제국주의시대 독일의 학자가 바라본 동아시아 역사 ― 오토 프랑케의 『중국제국사』를 중심으로 ―

Abstract

Otto Frank’s five-volume work 『History of the Chinese Empire』 is immense in content and provides invaluable fundamental resources in the history of China. Since the introduction of the first volume in 1930, the whole series was published as a complete series in 1952 after his death. The work provides us with a perspective of a western scholar who lived in the transition period toward the 20th century of East Asia. While Franke criticized Hegel or Ranke who did not include China in world history, he stressed China was part of world history by discovering the similarity between the western history and Chinese history. However, Franke put the state as the center of history awareness which was an influence of Ranke, and regarded the conflict between China and the western countries as the conflict between the universal state and the nation-state. At the same time, he treated Confucianism as the driving force for China to create the universal state. Franke pointed out Confucianism as a negative factor that could keep the empire but could stiffen the mental world at the same time. It is his understanding that China failed to develop as a modern nation-state because of that reason. There are two different evaluations on Franke. On the one hand, he attempted the first academic study on the Chinese history in Germany, and resisted the contemporary European’s perspective toward East Asia by relativizing the Euro-centrism and historicism. On the other hand, his works have been greatly influenced by historicism and experiences of Preussen. The excessive emphasis on the role of the state and assurance of the route of the western modernization are some evidence. Also, his history writing focused on the dense enumeration of facts, and overlooked more structural approaches toward the history of China. Criticism against him also includes that he did not yet reflect research results of Chinese historians yet. Nonetheless, Franke’s academic contribution to detailed description of the history of China and to a new interpretation at the time of ignorance toward East Asian history must be highly praised.