I stopped reading at once, for I had never thought of any similarity between Scandinavia and Japan before. But at the very suggestion, I at once realized that Japan and Scandinavia were both Edge peoples. They came into the civilized world in the shadow (or is it dazzled by the brilliance?) of a dominant culture.
I thought of other Edge peoples — the Arabs, who found an ideology that gave them the power to sweep through the culturally overwhelming Roman world; the Mongols, who united long enough to conquer and then be swallowed up by China; the Turks, who plunged from the edge of the Muslim world to the heart of it, and then toppled the last vestige of the Roman world as well, and yet sank back into again becoming Edge people in the shadow of Europe. All these Edge nations, even when they ruled the very civilizations in whose shadow they had once huddled, were never able to shake off their sense of not-belonging, their fear that their culture was irredeemably inferior and secondary. The result was that they were at once too aggressive and overextended themselves, growing beyond boundaries they could consolidate and hold; and too diffident, surrendering everything that really was powerful and fresh in their culture while retaining only the outward trappings of independence. The Manchu rulers of China, for instance, pretended to remain apart from the people they ruled, determined not to be swallowed up in the all-devouring maw of Chinese culture, but the result was not the dominance of the Manchu, but their inevitable marginalization.
True Center nations have been few in history. Egypt was one, and remained a Center nation until it was conquered by Alexander; even then, it kept a measure of its Centerness until the powerful idea of Islam swept over it. Mesopotamia might have been one, for a time, but unlike Egypt, Mesopotamian cities could not unite enough to control their hinterland. The result was they were swept over and ruled by their Edge nations again and again. The Centerness of Mesopotamia still gave it the power to swallow up its conquerors culturally for many years, until finally it became a peripheral province handed back and forth between Rome and Parthia. As with Egypt, its Center role was finally shattered by Islam.
China came later to its place as a Center nation, but it has been astonishingly successful. It was a long and bloody road to unity, but once achieved that unity remained, culturally if not politically. The rulers of China, like the rulers of Egypt, reached out to control the hinterland, but, again like Egypt, rarely attempted and never succeeded in establishing long-term rule over genuinely foreign nations.
Filled with this idea, and others that grew out of it, I conceived of a conversation between Wang-mu and Peter in which Wang-mu told him of her idea of Center and Edge nations. I went to my computer and wrote notes about this idea, which included the following passage:
Center People are not afraid of losing their identity. They take it for granted that all people want to be like them, that they are the highest civilization and all else is poor imitation or transient mistakes. The arrogance, oddly enough, leads to a simple humility — they do not strut or brag or throw their weight around because they have no need to prove their superiority. They transform only gradually, and only by pretending that they are not changing at all.
Edge People, on the other hand, know they are not the highest civilization. Sometimes they raid and steal and stay to rule — Vikings, Mongols, Turks, Arabs — and sometimes they go through radical transformations in order to compete — Greeks, Romans, Japanese — and sometimes they simply remain shamed backwaters. But when they are on the rise, they are insufferable because they are unsure of their worth and must therefore brag and show off and prove themselves again and again — until at last they feel themselves to be a Center People. Unfortunately, that very complacency destroys them, because they are not Center People and feeling doesn’t make it so. Triumphant Edge People don’t endure, like Egypt or China, they fade, as the Arabs did, and the Turks, and the Vikings, and the Mongols after their victories.