Since 2010, the Center for East Asian History has been carrying out the comprehensive task, "Intelligence Genealogy and Historical Awareness of East Asia" in three stages. The first stage deals with the East Asian recent-modern transition period, but ...
Since 2010, the Center for East Asian History has been carrying out the comprehensive task, "Intelligence Genealogy and Historical Awareness of East Asia" in three stages. The first stage deals with the East Asian recent-modern transition period, but the second stage deals with East Asia during the imperialism period, which includes more current problems. The age of imperialism was the node of the modern transition period and the road to the postwar Cold War. On that road, there was a mixture of imperialism, colonialism and modernization. The overall task of the second stage is 'the imperialist system and the East Asian modern science'. In the East Asian order with Imperial Japan at its summit, what was the trend of the East Asian intellectual system and what kind of interaction was between power and knowledge (scholarship and history).
Today, "politicization of history" is proceeding in a breathtaking way around the issue of historical recognition among Korea, China and Japan. On the other hand, 'colonial modernism' is emerging as a big issue. In this situation, we set the following research goals. First, based on the achievements accumulated in stage 1, we actively engaged in various theoretical tendencies and historical methodologies surrounding colonialism. Second, since East Asian historical disputes today are rooted in the memory of distorted colonialism, so we have conducted historical research to build up a correct colonial history. Third, we faced the painful past and searched for an alternative to healing the scars and establishing a shared history of East Asia. Fourth, we conducted studies East Asia which is open to the 'World History'.
Synthesizing the histories of various countries does not necessarily make it an East Asian history. Only when we should pursue 'another history' in order to complement the part that is not included in the national history, we can secure the East Asian horizon. To do so, comparative methodologies are essential in East Asian studies. In this study, we try to clarify the goal and the direction of the comparative study by setting the comparison unit and category as follows. First, Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese intelligentsia and their historical awareness were cross-compared. Second, we conducted comparative studies between colonies. We compared the colonial rule policies of Japan and the experience of colonized people mainly between Joseon and Taiwan. Third, we tried a multi-layered and pluralistic comparison methodology. This study compared empires and colonies, empires and empires (Germany and Japan), and western countries (Germany, the U.K. and France). Fourth, we cross-compared the geopolitics and policy science of Germany and Japan, and the cognitive systems of colonized people, centered on the keywords of Asianism and Greater East Asia.
As a result, this study set the problems involving the past and present, and analyzed the multi-level relationships within colonies through the interaction with colonial power, as well the flexible boundary in history. In addition, we hope that this study will prompt new historical studies by seeking a new point in the criticism of colonial history and pursuing the recognition of history beyond the boundary of the center / periphery.