Nationalistic history tends to swing back and forth between pride and humiliation. In one mode, it fosters solidarity among a varied populace by tracing the lineage of a nation to a single glorious tradition that has persisted, unaltered and continuous, to the present. At its other extreme, nationalistic history narrates the humiliation that people have suffered in order to rouse them to resist foreign encroachment. The metaphor of the “Sick Man of Asia” often evoked in modern Chinese literature, emerged after the crushing defeats that the Chinese endured for much of the modern age; it refers to the politically and physically sick constitution that made them unfit for life on the international stage. Cultural critics have exploited this discourse since the late nineteenth century to criticize all sorts of old and “feudal” cultural and hygienic practices. The formation of this stigma constitutes the central theme of Heinrich's book.
