1Preface
East Asia as a Unit in Historical Research
ZHANG Qing*

It is without doubt worth considering how to understand and situate East
Asia as a unit in historical research. Arnold Toynbee, in his Study of History,
took the unit of historical research as his point of departure in his comparative study of the basis for the development of civilizations. Toynbee raised
the issue of the unit of historical research because research limited to thenational perspective greatly restricts the historian’s outlook. Indeed, Europe
does not have a single people or nation that can articulate the challenges itfaces. For this reason, he advocated comparing and investigating thephenomena of history under the broader concept of civilization.
From this perspective, it makes even greater sense to regard East Asia asa unit of historical research, for East Asia is not only a composite culture; itis also a physical space. The new academic research field of East Asian
cultural interaction studies broke through the former notion of analyzing
historical issues in terms of nations and peoples, established East Asia as acomposite cultural unity, focuses on cultural formations, contacts, diffusions,and changes within this region, and seeks to interpret the entire pattern ofcultural interaction from a multipolar yet overarching perspective.
Of course, merely taking East Asia as the unit of historical research is far
from sufficient. We also have to determine how to carry out historicalresearch. Here Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory is an analytic framework andobservational perspective worthy of our attention. As Bourdieu said, “A field
can be defined as a network, or configuration, of the objective relations
between positions.” Obviously, East Asia forms a complex field comprising
many aspects, such as economics, politics, culture, etc. From this perspective,
we can say that the following topics of historical research are worth
expanding on:First, how did the field of East Asia form? Establishing past spatial connections creates a foundation for carrying out research on East Asian culture.	  * 章清 The Sixth President of the Society; Professor and the former Chair of the History
Department, Fudan University.

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Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 6 2015

Research on the Mediterranean Sea region by Fernand Braudel, the mostoutstanding representative of the Annales School of history, provides hints forthe development of East Asian research. Only by revealing the interactions
among the countries of East Asia via land and sea routes, and clarifying themeans by which contacts were made within East Asia and between East Asiaand the rest of the world, can we provide a foundation for explaining thecultural interactions that occurred in this space.
Second, what were the media connecting the field of East Asia? Scholars
have long recognized that the new media play an important role in promoting
progress in human societies. Two often cited examples of such theories are
Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere and Benedict Anderson’s
notion of print capitalism. Binding East Asia together were not only changing
modes of transportation but also a network for circulating publications. Such
media have had the effect of increasing the influence of events in the regionand of causing parties outside the region to take notice of East Asia. Hence,
we should closely examine the history of Catholic and Protestant missionary
activity in East Asia, the spread of books on Western learning in East Asia,
the history and influences of linguistic contact in East Asia, etc.
Third, how should we situate East Asia in the framework of world history?
Research on East Asian cultural interaction has often been influenced byhistorical research. In addition to the history of new cultural contacts and thehistory of books, the theories and methods of world history have also helped
us to better understand East Asia. But how should we combine regional
history and world history? The case of East Asia provides an example worthyof study. For example, in the spread of Western learning, the General
Conference of the Protestant missionaries of China, an organization central tothe diffusion, was an international organization of no one particular countryand people. Likewise, the appearance of newspapers transcended nationalborders, in that newspapers arose from Protestant missionaries’ expansion of
their efforts to proselytize.
We can thus say that discussing world history together with regional
history is a new topic that should further our understanding of East Asian
culture interaction. The Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia established as topics for research “Using the Media to Look at Various Features ofCultural Interaction” and “Regional Aspects of Cultural Contacts and TheirInfluence.” These topics offer new directions and themes for future researchon East Asian cultural interaction.