Asia and the West as Partners Before “Empire” and After

1969 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 711-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Holden Furber

A large number of us who are here today in 1969 remember the early beginnings of our organization. I remember particularly a small gathering of one of our earlier incarnations in John Fairbank's livingroom discussing our problems, when we were so small that Wilma Fairbank could send out the postcard notices of meetings without any secretarial help. We are now old enough to have acquired traditions, one of which is the rotation of the presidency from China to South East Asia to Japan to South Asia and then round again. By a fortunate chance the turn of South Asia falls this year on the centenary of the birth of the greatest of South Asians of modern times. Another of our traditions is that the president should deliver an address on a topic close to his own special interest—in my case the history of modern India. I am, however, going to deviate somewhat from that practice this afternoon. In closing, I shall make some suggestions which I hope all of us will keep in mind in this new era of Asian history which is now upon us.


1972 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Kate Leonard

Historians have attached a great deal of importance to Wei Yüan's geopolitical work, the Hai-kuo t'u-chih (The illustrated treatise on the maritime kingdoms), because of its use of Western source materials and its treatment of the West. While its importance as the first major Chinese study of the West should not be minimized, this should not obscure the fact that the Treatise was primarily a reassessment of the history of China's relations with the Asian maritime world, particularly South-east Asia and India.It was as much a rediscovery of China'spast involvement in this tributary sphere as it was a discovery of the West. This paper will attempt to describe the way in which Wei Yuan became involved in the problem of the West and to analyze and describe his view of the traditional Asian maritime world and the implications of Western expansion into this sphere.



2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ng Kwok Weng Roy

South East Asia (SEA) is made up of 11 countries (Viet-nam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Philippines, Indonesia and Timor Leste) from Myanmar in the northwest to Timor Leste in the far south east. It is one of the most far flung region in Asia, with a land mass of 4.5 million km2 and theitspopulation of 641 million makes it the third most populous geographical region in the world after South Asia and East Asia. Asia is the world’s largest most populous continent stretching from the Middle East in the west to Japan in the east with a population of 4.567 billion.



1962 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Singhal

The history of mankind is studded with narratives of human conflicts, inspired largely by man's desire of domination. Domination gave rise to resentment and agitation and finally gave way to freedom. Thus the struggle between man's desire to dominate and yet to be free determined the changing patterns of society and the course of human civilization. With the march of time and growth of experience the frontiers and concepts of loyalties widened and the tribal and clan conflicts developed into organised and highly mechanised national warfare. Consequently at the turn of this century most of the world lay humble at the feet of a few industrially and technologically advanced nations of the West. South East Asia belonged to the majority community of the humbled. Known as the “economic bulwark of western Imperialsm”, its economic wealth had, in fact, attracted over a period of centuries peoples of various cultures and races. The Europeans were only the last to come; before them had come the Indian, Chinese and Arab merchants. Of all these the Europeans were the most organised and persistent intruders. Their commercial rivalries through a process of political intrigues and military strifes inevitably led to the colonisation of South East Asia for several centuries. Except Thailand, all the nations of this region suffered a period of European domination; even Thailand's independence remained at its best precarious. Some remnants of this domination are still to be seen, for instance, in West Irian and Timor.



Author(s):  
Megan Bryson

Since its birth in India about 2,500 years ago, Buddhism has spread throughout the globe. As Buddhism reached new areas, its followers developed their own regional identities and understandings of Buddhist geography. South Asia, and specifically the sites associated with the historical Buddha’s life, remained a conceptual center for many Buddhists, but the near disappearance of Buddhism from the subcontinent in the 13th century allowed Buddhists in other regions to overcome their “borderland complexes” and identify sacred Buddhist sites in their own lands. This involved both the metaphorical transfer of sacred sites from South Asia to new places and the creation of new sacred sites, such as reliquaries for the remains of local saints and mountains seen as the abodes of buddhas or bodhisattvas. By the 19th and 20th centuries, colonial encounters introduced Buddhism to the West and created categories of national Buddhisms, which led to new visions of Buddhist geography and regionalism. In addition to national Buddhisms, regional distinctions commonly applied to the Buddhist world include the mapping of Theravāda in Southeast Asia, Mahāyāna in East Asia, and Vajrayāna in the Himalayas, or the mapping of Northern Buddhism as Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna in East Asia and the Himalayas, and Southern Buddhism as Theravāda in Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka. These models have some salience, but the history of Buddhist geography and regionalism reveals that the locations and interactions of different Buddhist traditions are more complex. New models for Buddhist regionalism have moved away from static, bounded spaces to foreground processes of interaction, such as network analyses of trade and transmission routes or areas such as “Maritime Asia” or the “East Asian Mediterranean.”



Author(s):  
Jürgen Schaflechner

Chapter 3 introduces the tradition of ritual journeys and sacred geographies in South Asia, then hones in on a detailed history of the grueling and elaborate pilgrimage attached to the shrine of Hinglaj. Before the construction of the Makran Coastal Highway the journey to the Goddess’s remote abode in the desert of Balochistan frequently presented a lethally dangerous undertaking for her devotees, the hardships of which have been described by many sources in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Sindhi, and Urdu. This chapter draws heavily from original sources, including travelogues and novels, which are supplanted with local oral histories in order to weave a historical tapestry that displays the rich array of practices and beliefs surrounding the pilgrimage and how they have changed over time. The comparative analysis demonstrates how certain motifs, such as austerity (Skt. tapasyā), remain important themes within the whole Hinglaj genre even in modern times while others have been lost in the contemporary era.



2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
Sanjeev Kumar

In recent years, there has been a rise in China’s profile in South Asia. It is no surprise that Chinese experts have used terms, such as ‘new springtime’ in China–South Asia relations, ‘rediscovery of the strategic status of South Asia’ and ‘most relevant region with regard to the rise of China’.    The objective of this article is to examine the nature and drivers of China’s South Asia policy, especially under the leadership of Xi Jinping vis-à-vis China’s policy towards the region in the past. It is not sufficient to only examine international factors or foreign and security policy in the context of the neighbouring region, such as South Asia. China’s ‘domestic periphery’ presents a significant threat to its national security. These areas are linked to neighbouring countries of South Asia and Central Asia. The announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping of a ‘New Era’ or ‘third era’ in the history of Communist Party of China (CPC) represents a China which is known for its dictum ‘striving for achievement’ ( fenfa youwei). This is different from the second era’s policy of ‘keeping a low profile and biding the time’ proposed by Deng Xiaoping. Of course, the name of Mao Zedong is synonymous with the first era beginning from 1949.



2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 299-317 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shohei Sato

AbstractThis article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.



1962 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-139

Readers of this Journal will recall the provocative article in Vol. 2, No. 2 by John Smail entitled An Autonomous History of South-East Asia. This article has aroused considerable comment. It is all-the-more unfortunate then that it was marred by fifty or more misprints and omissions. With this issue of the Journal we have changed to a new type and printing machine, and we hope such errors as committed before will remain merely the follies of our youth. We attach a list of the more important of the misprints in Mr. Smail's article.



2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-167
Author(s):  
Deb Cleland

Charting the course: The world of alternative livelihood research brings a heavy history of paternalistic colonial intervention and moralising. In particular, subsistence fishers in South East Asia are cyclical attractors of project funding to help them exit poverty and not ‘further degrade the marine ecosystem’ (Cinner et al. 2011), through leaving their boats behind and embarking on non-oceanic careers. What happens, then, when we turn an autoethnographic eye on the livelihood of the alternative livelihood researcher? What lexicons of lack and luck may we borrow from the fishers in order to ‘render articulate and more systematic those feelings of dissatisfaction’ (Young 2002) of an academic’s life’s work and our work-life? What might we learn from comparing small-scale fishers to small-scale scholars about how to successfully ‘navigate’ the casualised waters of the modern university? Does this unlikely course bring any ideas of ‘possibilities glimmering’ (Young 2002) for ‘exiting’ poverty in Academia?



Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sinn

This chapter takes a broad look at the Pacific Ocean in relation to Chinese migration. As trade, consumption and capital flows followed migrants, powerful networks were woven and sustained; in time, the networks fanned across the Pacific from British Columbia along the West Coast of the United States to New Zealand and Australia. The overlapping personal, family, financial and commercial interests of Chinese in California and those in Hong Kong, which provide the focus of this study, energized the connections and kept the Pacific busy and dynamic while shaping the development of regions far beyond its shores. The ocean turned into a highway for Chinese seeking Gold Mountain, marking a new era in the history of South China, California, and the Pacific Ocean itself.



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