Which White Horse Temple? Some Difficulties in Achieving a Singular Nationalist Archaeological Narrative in Republican China

Abstract

AbstractThe modern academic discipline of archaeology in China was born in a period of heightened nationalism. This fact, combined with repeated pronouncements by early twentieth‐century Chinese archaeologists, museum curators, and nationalist intellectuals that archaeology could ‘awaken’ the Chinese to patriotism, has led many contemporary historians to assert that archaeology was an effective tool in educating the people in nationalist ideology at the time. This research note seeks to qualify that assessment by calling for closer attention to the working of the discipline at the local level. Using archaeological activities conducted under the auspices of the Sichuan Provincial Education Office in the late 1930s and early 1940s as a case study, this essay suggests the ambiguities inherent in the discipline, as local actors used it to bolster their case for historic differences from the putative centre of Chinese civilization, thus creating a sort of provincial nationalism, which stood in contrast to the version of national history expounded by the centre.