| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the AHR online. About 298 words from this article are provided below; about 542 words remain.

If you are a individual member of the American Historical Association, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time. AHA members can go to the AHA individual membership section to locate their member numbers.
If you are not a member of the American Historical Association, you can:: • Join the AHA and receive many member benefits including print and electronic issues of the American Historical Review.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the American Historical Review (104.3-present). Note: the Research Pass does not provide access to JSTOR's holdings of the American Historical Review.
Instititutions can:: • Subscribe to this journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Asia

Rebecca E. Karl. Staging the World: Chinese Nationalism at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. (Asia-Pacific: Culture, Politics, and Society.) Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 314. Cloth $59.95, paper $19.95.

Anyone who has read the Chinese periodical literature of the 1890s and 1900s will have been struck by the amount of space devoted to places whose names are seldom mentioned today in relation to China's history: Poland, Turkey, the Philippines, the Transvaal. Rebecca E. Karl argues convincingly that, in order to understand the nature of Chinese nationalism during this period, we need to see it in relation to what was going on in the rest of the world. This sharply contradicts the tendency of the existing literature to look at Chinese nationalism either in the context of China's reaction to Europe, America, and Japan or as an outgrowth of earlier Chinese culture. Thus Karl raises an important challenge to many conventional assumptions about the nature and origins of Chinese nationalism. 1

The 1890s and 1900s were a crucial period for the formation of Chinese nationalism. Karl makes two main theoretical points about this process. First, she argues that observing events in other countries that were experiencing some of the same kinds of pressures as China influenced the thinking of leading Chinese intellectuals. As a result, the shape Chinese nationalism took was contingent on the outcome of struggles elsewhere in the world. Second, she argues that we must not conflate nationalism with state building. The point is important because almost all the existing literature on Chinese nationalism does indeed conflate the two. Karl argues that there were two separate and competing ideologies, which she calls ethno-nationalism and statism, and these ideologies had quite different implications for the future of China. . . .

There are about 542 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.