| This dissertation develops a theoretically more robust approach to agency and an empirically more integrated understanding of leadership through analyzing the political figure of Chiang Kai-shek, a twentieth century Chinese leader whose historical evaluations have remained consistently contradictory to this day. My analysis relies on the shilue manuscripts---an intriguing draft chronology of selections from Chiang's diaries, telegrams, and speeches---that his secretaries compiled in the 1940s.;I first identify patterns in the leadership context by critically comparing Chiang's leadership with Yuan Shikai's (1912--1915) and Mao Zedong's (1935--1949). Next, I examine when and why a leader invokes the Confucian ideological structure of shame. Last, and most importantly, I analyze the mechanisms by which Chiang mobilized shame. Isolating three moments in his leadership---the Jinan Incident (1928), the Manchurian Railway Incident (1931), and the New Life Movement (1934)---I chart how Chiang adapted historical narratives on and philosophical understandings of shame over time to make his leadership both modern and national and to push China towards independence.;My approach to a leader's agency neither treated agency as a dependent variable nor as some essential characteristic within the leader. Instead, I approached agency as a process by which a leader constructs a public face that sustains a political agenda and resonates with followers and with posterity. This public face, constructed through interacting with the structural context, might be a blueprint for success, an ideological warrant, an attempt to appear virtuous, or, a compilation of one's words and actions (as with the shilue manuscripts) to argue for one's place in history.;Ultimately, by studying how Chiang's agency dynamically interacted with historical structures, we better understand how (1) Chiang prevented the disintegration of the nation-state and therefore set the stage for Mao's spectacular rise to power, and (2) Chiang drew upon and shaped an ascetic ideology to carry himself and his followers through a difficult period in Chinese history. In this process, Chiang succeeded in transforming Chinese leadership from an imperial conception to a modern and national one. |
