This thesis examines the relationship between Japanese pan-Asianists and pan-Islamists from the end of the nineteenth century till World War II. The materialization of pan-Asianism in Japan and pan-Islamism in the Ottoman Empire was a response to the perceived acts of aggression against a fictive and universal West. Both pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism emerged as a reaction to the strong currents of anti-Western discourse. The trajectories of both pan-Asianism and pan-Islamism intertwined with major turning points in international history, such as the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), WWI, and later in the 1930s after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Intellectuals involved in both these movements engaged in intense debates about race, civilization, and empire. It was such transnational imaginations that laid the foundations of Japanese-Ottoman interactions. Pan-Islamists, keen on uniting the social, religious, and political recesses evident in the Islamic world, sided with Japanese pan-Asianists in the Early Meiji Era. It was the desire of pan-Islamic intellectuals to join forces with Japan for the purpose of constructing a twentieth century utopia under the banner of Islam, which was suitably modern, spiritual, and able to withstand Western hegemony. According to them, the strength of Japanese pan-Asianism combined with the universality of pan-Islamisms message was an integral force in the awakening of Muslims around the globe. Also, Japanese pan-Asianists were keen to engage in diplomatic discourse with Ottoman intellectuals so as to overturn the Orientalist framework that had condemned the Eastern nations to a status of inferiority by the Occident. This thesis, therefore, connects Japanese history to the world of Islam and investigates how the accepted notions of Orient and Occident, East and West, Self and Other, engineered a relationship between two very different nations. The embracing of Japan by pan-Islamist intellectuals and the affinity of pan-Asianisms message as the Easts answer to the West (as an equal in matters of race, civilization, and culture) is indicative of an association incumbent upon restructuring the global power politics of the time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08042008-100733 |
| Date | 14 January 2009 |
| Creators | Sattar, Sadia |
| Contributors | Martha Chaiklin, M. Pinar Emiralioglu, Richard J. Smethurst |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08042008-100733/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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