Course Description:
This course explores China’s interactions with the broader world from classical antiquity to the end of the First Opium War. In doing so, it asks students to think about two important questions:
- How did the process in which China’s interactions with the world shaped the development of Chinese identity, culture, and civilization – that is, what is “Chinese”?
- How did the development Chinese culture and civilization shaped the development of other polities in East Asia and around the world?
Topics covered in this course include: the history of the Silk Road, maritime history, China in the Mongol World Empire, the Ming tributary system and the wokou raids, the Zheng clan and the Qing conquest of Taiwan, and the Canton System and the outbreak of the Opium War.
