ABSTRACT
Modern nationalism turned out to be incompatible with even a very flexible version of Confucianism, as New Text proved amenable to radical reforms in the late nineteenth century, but its traditional mystical approach to imperial authority did not allow for the emergence of the notion of citizenship. The emergence of New Text Confucianism is in many ways a continuation of this call to return to the Han foundations of classicism and philology. The revival of New Text Confucianism in fact made use of philology to implement a political agenda. The political and institutional crises of the late nineteenth century must, therefore, be placed in a “culturalist” perspective, within which such “internal dialogues” as the Confucian commitment to statecraft and the Old Text/New Text controversy play a decisive role. The origins of the New Text revival during the Qing dynasty should be placed in the context of longstanding political battles to control the interpretation of the Classics in the imperial state.
