World History

Unit 4: The Emergence of Modern Nations

Chapter 18: Asia In Transition

Mon, Jan 27, 2014

38. Tue, Jan 28, 2014

This chapter again reveals a substantial bias toward Western Civilization. Chapter 17 ostensibly covered about a century, but focused in particular on 1775 to 1829: thirty-seven pages spent on about fifty years. Chapter 18 spends twenty-five pages on an era stretching from 1368 to 1923. There will be a little more later on in the book about some of this, but that expanse of time betrays quite a bit of Eurocentrism.

To counter that, we shall focus first on the Asian aspects of this chapter. As usual, the place to begin is China. A key question here is why China did not go on to conquer widely as the European powers did. As the chapter mentions, the Ming Dynasty had the ability to become a great sea power, but elected not to. Some reasons are given, and they are plausible: China's general self-sufficiency, Confucian attitudes, the distraction of the northern frontier problems. Probably the most compelling reason to my mind, however, is not stated as such. Observe the maps of the Ming Dynasty on page 454, and then the map of the Qing Dynasty on page 456. It would appear that China was indeed colonizing: it was just colonizing by foot.

That said, we have in this chapter many examples of somewhat faltering civilizations. Qing China pushed outward, but also drew in on itself. Tokugawan Japan intentionally sealed itself off from the world. The Ottoman Turks nearly conquered Vienna and Eastern Europe with it, and certainly held the Balkans for centuries — but then also began to turn inward and decline. Finally we have the foundering Mughals. Which leads to some vital questions:

• What leads an empire to decline? The economy, the geography, the politics? Is there a maximum size for empires?
• What do you make of the Closing of Japan? What does Japan's indrawing tell us about a country's ability to exist in isolation?
• The question of maps on pg. 472 is worth addressing as well. Compare it to the maps on pg. 362-363 and 370-371. Then take a look at this map: The South on Top. If you have access to a globe, compare all four maps to that. What can you learn from the comparison? What effect might these maps have if you only saw and learned from one of them?
• Similar to the issue with the maps, what effect might be had of giving such scant attention to Asian history?

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