Między poczuciem wyższości cywilizacyjnej a autoidentyfikacją, między rasą a narodem. Polska i Chiny w drugiej połowie XIX wieku
Between the Sense of Civilization Superiority and Self-Identification, Between Race and Nation. Poland and China in the Second Half of the 19th Century

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses, on the one hand, three stages of developing views about raceand superiority of European civilization reflected in the second half of the 19th century in aggressivesocial-Darwinism of positivists, and on the other it confronts racial generalizationswith nation-centered thinking, which played an extremely important role in identity discourseof the Poles. On the example of China and the Siberian-Chinese borderland, it can be noticedthat perception of geography and the ethnic diversity in the world through the prism of greathistoriosophical and racial constructions is manifested in quite widespread adaptation oforientalizing language of the hegemon speaking about backwardness, lack of maturity formodernization and definite supremacy of Europe, while resistance to the oppression ofthe partitioners, and more broadly to the colonial policy of the European powers allows inPoland, contemptuously called Halb-Asien, like in the case of Indians and Boers, creatinga kind of auto-colonial identification with the seemingly “exotic” nation.

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