“Seeds for a New Life”

Modernity and the Pacific Turn in the Progressive Era

Dados Bibliográficos

ID21743530
AutoresConstance Chen (Loyola Marymount University, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume19
Fascículo3
Páginas447-472
Data de publicação2020-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1537-7814 • E-ISSN: 1943-3557
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1537781420000109
OpenAlexW3034825453
IdiomaEN
Referências citadas64

Since the colonial era, the ideological and cultural usefulness of Asia has changed with evolving American needs. This article argues that the Progressive Era turn toward the Pacific world marked a new epoch and mode of transnational interchange as a diverse array of Americans traveled to China and Japan. Encounters with Asianness in situ would lead to a reinvention of the U.S. worldview in the late nineteenth century. The question at hand for certain Americans was how to become “modern,” to germinate “seeds for a new life” that would ensure the prosperity and well-being of the United States amidst momentous global changes. Instead of being antimodernist, the fetishization of Asia served as a way to rein in and define modernity for American purposes. In the process, modernist Orientalism became a framework for imagining China and Japan and their cultural practices. Buddhism, in particular, was reconceptualized as a hybrid entity that seemed to be emblematic of the dawn of a new era. Ultimately, the flow of ideas and peoples between Asia and the United States enabled Americans to construct a global “modern” identity for themselves and to carve out a prominent role for the nation within the international community

China · East Asia · Ideology · Modernity · Modernization theory · Orientalism · Political economy · Political science · Prosperity · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law