Early Modern Asia

Catalog description

This course offers a foundation in early modern Asia from roughly the fifteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. Students will examine the constitution of centralized and bureaucratic empires, ideological movements, and practices associated with Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, and Hindu thought, and the formation of syncretic socio-cultural spheres in different parts of Asia. Through an exploration of key political, cultural, and intellectual developments in Asia, students will assess Asia's place in the global network of thought, commerce, and exchange. Central to this analysis is how such contact with overland and maritime cultures deeply affected mainstream Asian societies. By tracing such interactions, students will be encouraged to recognize, identify, and apply the roles of frontier and borderlands in the creation and reification of identity and culture in different parts of Asia. Through this multifaceted approach to Asian history, students will come to recognize the strategic role of Asia within the pan-Eurasian sphere of interactions while also achieve a better understanding of the diverse characteristics of Asian peoples, societies, and institutions in history.