Hello, I’m Yang Zhao. We continue our introduction to Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.

Where did totalitarianism come from? Arendt explains it in three major parts.

Part One addresses the Jewish question. As a Jew, she courageously confronts a subject acutely sensitive to her and those around her, revealing the position, method, and narrative style of a principled and exceptional historian.

Part Two explains imperialism. At the outset she defines it as a phenomenon of the thirty years from 1884 to 1914. Our familiar assumptions about imperialism cannot simply be applied to her subject; this is a new imperialism.

Imperialism can readily be traced further back.

The Opium War of 1840, for example, marks the beginning of modern China’s greatest historical predicament and the encounter between China and Western imperial powers. British armed force in China was certainly imperialism, already formidable in the 1840s.

But Arendt does not narrate imperialism’s whole development. She concentrates on 1884–1914 and reserves the term imperialism for that period, passing briefly over earlier related phenomena as colonialism.

Her point is not to control everyone’s terminology, but to examine this distinctive period with strict precision.

To separate it clearly, we might wish Arendt had chosen a different name, such as “new imperialism” or “a new stage of imperialism.”

 

The contradiction is basic: a nation-state means one people building one state, whereas an empire contains many peoples. Building an empire violates the principle that each people should have its own state. Arendt has sound historical reasons for isolating these thirty years.

Consider the history closest to me, that of Taiwan.

In 1884, Taiwan was still an island administered under Fujian rather than a formal province. The Sino-French War broke out, French forces attacked Taiwan, and Liu Mingchuan organized its defense. The campaign made the Qing court recognize Taiwan’s strategic importance.