Nationalistic Response To European Imperialism

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The Nationalistic Epidemic Herbert A. Miller THE purpose of this paper is to show that the nationalism of Europe has been in part induced by the reaction in Asia to European imperialism, and also to indicate that its course in Asia will be modified by the varied cultural structures of the several countries there. Although I omit much of the discussions usually involved in nationalism, I would not exclude their validity. NATIONALISM DESCRIBED I have said elsewhere: There is no concrete and permanent definition of a nation. It usually has some geographical relations, but may exist without them; it may inhere in a consciousness of blood relationship, but aliens may be adopted into it; it may turn on tradition and history, but myth may…show more content…
During the whole period since that time Japan has been on the offensive-defensive against the Western World. She offers the most clean-cut and unqualified example of nationalistic resistance to imperialism that the world affords. The organization of Japan presented a perfect set-up for the development of nationalism: a group of small islands whose resources were so limited that existence was insecure; numbers so small—then only thirty millions—that there was danger of being overwhelmed; a military caste, the samurai, who dominated the whole system; an emperor of divine origin whose status had always symbolized a divinity that is Japan, and whose relation to the people was interpreted as that of the father of the family, thus conferring upon all an element of divinity; a cocksureness of the purity of their blood, though really they are of many bloods; and finally the religion of Shintoism, which, in its ancestor worship, in some mystical way included the ancestors of the emperor and thus the continuity and the exclusiveness of

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