중국 근대 역사학에서 國家 개념의 재구성

Abstract

The article examines the regional characteristics of China's state concepts by analyzing how they have been reconstructed in modern historical studies in China. A characteristic of China's state concept is that “state(國)” and “family(家)” are closely connected from the beginning, which will be perceived as clearly divided into “public(公)” and “private(私)” spheres in the West. In China, the two have been closely bound in power division and sharing since the time of the ancient feudalism. This state concept was shaken by the emergence of the tyrant(霸者) after the Spring and Autumn period. It rather more closely related to “state” and “family,” which had become more public amid the establishment of an order centered on the celestial body of the Son of heaven(天子) that has been ideal since its inception. And the concept of state, which was formed through this process, has been embedded in a logical structure that has the stratified form of “family-state-world”. In this context, the state concept in China can be explained that the state failed to establish itself, forming a logical organism along with other dimensions of concepts such as the family, world. Pre-modern Chinese historical descriptions have evolved in tune with these state concepts and structures. As China's state system and its structure changed radically, Chinese historians developed a new way of describing history, and it was reconstructed with state concepts. “The construction of a nation-state” is the main stream among the trends of modern historical studies such as Liang Qichao(梁啓超), Gu Jiegang(顧頡剛), and Fu Sinian(傅斯年). In particular, it was an important task in describing the history of how to converge the Qing Empire system, which contains multiple ethnic elements, into a new state system. In the process, the geographical scope of Chinese history descriptions covered the geography of the Qing Empire, but it was not easy to overcome the real distance that existed between both in the populational and the cultural dimension. As a result, the state concept was not established independently as a system, but it was judged to have the inertia to form its meaning based on other concepts that bind the various elements contained in it. The so-called “historical China(歷史上的中國)” discussed in Chinese historians today reflects the problem surrounding these state concepts. In this regard, attention is drawn to whether China's state concept in the future will be restructured to strengthen other grounds on which it will depend, or to establish its system independently.