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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry (00:03.201)
Hello and welcome to Chasing Leviathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Virene Morty, professor of history at UW Madison. And we're talking about his book, Pan-Asianism and the Legacy of the Chinese Revolution. Dr. Morty, wonderful to have you today.
PJ Wehry (00:24.057)
So, Dr. Morte, tell me why this book, why do we need to learn about Pan-Asianism? What do we need to see? You talk at length about Pan-Asianism started with Imperial Japan, but then it has, and I think we understand why this happened, has focused more and more on the rise of China. What does the rise of China mean? Why did you feel the need to write this book?
PJ Wehry (02:24.801)
So and you start with kind of a review and a critique of the forgive me I didn't write down what was the first one there the second one's cultural and the first one was Geographical yes
PJ Wehry (04:13.662)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (04:32.689)
And in your book, you're talking a lot about China and Japan. You do mention, I think, Singapore. As we look at a lot of the other countries, there's this idea of uniting geography. And maybe this has to do with the history of the idea. And that's kind of, seems, what you're tracking. How do India and Russia? Because when we say Asia, I was actually kind of surprised that India and Russia didn't show up, right? Because we think of Asia and we think of the continent.
And so it seems like when we talk about pan Asianism, are we talking more about what we would think of geographically East Asia or are they kind of they assume that like India and Russia would kind of follow along? know Russia has a really weird history with being, you know, Asia to some people, Europe to others. So how do how do they fit into the picture?
PJ Wehry (06:13.633)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (08:46.273)
Mmm.
PJ Wehry (09:22.111)
PJ Wehry (09:32.821)
Go.
PJ Wehry (09:55.787)
Yeah
PJ Wehry (12:35.211)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (13:30.547)
I really appreciate you giving us those three categories at the beginning with geographical, cultural, and ideological. And so we've talked quite a bit about the ideological and geographical. But one thing I did notice is India seems to be more included and that one seems to be more cultural over Russia because Russia is largely Christian.
whereas India, because of Hinduism, has that connection, I would say, through Buddhism. that's where they can see Confucianism and Hinduism meeting. But with Russia, it has to be through ideology. can't be culturally because of the religious side. Is that a fair thing to pick up on there?
PJ Wehry (15:26.429)
yeah, yeah. mean, this is I can immediately see because you're talking about different thinkers and some of would consider different countries and some of them wouldn't. But every like when they do consider a country, it's always going to be different from the other thinker. So you have because I mean, Singapore has got to be a really interesting. Indonesia is going to be I don't know how much they considered Indonesia. But like, I mean, when you talk about Islam.
Bangladesh, all these different ones. And of course, Islam would have political ramifications as well.
PJ Wehry (19:26.337)
So I would love to get into those critiques, the anti-capitalist side of things, the anti-colonial side of things. But first, can we talk a little bit about Hegel's sublation and why you thought that was a good way to start, why you felt that that was a good concept to introduce here?
PJ Wehry (22:39.425)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (25:13.877)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (25:53.121)
When they talk about, I'm having a hard time keeping the figure straight, but when you mentioned that one of them talks about village life and how that really reconciles the individual to communal freedom. Can you expand on that a more?
PJ Wehry (28:51.775)
Yeah. And forgive me, it's just maybe, again, this is not my area, but I've always heard that there is a certain point of Chinese pride that their type of communism is different from Russian communism. And is that part of that story there?
PJ Wehry (31:11.137)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (31:41.249)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (33:05.235)
Which when we look at Japan during this period, we do see a lot of what we would call westernization. So we could understand where this critique is coming from for him.
PJ Wehry (34:32.277)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (34:35.657)
Right, then you... Yeah, and of course, I'm sure from the Korean point of view, they're not going to be happy with the Kyoto school for obvious reasons. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (35:02.42)
Okay.
PJ Wehry (35:11.361)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (35:21.91)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (35:42.955)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (37:27.24)
Mmm.
PJ Wehry (37:56.001)
Mm. Right.
PJ Wehry (38:24.641)
And forgive me, it's probably for obvious reasons, the history that I know better, would this be, would the parallel case be the way that at a popular level, when people look at, you know, the ultimate bad guys are Germany and eugenics are like the ultimate evil. But when you look at, you know, and that's now, right? You know, we're very critical of, for obvious reasons, 1920s, 1930s Germany. But at the time,
The United States had a very robust eugenics, know, so it's easy to look back and say, and have this severe critical attitude, but at the time, considerably more complicated.
PJ Wehry (39:32.993)
Maybe a different episode. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (40:00.545)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (40:55.392)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (41:15.478)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (41:55.179)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (42:37.248)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (43:45.921)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (45:03.288)
One, thank you. That was...
a lot but really good. I want to be respectful of your time as we look at things here, but I wanted to ask you what is the future of Pan-Asianism look like? So where do you see it going in the future? It seems to be more of an emphasis on China and China's leadership, at least from what I'm seeing in your book. I don't know if it's fair to ask for predictions, but what are maybe the current trends that
that you might see for the future.
PJ Wehry (47:06.241)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (47:45.249)
Hmm.
PJ Wehry (48:02.305)
Okay, all right.
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (48:22.4)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (48:28.113)
Would it be similar to Global South?
PJ Wehry (48:37.151)
Okay, alright.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
PJ Wehry (48:48.193)
Mm.
PJ Wehry (49:51.519)
Yeah. Yeah.
PJ Wehry (51:35.969)
Mm.
PJ Wehry (51:41.632)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (52:21.173)
Yeah. Well, one difference, and I know that there's different levels of development in China, but it does seem that the one thing that Asia really keeps is that Chinese leadership in a way that global South and Third Worldism doesn't. And that does seem to be an important part of what makes everything you've described with Pan-Asianism. Is that maybe one thing that would keep that kind of that Asian
designation even though it could include somewhere like Cuba, it's the leadership of someone like China.
PJ Wehry (53:02.165)
Where?
PJ Wehry (53:13.279)
Yeah.
PJ Wehry (54:58.817)
Yeah. Well, and they're ongoing questions, right? They're questions that we're going to see answered by people a lot of ways making policy decisions. Yes, sir.
PJ Wehry (56:03.947)
Yes.
PJ Wehry (56:46.305)
Well, and it's not fair to have you answer that because you're a historian, not a prophet. that's a.
PJ Wehry (56:56.129)
Dr. Morty, absolutely wonderful having you on today. I really appreciate it. Thank you.