and indeed faced similar external challenges. From this point of view, although the classification itself did not take full responsibility for the rise of nationalism within the Austrian-Habsburg Empire, it did have some impact.
Interface Culture: Based on the discursive narrative of the center-periphery, do you think there is social solidification between the two under imperial rule? That is, the concept of "internal colonialism" proposed by Michael Hector, a professor in the Department of Sociology at Arizona State University in the United States, means to limit the upward mobility of people on the periphery.
Zheng Fei: When Hector proposed the concept of "internal colonialism", the object he compared was "external colonialism", the main group of the country treated its own marginalized groups no differently from the colonial empire treated its colonies, the central population occupied the upper reaches of the social hierarchy by virtue of its political, economic and cultural advantages, and the marginal groups could only be subordinated.
However, Hector gave this judgment mainly from the British experience. The French were, on the face of the French Empire, more "liberal imperialism" than the British. For example, on May 5, 1881, the famous French republican politician Gambida gave a speech at a banquet commemorating the abolition of slavery (1794), proposing to toast "France Abroad" and saying: "The Declaration of the Rights of Man does not distinguish people according to skin color or rank ... It is this that gives it solemnity and authority... It does not say 'the rights of the French and the citizens', but 'the rights of the people and the citizens'. ”
The Australian historian Robert Aldridge also points out: "The concept of French colonial policy throughout the late nineteenth century was 'assimilation', a policy aimed at eliminating all differences between the colonies and the headquarters, giving them the same administrative, financial, judicial, social and other systems as the ministry, giving their inhabitants full civil rights and forcing them to assume the same obligations as French citizens." The aim of this policy is, from a bureaucratic point of view, to turn Little France overseas and, perhaps, when the time comes, to transform Africans, Asians and islanders into French men and women of different colours. Although the French did not fully implement this assimilation policy, it was partially implemented. The Austrian writer Zweig once described in The World of Yesterday that "a very beautiful girl with a pitch-black man or a slender Chinese walked into the nearest inn with his arm crossed at all unashamed." In Paris, who cares about what race, class, origin? "This is not seen in other European capitals.
Therefore, in imperial rule, there was not necessarily an irreparable distinction between marginal groups and central groups, depending on the environment and treatment.
Interface Culture: National identity is a concept that has gained widespread attention since the rise of the modern state and nationalism. Does the exploration of pre-modern empires and their internal ethnicities, and the attempts by the imperial centers to bridge the gaps, help us understand transnational "diaspora" and separatist movements in contemporary international society?
Zheng Fei: The Art of Empire has two very simple conclusions:
In the past, we often described the cause of the imperial center-periphery tension as the rise of local nationalism. But in many cases, local nationalism is not so much the cause of tension as the result of tension. Frankly speaking, nations are rarely natural and mostly the product of inventions. Political conflict plays a greater role in promoting people's national identity than cultural or kinship—the periphery is more or less weak and organizationally weak than in the center of the empire, unless strongly supported by external forces or when the empire is greatly weakened and facing collapse. Elites in local communities rarely seek autonomy and independence from the outset, but rather reform, respect, and power-sharing, whether this is due to pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, or traditions and customs. Generally speaking, it is the development of events that gradually radicalizes them, and it is the political conflict itself that gradually draws social boundaries and thus "nationalizes" these local communities. Nationalism is often the result of contradictions within the empire, not the cause of the contradictions of the empire.
In the era of mass politics, the people at the center of the empire demanded the empire, both for the realization of an ethnic hierarchy within the empire (that is, the distribution of the interests of the empire was tilted towards the core ethnic groups), and for the integration of the upper and lower levels, believing that the empire should strengthen the management of the peripheral places in order to draw more powerfully. This style of behavior clearly goes against the lessons of imperial history from the past. Or to put it another way, the constraints of the Empire's headquarters actually made the cost of "Imperial Entrepreneurs" governing the Empire greatly increased, which was the root cause of the Empire's decline. Therefore, the most dangerous threat to the Empire comes from the People of the Empire's own population, not from the periphery.
From these two historical experiences, in the case of separatist movements in countries of modern multi-ethnic states, first, it is best not to look at the religious, cultural, social or historical particularity of minorities at the first time, as well as their differences with the main peoples, and feel that the elimination of special and differences can eliminate separatist movements and tendencies, but to see under what circumstances such special and differences are mobilized; second, it is necessary to understand that the closed mentality of the subject population is often the greatest threat to national unity. And not a challenge for marginalized people.
03 It is not to seek the truth, but to prove that different things exist
Interface Culture: You questioned the idea that "modern people study empires mostly out of antipathy to nation-state narratives and want to find a cure for ethnic politics in ancient times." In your opinion, can the imperial ruling structure be used today?
Zheng Fei: People at different times and in different places naturally have different definitions of what empire means, but it is generally believed that if a country is strong and vast (the people of the land), then the country is worthy of the title empire (whether empire is an adjective or a noun here). Scholars may be more critical of the definition of empire, arguing that a powerful country is not necessarily an empire (although the great power often prides itself on empire), but it is more appropriate to consider it in terms of breadth.
In their book History of World Empires: The Politics of Power and Difference, Professors Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper of NYU History put it this way: Nation-states exalt the commonality of their peoples, while empires recognize the differences of their diverse populations. Nation-states tend to assimilate/expel for consistency, while empires are self-absorbed, consciously maintaining the diversity of their subjects and implementing multiple governances, thus highlighting the differences between their subjects. The authors describe themselves, they simply want to move away from the dominant narrative of the growth of the nation-state to describe this older, more enduring, more differentiated/pluralistic political practice, how it practices the Politics of difference internally, its relationship with its local proxy elites and their peoples, the rivalry and learning between them, the concept of empire, and the strategies of domination.
I don't think they're wrong, but in ancient times it's hard to say what ethnic politics was, or that ethnic groups weren't very important political actors—and here I mean that people might have had simple national identities in ancient times, but it's a very questionable thing whether that identity surpassed others. Correspondingly, in ancient times, the implementation of pluralistic and differential rule was almost a subconscious style of rulers, nor was it particularly laborious.
Interface culture: The public's attention to empire seems to be focused on the British Empire, the Habsburg Dynasty, etc., or the former colonies such as the United States and Canada, which have become capitalist powers today, and we have always understood the ancient world based on the concept of "empire" in the Western context.
Zheng Fei: Of course, Western-centrism is an important thing, which will limit people's perspective and cognition. But conversely, in order to overthrow "Western-centrism," it is necessary to engage in an Eastern version of the definition of "empire," or to do only non-Western imperial research, which I would also think is another misunderstanding. Because I think that the so-called so-and-so centrism probably refers to understanding the world only from the historical experience of a region. In contrast to centrism, then, we cannot simply say that the cognition arising from this experience is biased and unjust (at best we can say that this perception is untested, which may or may not be right), nor can it simply find the historical experience of another region to deny the truth of the former's cognition. It is entirely possible that we are touching an elephant in the blind, and everyone is touching a part of the truth.
I personally think that it is better to distinguish between East and West, there is a useful concept to take and use first, when used regardless of East, West to test it, so that it may make a better historical study.
Interface Culture: Whether ancient China was an "empire" has never been conclusive in academic circles. Can the study of Western imperial history inspire a review and reflection on the traditional Han-centered research paradigm, thereby enriching the macroscopic thinking of ancient Chinese history (frontier history)?
Zheng Fei: The study of the history of the New Qing Dynasty is the result of Western scholars looking at Chinese history with a pluralistic imperial political view. I have always thought that Professor Yao Dali of Fudan University is the best scholar in the field of frontier history and ethnic history, who can learn from the strengths of all, master the rich multilingual and multi-regional historical materials, and accept new perspectives and theories. His understanding of China's frontier history not only broke through the original Han central view, but also pointed out the inadequacies of Western scholars' vision and knowledge—because of his experience, he paid too much attention to the ethnic factors in the dynasty.
As I just said, although nationalism is a Western concept, it does not mean that we cannot use it. We can draw on the experience of a certain region to carry out more tests. I don't mean to seek the truth, as long as I can make people aware of different existences.
Interface Culture: The Skills of Empires and The Failure of Empires are the first two books in the trilogy, and the third book, The Future of Empires, focuses on what direction?
Zheng Fei: In the process of writing "The Failure of Empire", I thought about extending the historical analysis of fragments to the middle of the wider world, so I wrote "The Art of Empire", using four different empires of Britain, France, Austria, and Russia to test the pattern that evolved from a certain case. Logically, The Art of Empire first proposes an explanatory model that classifies modern empires according to two dimensions: formal/informal, and absorbent/isolated. "The Failure of Empire" is a test of this model in the middle of a fragment, while "The Future of Empire" focuses on the historical experience and lessons drawn from the current multi-ethnic countries, such as China, the United States, and Russia, three large-scale, historically distant and complexly populated countries. More specifically, in the case of Russia, from the Russian Empire to the former Soviet Union to the present Russian Federation, there is actually a logical thread that can connect them, which is what I want to present in The Future of Empire.