Peng Peng| From Empire to Nation-State: Historical Development of National Identity in China

From Empire to Nation-State examines how Chinese elites reimagined and shaped the nation during the late Qing (1840-1949). Most accounts emphasize an enmity pathway: foreign threats provoked humiliation and hostility, hardening boundaries through opposition. This book advances an aspirational alternative, showing that crises also generated emulation. Elites compared China to more successful states--especially culturally proximate Japan--and sought to borrow institutions in law, education, industry, and governance. Drawing on original datasets of late-Qing newspapers and journals, including Shen Bao and the National Index of Newspapers and Periodicals, the book traces how discourse about China oscillated between antagonism and admiration. While war and defeat produced spikes of enmity, emulative appeals soon resurged and often dominated. The book reframes nation-building as a dual, sequential process--enmity followed by emulation--and recasts Chinese nationalism as not only grievance-driven but also reformist, outward-looking, and aspirational. --- Event Details: https://my.princeton.edu/rsvp?id=1968609