Colonization and Ethnicity in East Asian History

Catalog description

East Asia is among the most culturally and linguistically homogeneous regions of the earth, the result of over two millennia of conquest and colonization. This course explores how the wide diversity of cultures, languages, and ecosystems that once existed across East Asia were transformed into a few dominant cultural groups. We will cover two main topics. One is the process whereby the people now known as the Chinese (or Han) were formed through imperial conquest and cultural mixing. The second focuses on the Ainu people of Northeast Asia and how they were forcibly incorporated into the Japanese nation. This course will teach students to think comparatively about processes of colonialism and ideas of ethnicity. While the colonial practices of Western Europeans have been studied in great depth, those of other civilizations have not received as much attention. P