The Surprising Costs of Success: National Identity in East Asia and Europe

Abstract

In the years following the end of the Second World War, Europe and East Asia have seen their situations transformed from catastrophic ruin to global prominence. Success has brought many benefits to the respective populations. Success has also brought novel problems, in particular with regard to identity, the ways in which political communities think of themselves and their neighbours. Today, both regions confront the task of re-imagining their political identities. On the one hand, the project of the European Union was inaugurated in the wake of the disaster of the long period of warfare in Europe and, along with national-level welfare states, has proved to be surprisingly successful. One unexpected consequence of this success is that deepening integration is raising questions of identity, not just national identity but also European identity. On the other hand, East Asia after a number of ruinous wars has emerged as one of the global system’s most powerful regions: first, in Japan, later in the four ‘tiger economies’ and more recently with China, whose reform programme, looking to the East Asian model, has generated very rapid development. Once again, success creates its own novel demands: local nationalisms have been constructed, their unfolding relationships intermittently problematic, so too the wider issue of the identity of an East Asian region and its general place within the modern world. The ways in which European and East Asian polities deal with these questions will shape not only their domestic self-understandings but also their relations with local neighbours and other major regions within the global system.

This piece is derived from a paper presented to a conference at the University of Hong Kong in June 2009; it has been extensively revised in order to update and clarify the line of argument, and these issues have been pursued at greater length in P.W. Preston 2010 National Pasts in Europe and East Asia, London, Routledge.