近代 中國政治思想史에서 洋務思想 - 사상적 발생기원과 정치적 적용과정을 중심으로

Abstract

After 1860 a segment of the literati that Chinese was facing a new situation the like of which she had not seenin thousands of years. This situation called change(pien-tung) or turning point. From that time China trying to understand and emulate the West, pragmatic literati-officials had changing conception of the outside world which became sophisticated slowly but steadly. It started with the world-wide geographical study by Wei Yuan in the 1840-50 A. D., and changed to military emulation effort made in the name of Self-strengthening after 1860. After the mid-seventies, however, commerce and industry were emphasized, and Wetern political and educational institutions were discussed by foreign affairs experts. The role did the West play in the Chinese state and society was first assumed its impact could be marginally absorbes into the Chinese polity and social order without changing the fundamental Chinese scheme of things. By 1860 the Westerners were still treated as a nuisance to be brushed off. In the end, however, Western affairs became a focal point of nation-wide concern. Changes in the use of key terms give eloquent testimony to this progress in understanding the West. Affairs in connection with the West were in the main called ‘barbarian affairs(i-wu) before the sixties, Western affairs’(yang-wu) and ‘Western learning(Hsi-hsueh) in the seventies and eighties, and ‘new learning’(hsin-hsueh) in the nineties. The first term was Sino-centric; the second and third were rather neutral in value judgement; while the last unmistakably implied approval. The change in attitude of the some scholar-officials also illustrates this point. The leading advocates of self-strengthening, such as Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang and Price Kung were all anti-foreign when they first confronted the Westerners. Their attitude became more and more flexible and relistic as their understanding of the West deepened. In spite of all these changes, the power of conservatism remained strong. Success in the introduction of things Western into China depended in large measure on the extent to whuch they were compatible with this tradition. Accordingly, the armament industry was easily acceptde, yet mining, encountered difficulties. Many literati-officials accepted the yang-wu movement because it was modern, in the hope that it could save China from destruction. But then some rejected it because it was Wester, in the fear that it would replace Confucianism. Faced with the problem of how to save China and at the same time remain Chinese, they held an ambivalent attitude.