HIST 284CAsians in Latin America

Catalog

Why does Brazil have the largest Japanese population outside of Japan? How did Chinese-descended peoples experience the Mexican and Cuban Revolutions? How did Indians become the largest ethnic group of Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago? This course surveys the history of Asian and Asian-descended peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean. While the course will begin with the Manila Galleons that connected Asia to Spanish America in the sixteenth century, most of our attention will focus on the experiences of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Indonesian, and Korean peoples from the nineteenth century to the present. This course will be guided by the following questions: How can we write the histories of Asian-descended people in the region we call "Latin America"? How have Asians peoples been integral to Latin American and Caribbean history? How have Asian-descended peoples engaged with or disrupted the complex racialized hierarchies of the region? Topics include but are not limited to: indentured servitude and the "coolie" trade; the role of Asian immigration in nation-building and economic development; the racialization of Asians and experiences of racism; resistance through interracial alliances, mixed race relationships, social movements, and cultural production; "new" Asian migrations at the turn of the twenty first century; and the creation of transnational, multinational, and multicultural identities .FULL TITLE: Modern History of Sino-Japanese Relations This course examines Sino-Japanese relations from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Sino-Japanese War in 1945. Facing the pressure of modernization and the threat of western imperialism, the perceived decline of the Qing empire and the rise of the Japanese empire fundamentally transformed the ways in which communications were conducted between China and Japan. While the construction of rivalry between the two East Asian powers led to political tension, diplomatic competition and two wars, intellectual and cultural communications and collaborations also flourished during this period. This course offers the historical context for one of the most important bilateral relations in East Asia and a necessary background for the understanding of contemporary China and Japan.