Introduction

The Chinese government itself has turned to the history of Chinese civilization as it refashions national identity in the post-Mao era. Inspired by traditional historiography, many Chinese archaeologists trace the emergence of Chinese civilization to the third or second millennium BCE. The word-by-word approach to changes in thought proposed is based on the assumption that the history of ideas can be explored through studies of historical changes in the words referring to those ideas. Numerous studies of early Chinese texts implicitly assume the existence of an early Chinese concept of ‘civilization.’ Poo Mu-chou’s Enemies of Civilization is a notable exception, in that it contains a comparative analysis of how “cultural consciousness” in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China was expressed in each tradition’s relationship with ‘others’ as “enemies of civilization.” Complex political developments triggered the emergence of a complex set of identities that informed the creation of new collective consciousnesses in different areas.