Historians as rooted cosmopolitans: their potentials and limitations

In the 1990s, the so‐called ‘history problem’ began to escalate in East Asia as the result of mutually reinforcing nationalist commemorations in Japan, South Korea and China. In response, historians from the three countries organized joint historical research and textbook projects. In this article, I examine the extent to which these joint projects succeeded in promoting the cosmopolitan logic of historiography that challenged nationalist commemorations. Specifically, I compare governmental and non‐governmental projects and illustrate structural and dispositional mechanisms that facilitated the cosmopolitan logic of historiography. However, at the same time, I show that the joint projects have had only a limited impact on official and public commemorations because of the absence of any formal institutional links between historians' activities, governments and the public. Thus, while historians have the potential to act as rooted cosmopolitans and to mobilize transnational epistemic networks in East Asia, they have been unable effectively to counteract nationalist commemorations.