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The Concept of “Educational Transformation” and its Relationship to Civilizing Missions in Early China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2020

Erica Fox Brindley Open the ORCID record for Erica Fox Brindley [Opens in a new window]
Erica Fox Brindley*
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Pennsylvania State University
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*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the early history and evolution of the concept of jiaohua (教化 “educational transformation”) as a reference to civilizing missions in China. It explores Ru (Confucian) concepts advocating the widespread education of the masses, showing how such concepts were linked to notions of ethnicity and moral attainment. Then it contextualizes the first uses of educational transformation in writings concerning statecraft. Xunzi emerges as a pivotal figure who helped adapt the statecraft rhetoric on educational transformation to the largely Ru goal of spreading a morally superior Huaxia culture among the masses and to peoples of other cultures. I then move beyond this conceptual history to examine a few civilizing missions in the Han era. My purpose is to link large-scale, civilizing missions in Chinese history with the early philosophical rhetoric and show how history was shaped by these underlying conceptual orientations.

Keywords

civilizing missionsHuaxiaethnic identityassimilationsinicization
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊 , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 2021 , pp. 1 - 21
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

I am thankful to a slew of anonymous reviewers and readers for their helpful feedback in making this a better article.

References

1 On soft power, see Nye, Joseph, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Perseus Books, 2004)Google Scholar. Critics of the concept point out that much of what is understood as soft power in contemporary world politics is actually supported by more coercive elements, specifically, by understanding attraction as “representational force.” See Mattern, Janice B., “Why Soft Power Isn't So Soft: Representational Force and the Sociolinguistic Construction of Attraction in World Politics,” Journal of International Studies 33.3 (2005), 583–612Google Scholar.

2 James Leibold, “Mind Control in China Has a Very Long History,” New York Times, November 28, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/opinion/china-reeducation-mind-control-xinjiang.html.

3 As I mention below, there is much scholarship on the topic of jiaohua as a form of Confucian moral cultivation, most of it connecting it to politics in a general way. Wang Baoguo 王保国, “Jiaohua de zhengzhi yu zhengzi de jiaohua—chuantong Zhongyuan zhengzhi wenhua chuanbo moshi tanxi” 教化的政治与政治的教化—传统中原政治文化传播模式探析, in Xueshu luntan 1 (2008).

4 My use of “Huaxia” is comparable to using the term “Hellenistic” instead of “Greek” when referring to the sphere of Hellenistic culture in the ancient Mediterranean region.

5 Hall, Jonathan in his work, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

6 For more extensive discussions of early forms of ethnic identity and how culture played a role, see Brindley, Erica, Ancient China and the Yue: Perceptions and Identities on the Southern Frontier, c. 400 BCE–50 CE (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, especially 118–31.

7 I use “Confucian” here to refer to the ritual traditions and views on morality and self-cultivation associated with the Ru social group in ancient China.

8 Scholars working on borderlands history have touched on the relationship between so-called Confucian statesmen and civilizing missions. See Cosmo, Nicola Di, Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 104–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Chin, Tamara, Savage Exchange: Han Imperialism, Chinese Literary Style, and the Economic Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Yenching Institute, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Uffe Bergeton provides an extensive analysis of the linguistic development of the ancient terms for “civilization” and various ethnic others in East Asia in The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China: History Word by Word (New York: Routledge, 2019).

9 In Harrell, Stevan, “Introduction: Civilizing Projects and the Reaction to Them,” in Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers, edited by Harrell, Stevan (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996), 7–9 and 25Google Scholar. I think Harrell's translation of wenhua is wrong here, but his basic point that it implies a civilizing process is spot on.

10 The story of imperial interactions with “barbarians” in and around the frontiers of imperial states in China is indeed a long one. For studies concerning the premodern period, see especially Magnus Fiskesjö, “On the ‘Raw’ and ‘Cooked’: Barbarians of Imperial China.” Inner China 1–2 (1999), 135–68, as well as the huge volume of recent works by scholars Pamela Crossley, Naomi Standen, Leo Shin, Kathlene Baldanza, Mark Elliott, Erica Brindley, Nicola DiCosmo, Uffe Bergeton, Tamara Chin, Andrew Chittick, and others.

11 Chen Zongzhang 陈宗章 and Wei Tianjiao 尉天骄, “‘Jiaohua’: yige Ruyao chengqing de gainian” 教化 : 一个需要澄清的概念, Hehai Daxue Xuebao; Zhexue Shehui kexueban 4 (2011); Zhan Shiyou 詹世友, “Xian Qin Rujia daode jiaohua de butong fanxing zhi fenxi” 先秦儒家道德教化的不同范型之分析, Zhexue yanjiu 2 (2008); Yang Fuzhang 杨福章, “Kongzi de shehui jiaohua sixiang ji qi xiandai yiyun” 孔子的社会教化思想及其现代意蕴, Lanzhou Jiaotong Daxue xuebao 5 (2008); Yang Zhaoming 杨朝明, “Chuyi Rujia de jiaohua wenhua” 刍议儒家的教化文化, Kongzi yanjiu 6 (2008).

12 Liu Yongyan 刘永艳, “Xunzi ‘jiaohua’ lun zai daxuesheng daode shehui huazhong de jiazhi” 荀子“教化”论在大学生道德社会化中的价值, Hehai Daxue Xuebao; Zhexue Shehui kexueban 1 (2000); Zhang Desheng 张德胜, “Rujia lunli yu shehui zhixu: Shehuixue de quanshi” 儒家伦理与社会秩序: 社会学的诠释, Shanghai Renmin Publishing 43 (2008); Tang Mingyan 唐明燕, “Lun Xian Qin Rujia jiaohua zhexue de lilun genji” 论先秦儒家教化哲学的理论根基,” Zhongguo Shiyou Daxui Xuebao 5 (2009); Zhang Xiqin 张锡勤, “Shilun Rujia de ‘jiaohua’ sixiang” 试论儒家的“教化”思想, Qilu Xuekan 2 (1998).

13 See Chen Zongzhang 陈宗章, “Xian Qin Rujia ‘jiaohua’ sixiang de yanjiu huigu yu zhanwang” 先秦儒家“教化”思想的研究回顾与展望,” Chuanshan Xuekan 1 (2014), 119–26.

14 While it is certainly acceptable to take a contemporary, twentieth-century concept of educational transformation as an heuristic for analysis of the past, it is highly problematic that authors tend to present this definition uncritically, as though the meanings associated with it currently had a deep past.

15 For an in-depth discussion of the linguistic development of terms defining “civilization” and the self in Early China, see Uffe Bergeton, The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China.

16 Crossley, Pamela Kyle, “The Imaginal Bond of ‘Empire’ and ‘Civilization’ in Eurasian History,” in Verge: Studies in Global Asias, edited by eds. Erica Brindley and On-cho Ng, special volume of Asian Empires and Imperialism 2.2 (2016), 81–114Google Scholar. With respect to these points, Crossley states, “On the ground, Rome and Han as cultural or moral entities were, in all likelihood, notional outside of the capital or the cities that were the base of provincial government,” 91–92. And, “Rome and Han were, at root, corporations of conquest and commercial inducement,” 93.

17 Crossley, “The Imaginal Bond,” 106.

18 Lewis, Mark Edward, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 1Google Scholar.

19 Nylan, Michael, “The Rhetoric of ‘Empire’ in the Classical Era in China,” in Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared, edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 39–64, here 61Google Scholar.

20 Other scholars working on early imperial China generally share in Nylan's and Lewis’ beliefs. Yuri Pines, for example, argues that imperial “longevity owes as much to ideological as to geographical, military, or administrative factors,” in Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2009), 222.

21 For work on the southern reaches of early China and the many types of state–non-state interactions there, see Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue.

22 Shangjun shu zhu yi 商君書注譯, edited by Gao Heng 高亨 (Beijing: Zhonghua Publishing, 1974), 89.

23 This anonymous text, associated with the ancient state of Qi, is considered to be one of the “Seven Military Classics of China.” Like other texts of its genre, it discusses military strategy, organization, and administration, as well as the underlying philosophy of leading a troop to military victory.

24 Sima Fa 司馬法, “Tianzi zhi yi” 天子之義.

25 When used to refer to the general instruction of the masses, jiao is used exclusively as a verb. As a noun, it is found only once in the text, referring more specifically to Confucius’ four areas of teaching—confined to his own disciples—such as letters, conduct, sincerity, and trust. Whether these differences in the usages of the term are meaningful or just a consequence of the randomness of our record, we cannot know for sure. Such usages certainly give us enough reason to consider the likelihood that the notion of jiaohua as a binome may not have been prevalent in the discourse at the time, and that jiao as a verb probably refers to the simple act of instructing the population, not to a more elaborate, formalized social program of instruction. In any case, the meanings of jiao in the Analects are twofold, referring on the one hand to high-level, moral teachings that would have been appropriate for the self-cultivation of an elite, educated class of men, and on the other hand to the act of instructing the general population in some way.

26 See Analects 15.39.

27 In particular, Analects 3.29 and 3.30.

28 While it is true that the system of the rites could be understood as just another type of formal rule-based institution, the important distinction between the rites and laws in ancient China is based on sources of human motivation. The locus classicus for the idea that humans will be more thoroughly and naturally motivated to do good through the implicit, cultural influences of the rites rather than through the carrot-and-stick method of legal statutes occurs in Analects, 2.3. Other famous examples of the ruler or nobleman leading and influencing others through charismatic, contagious virtue can be found in Analects passage 2.1, where the virtuous ruler is compared to the Pole Star that remains in the center with others revolving around it, and in 12.19, where the nobleman's virtue is compared to the wind that blows over grass, making it bend.

29 This text was published in 1993 in a volume on bamboo slips found at Guodian. It is also found among the slips purchased and published by the Shanghai Museum, under the name “Xing Qing Lun” 性情論.

30 “Xing zi ming chu” 性自命出. Ma Chengyuan 馬承源, ed. Shanghai bowuguan cang Zhanguo Chu zhushu 上海博物館藏 戰國楚竹書, vol. 1 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2001).

31 For more extended discussions of ethnicity in relationship to Zhou culture and civilization, see Bergeton, The Emergence of Civilizational Consciousness in Early China, and Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue, especially 118–20.

32 Mengzi yizhu 孟子譯注, edited by Yang Bojun 楊伯峻 (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1998).

33 Xunzi jinzhu jinyi 荀子今註今譯, edited by Xiong Gongzhe 熊公哲 (Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1990), 1.

34 Clearly, Xunzi takes this debate to new heights by contrasting nature with wei 偽, deliberate effort, and using such a concept to further develop and elaborate on the psycho-social aspects of learning.

35 The Xing zi ming chu in particular highlights the “human Dao” (人道), but the concept also appears a few times in the Xunzi, especially in the “Discussion of Rites” (禮論) chapter.

36 Xunzi, “Wangzhi” 王制: Xiong 1990, 167; and “Yi bin”: Xiong 1990, 288.

37 For Xunzi on culture vs. nature, see Puett, Michael J., The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; for rituals and music as moral instruction, see Paul Goldin, Rituals of the Way (Chicago: Open Court, 1999), 53–81. For a comparison with Han thinkers, see Goldin, Paul, “Xunzi and Early Han Philosophy,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 67.1 (2007), 135–66Google Scholar.

38 Xunzi jin zhu jin yi 荀子今註今議, edited by Xiong Gongzhe 熊公哲 (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu yingshuguan, 1990), 167.

39 Xunzi jin zhu jin yi, 261. Translation adapted from Eric L. Hutton, Xunzi: The Complete Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 133.

40 Xunzi jin zhu jin yi, 360.

41 Intriguingly, there are instances in the Xunzi in which he uses the term jiao 教, and not jiaohua, to refer to top-down measures that educate and harmonize those below as well. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing these out. I focus on Xunzi's use of jiaohua in this study not to demonstrate that Xunzi used jiaohua distinctively from other concepts he invokes that concern education, but to show how his writings seem to be the first of the Confucian writings to adopt jiaohua and to and infuse it with traditional, moralistic notions of culture and civilization.

42 Xunzi jin zhu jin yi, 167.

43 Xunzi jin zhu jin yi, 288. I have adapted Eric Hutton's translation for qi 齊 here as “coordinated,” since it implies a much more complex type of unity, as opposed to terms such as “uniform” or “even.” Hutton, Xunzi, 150.

44 The methods criticized here were likely to have been contemporary military practices or fashionable military theories, such as those we might find in a treatise like the Sunzi Binfa (Sunzi's Art of War). To claim that a morally grounded, ethically inflected training makes troops stronger and less vulnerable certainly seems idealistic to us, especially when recommended as an alternative to more concrete, practical training. But when one considers that the Confucian ideals for education steeped in the rites and jiao seem to have possessed a very basic, hands-on component that prescribed rules for behavior, then perhaps such a form of socio-political reform was in Xunzi's day perceived as eminently feasible.

45 See Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue, 18–31. A work that links Confucianism in Tang-Song times to a specific cultural line is Peter Bol's “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).

46 By Han times, this Huaxia realm is often referred to in the texts as Zhongguo 中國, or “Central States,” designating a cultural, and not merely a political, sphere.

47 For more on the relationship between Confucianism and early notions of Huaxia or Zhuxia identity, especially in the Analects, see “Barbarians or not? Ethnicity and Changing Conceptions of the Ancient Yue (Viet) Peoples (~400–50 B.C.),” Asia Major 16.1 (2003), 1–32, here 19–21, and Brindley, Ancient China and the Yue.

48 Jiazi xinshu 賈子新書, edited by Lu Wenchao 廬文弨 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yin shuguan, 1968), n.p. (Juan 5, “Fuzu” 卷五, 輔佐).

49 Jiazi xinshu, n.p. (Juan 9, “Xiuzheng Yushang” 卷九, 脩政語上).

50 The passage reads, “His training reached Bactria and the Jusou [an area associated with the western regions in early Han times] 訓及大夏渠叟. Jiazi xinshu, n.p. (Juan 9, “Xiuzheng Yushang.”

51 Qianfulun jianjiaozheng 潛夫論箋校正, edited by Peng Duo彭鐸 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997), 71.

52 Yantie lun jiaozhu 鹽鐵論校, edited by Wang Liqi 王利器 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1996), 1. The “literati” perspective in this text proclaimed the importance of nourishing the fundamental, “trunk” (ben 本) endeavors such as agriculture over the peripheral “tip” (mo 末) endeavors such as trade.

53 Hou Han shu, “Nanman Xinanyi Liezhuan,” 2836.

54 Hou Han shu, “Nanman Xinanyi Liezhuan,” 2836.

55 Hou Han shu, “Nanman Xinanyi Liezhuan,” 2836.

56 Hou Han shu, “Ma Yuan Liezhuan,” 839.

57 Dongguan Hanji, “Ma Yuan.” Siku quanshu edition, 24.6《欽定四庫全書》本。本書24卷，拆分成6冊, accessed through the Chinese Text Project, https://ctext.org/library.pl?if=en&res=5748.

58 Achim, Mittag, “Forging Legacy: The Pact between Empire and Historiography in Ancient China,” in Conceiving the Empire: China and Rome Compared, edited by Fritz-Heiner Mutschler and Achim Mittag (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 163Google Scholar.

59 Achim, “Forging Legacy.”

60 Recent scholarship discussing educational transformation in the Song and Ming-Qing periods, and even jiaohua organizations, in twentieth-century China indicate that the concept had staying power throughout the millennia. See Lee, Junghwan, “‘Jiaohua’ 教化, Transcendental Unity, and Morality in Ordinariness: Paradigm Shifts in the Song Dynasty Interpretation of the ‘Zhongyong,’” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 42 (2012), 151–233CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yingzhi, Zhao, “Literati Use of Oral or Oral-Related Genres to Talk about History in the Late Ming and Early Qing: From Yang Shen to Jia Fuxi and Gui Zhuang, and from Education (Jiaohua) to Cursing the World (Mashi),” Journal of Chinese Oral and Performing Literature 34.2 (2015), 81–114Google Scholar; and Billioud, Sébastien, “Confucian Revival and the Emergence of ‘Jiaohua Organizations’: A Case Study of the Yidan Xuetang,” Modern China 37.3 (2011), 286–314CrossRefGoogle Scholar.