ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the inverse trajectory of Northeast Asia’s former integrated Confucian international society to a conflicted ‘regionness’ (and lack of regionalism). Nationalism, imported together with the constitutive institutions of the ‘Westphalian’ international society on the gunboats of imperialism, destroyed the Confucian international society. Northeast Asia took a nationalist turn to the European-style power politics – and Japan even emulated European imperialism against its neighbours. Nationalist rivalry and conflicts about the past continue to this day and explain territorial disputes and maritime conflicts and the nationalist self-reliance during the financial crisis. This chapter highlights the role of historiography and school textbooks in perpetuating national narratives and historical grievances. The chapter explains Northeast Asia’s previous long peace built on the investiture and tribute system and highlights critical junctures paving the way to rivalry, nationalism and conflict, the Imjin War, the destruction of the Confucian world after the Opium Wars, Japanese imperialism and the Korean War.
