I've been reading John King Fairbank's China, A New History recently and one of the key ideas he expresses is the importance of the Chinese concepts of 'wen' and 'wu' in Chinese history. Wen is culture and moral civility and wu is military power. Under the influence of scholars and bureaucrats Chinese culture has typically valued wen much more than wu; indeed for an emperor to employ military might has traditionally meant that he has failed in his moral and ethical duties, causing him to fall back on power rather than culture. That said, military power was needed to consolidate the empire and unify China and Fairbank argues that this was usually supplied from outside China as China did not value or cultivate military power. He argues that the new dynasties that often provided a fresh injection of wu into a society that had become stagnant were often the 'barbarians' on China's borders. Although they provided the military power necessary to re-unify China and impose a new regime the essentially foreign dynasties were soon absorbed into the Chinese cultural system.
In some cases these were obviously foreign powers such as the Yuan (Mongolians) and the Qing (Manchurians) but Fairbank goes further in arguing that many dynasty founders, even of dynasties such as the Tang, were actually barbarian leaders who had married into Chinese society. To some extent this obviously undercuts the element of Chinese national identity that thinks of China as an essentially self-contained 5000 year-old culture.
Of course, this is nothing unusual about this. All nations inevitably contain this intermixing of cultures, ideas and leaders. Many English people would regard England as, until recently, a fairly self-contained island culture, but of course we have been invaded many times. To name a few examples we have been invaded by the Celts, the Romans, the Vikings, the Saxons, the Normans and more debatably (and recently) by the Dutch.
The Dutch invaded in 1688, the army of William of Orange taking London and imposing Dutch rule on England. We like to tell ourselves that it wasn't really an invasion, however, as William was invited to invade in a letter written by six noblemen and a bishop, basically on the premise that they would rather a foreign Protestant king than the Catholic James II. William was followed by Queen Anne and upon her death rule passed to King George, a minor member of the Hanoverian royal family, thus starting the unbroken rule of Britain by German royal families, the House of Hanover being followed the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (or the Windsors as they prefer to be known nowadays as it sounds more British).
Whilst it's fine to admit that we have been invaded many times, it happens to every nation after all, one misunderstanding should be cleared up. Some people have the crazy idea that we were invaded by the French in 1066. In fact the Normans were Vikings (Norman literally meaning North Man) who had invaded and settled in a part of what is now France. After some time they then went on to invade England, another of the Viking invasions of Britain. Admitting that we have been invaded many times and ruled by the Germans for centuries is one thing but accepting that we've been invaded by the French is just too much.
I've been reading Orwell's 'The Road to Wigan Pier'. Orwell was a committed Socialist and social activist who always tried to look at the real conditions and concerns of working people and who was always prepared to cut through the bullshit spouted by many who claimed to share his concern for the conditions of the working class. This made him something of a pariah with much of the left, of course. I thought these quotes might be of particular interest to a certain Mr. Evil of Discovery Bay.
