Southeast Asia and the West.

Catalog description

This course examines the history of the "lands below the winds" - maritime and mainland southeast Asia - from their epochs of pre-modern greatness to the present as well as the lands of Southeast Asia as both a regional and global crossroads. Southeast Asians were connected with other civilizations through trade and religion early and consistently. Topics include the glories of Angkor and Khmer civilization, the spice trade and the world economy, and the spread of Islam. The course also focus on the European and U.S. colonization of the region's states and their subsequent independence struggles, with in-depth consideration of the Philippines, the Indo-Chinese wars and the events leading to the world's most destructive genocide under the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.