梁啓超と「民族主義」

Abstract

Since 1980s, it has been generally said that Liang Qichao had been the first person who used the Chinese word "minzu (民族, nation)". Now, many historical resources and studies tell us this is false, but it is a fact that Liang Qichao was the one of the earliest and the most important person who introduced the word "minzu zhuyi" into the Chinese language. Liang first used the word "minzu zhuyi" in his "On the Changes and the Differences of the Thoughts on State" (國家思想變遷異同論, 1901). In this article Liang argued that contemporary Western states were in transition from the period of "minzu zhuyi" to that of "minzu diguo zhuyi" 民族帝國主義 (national imperialism). And Asian states were still in the period of old "diguo zhuyi" 帝國主義 (imperialism), so that they must quickly establish "minzu zhuyi" to resist Western "minzu diguo zhuyi". In fact, his notions of "minzu zhuyi" and "minzu diguo zhuyi" were directly derived from Paul S. Reinsch, World Politics at the end of the Nineteenth Century : as Influenced by the Oriental situation (1900), which was translated into Japanese by Takada Sanae. So that, at first, Liang used this "minzu zhuyi" only to explain international politics. But his readers, especially young Chinese students and revolutionaries took "minzu zhuyi" as the critical means to rescue China from the Western invasion. They enthusiastically discussed "minzu zhuyi" and came to the conclusion that to rescue China, the Han nation needed to overthrow the Qing dynasty of the Manchu nation and establish a nation-state. But afterward, Liang changed his mind and argued that what Chinese really needed was not an ethnic "minzu zhuyi" but a political "guojia zhuyi" (國家主義, statism), the Han and other domestic nations should not be divided. Here, Liang started a controversy with the revolutionaries' "minzu zhuyi", which had been originally introduced by him.