Qingjia Edward Wang

Narrative historiography promoted the rise of nation-states in modern East Asia. But narrative history was not simply a Western import. Rather, it gained its preeminence through a cross-cultural dialogue, negotiation and integration. From the late nineteenth century when the East Asians encountered Western cultures, they were prompted to hark back to their native traditions for useful resources. Those resources enabled them to accommodate and appropriate Western influences and integrate them into their project on transforming their cultures for adjusting to the modern world. The adoption and propagation of narrative style by East Asian historians (first in Japan and later in China and elsewhere) in writing anew their national history is a salient example. The historians turned to narrative historiography because it enabled them to adumbrate the collective development (culture, wealth, intelligence, education, etc.) for the national imaginary. Though attractive and popular to this day, nationalist history-writing also invariably confines the ways in which the historians envisage, reconstruct and present the past.