History
East Asian Empires
The East Asian Empires refer to the powerful and influential imperial dynasties that ruled over East Asia, including the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean empires. These empires were characterized by strong centralized governments, sophisticated bureaucracies, and significant cultural and technological advancements. They played a crucial role in shaping the history and development of East Asia, leaving a lasting impact on the region.
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7 Key excerpts on "East Asian Empires"
eBook - PDFA History of East Asia
From the Origins of Civilization to the Twenty-First Century
- Charles Holcombe(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
East Asia is therefore a critically important region of the world; but what is East Asia? Asia, in its entirety, is actually not a coherent entity. The concept of Asia is one that we have inherited from the ancient Greeks, who divided the world broadly into two major parts: Europe and Asia. For the Greeks, however, this original Asia meant primarily the Persian Empire. As the scope of Asia expanded beyond Persia and what we now call Asia Minor, Asia came to include so many different cultures and peoples that the label was drained of most of its significance. By the late 1700s, for example, two-thirds of the world’s total population and 80 percent of the world’s production were all located in Asia. Asia was nothing less than the entire Old World minus Europe. If Asia as a whole is not a very meaningful label, however, the word can still serve as a useful terminological anchor for certain geographic subregions, such as South Asia and East Asia, which do have more historical coherence. 6 Even these subregions, of course, must still be somewhat arbitrarily defined. Premodern East Asians certainly did not think of themselves as either Asians or East Asians. Today the U.S. State Department lumps Southeast Asia and even Oceania together with East Asia under its Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Geographic regions can be defined in many ways, and a variety of labels applied to suit different purposes. In historical terms, however, and especially in consideration of shared premodern culture, East Asia is most usefully defined as that region of the world that came to extensively use the Chinese writing system, and absorbed through those written words many of the ideas and values of what we call Confucianism, much of the associated legal and political structure of government, and certain specifically East Asian forms of Buddhism.
eBook - PDF- Erik Ringmar(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Open Book Publishers(Publisher)
2. China and East Asia 13 2. China and East Asia For much of its history, China was the dominant country in East Asia and international relations in this part of the world were, more than anything, organized by the Chinese and on Chinese terms. China itself was an empire but the international system of which China was the center concerned the external relations of the empire — its relations with the rest of East Asia. In order to describe these relations the metaphor of a “solar system” is sometimes used. Here, China is the sun around which other and far smaller political entities, located at increasing distances from the center, are circulating in their respective orbits. Some historians use the term “suzerainty,” referring to a relationship in which “a dominant state has control over the international affairs of a subservient state, while the latter retains domestic autonomy.” At the same time, there was a great difference in the way the Chinese dealt with neighbors to the north and the west of the country and neighbors to the south and the east. The former relations were organized according to what we will call the “overland system,” and the latter relations according to the “tribute system.” The people to the north and the west constituted permanent threats. They were nomads who grazed their animals on the enormous steppes of inner Asia. Despite their economic and technological backwardness, they had access to the most advanced military technology of the day — fast horses — and in addition they were highly skilled archers. Since the terrain was flat and since there were few natural obstacles in their way, it was easy for the nomads to raid Chinese farming communities. Occasionally they made it all the way to the capital itself. The imperial authorities always struggled with how best to respond to these threats, mixing defensive and offensive strategies, without ever finding a satisfactory solution.
eBook - PDF- S. Kaufman, R. Little, W. Wohlforth, S. Kaufman, R. Little, W. Wohlforth(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
In addition, the time period of this study is restricted to roughly the six centuries from 1300 to 1900 – a period that covers the Chinese dynasties from the end of the Yuan, the Ming, and finally the Qing. China – and East Asia – has millennia of history, and this study no more attempts to explain earlier historical periods such as the ‘Warring States’ period in China (481–221 BC) than a study that focuses on Napoleonic-era Europe would attempt to explain the foreign policy of 3 rd century Visigoths (Hui, 2004b). The major actors Political units comprising the East Asian international system of the past millennium have been recognized sovereign entities with power over a geographic area. As Lien-sheng Yang (1968: 21) wrote, ‘there is no doubt that China had at least a vague concept of state (kuo) by late Chou times (BC 400).’ Both Korea and Japan historically have used the David C. Kang 201 202 Table 9.1 East Asian Political Systems, 1200–1900 China Japan Korea Vietnam Thailand Taiwan Malaya Java Philippines 1200 1279–1368: 1160–1333: 918–1259: 939–1407: 1238–1350: Thai 1222–1293: Yuan Kamakura Koryo Champa Sukhothai domination Singosari and Nam Viet 1300 1333–1573: 1392–1910: 1350–1782: 1293–1520: Ashikiga Choson Ayuthia Majapahit 1400 1368–1644: 1407–1427: 1402–1511: Majapahit Ming Chinese rule Malacca influence 1427–1787: Le Dynasty 1500 1511–1641: 1571: Portuguese Spanish Malacca colony 1600 1644–1911: 1600–1868: 1662–68: 1641–1796: 1619: Qing Tokugawa Dutch Dutch Dutch 1683–1895: Malacca colony Chinese district 1700 1782: 1796: Chakri British colony 1800 1868: Meiji 1802–1955: 1895–1945: 1898: Nguyen Japanese US colony Dynasty colony and French colony word for ‘country’ (kuo in Chinese, koku or kuni in Japanese, kuk in Korean, quoc in Vietnamese; all derived from the same Chinese charac- ter) to refer to each other and to China since well before the Sung dynasty.
eBook - PDFNanyang
Essays on Heritage
- Gungwu Wang(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- ISEAS Publishing(Publisher)
They led me to the origins of the tributary system devised for a tianxia, or “All Under Heaven”, that John King Fairbank called “the Chinese world order”. 14 This new term suggests that, by the criteria that defined empires in European history, China was not quite the kind of empire they were familiar with. All the same, as shorthand, everyone used the word empire for China until 1911. What is interesting is that, long after 1911, the shadow End of Empire 171 of empire still seems to follow China around. No matter that, officially, all countries recognize China as a large multi-nation state and accept its international borders, it has been easy for regions like Southeast Asia to be pointed to as targets of a future “China threat” because of its imperial past. It is true that the Qin-Han Empire advanced into the Red River valleys of northern Vietnam over 2,000 years ago and stayed over 1,000 years. It is true that, over a long period of some 600 years, the kingdom of Dali and the tribal statelets of Guizhou and Yunnan were gradually incorporated into what became Ming and Qing imperial provinces. It is also true that vague terms like feudal and tributary relations, vassalage and suzerainty, left us unclear whether they might be used again in future relationships. I had gone on to study North China during the late Tang and Song dynasties, covering a long period when the Chinese empire was weak and divided. This was when Chinese emperors were sometimes forced to pay tribute to other emperors stronger than themselves. My study led me to examine other manifestations of empire in Asia. For example, the Mongol conquest of China under the Yuan dynasty led to aggressive activity in Southeast Asia, including the invasion of Burma, Vietnam, Champa and Java (and Korea and Japan as well).
eBook - PDFThe Political Economy of East Asia
Regional and National Dimensions
- K. Cai(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
10 The Political Economy of East Asia new skills and attitudes among the people and to shape their loyalty and obedience to the new state. 1 As a result of these efforts, Japan had transformed from a weak, feudal, and agrarian country into a modern industrial power within a period of about three decades, economically and militarily capable of resisting foreign domination. The achievements of Japan’s modernization were most illustratively reflected in Japan’s victories over China in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 and over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. Japan’s victories of these two wars indicated that an economically underdeveloped and militarily vulnerable semi-feudal nation had been transformed into an imperial power. On the other hand, however, the victories of these two wars set Japan on a course of expansion and empire- building in East Asia. Japan forcefully annexed Taiwan from China in 1895 as a result defeating China in the Sino-Japanese War and then form- ally annexed Korea in 1910 following a decade and half of consolidation of its control over the peninsula. The Japanese quest for a colonial empire in East Asia was supported by various domestic interest groups and clearly impelled by its economic concerns, notably, markets for surplus production and secure sources of raw materials. 2 In addition, a variety of noneconomic motives were also behind Tokyo’s efforts to establish a Japanese empire in East Asia, including Japan’s overriding concern for its insular security, a sense of mission to bring about development in Asia, a sense of excitement and adventure, a sense of pride and prestige, and expansion of living space. 3 The industrialization of Japan was achieved primarily through the mobilization of agricultural resources of land and labor. The rural sec- tor was therefore made to bear the financial burden of modernization during the initial stage of an emerging industrial sector in Japan.
eBook - PDFThe Limits of Universal Rule
Eurasian Empires Compared
- Yuri Pines, Michal Biran, Jörg Rüpke(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Finally, the Mongol and post-Mongol empires merited five contributions, covering the Mongols themselves, the Muslim empires in Near East and South Asia (the Ottomans, the Safavids, and the Mughals), Ming and Qing China, and the Russian Empire. The result, we hope, is a fair and balanced presentation of major case studies. Below we shall outline the major parameters of our discussion. 4 Universalism and Its Limits The avowed desire to rule “the four corners of the universe” may be con- sidered the hallmark of imperial political culture worldwide. Actually, it is so old as to predate the creation of the empires senso strictu, being associated with the earliest quasi-imperial formations mentioned above. The rulers of Akkad (2334–2193 BCE), founded by Sargon, took the titles “king of the universe, king of the four regions of the world.” This “early instance of univer- salistic discourse” (Strootman 2014: 40) 13 was echoed regularly by all powerful 13 Strootman associates the earliest instance of this discourse with the Sumerian king Shulgi (r. c.2029–1982 BCE), but the precedents can go back already to Sargon and to his singularly important successor, Naram-Sin (r. c.2211–2175 BCE), who was the first to call himself “king of the four quarters of the universe” (Van De Mieroop 2016, 73). 15 Introduction: Empires and Their Space Map 0.3 Major Eurasian empires, c.1700 CE. Produced on the basis of the “Interactive World History Atlas since 3000 BC” (ht tp://geacron.com/home-en/?sid=GeaCron44764). rulers in the ancient Near East. Egyptian pharaohs referred to themselves as rulers of “all that sun encircles,” “kings of kings,” and so forth, allowing Morkot (2001, 227) to conclude that Egypt should be qualified as an empire. This discourse – usually augmented with territorial expansion – remained the sine qua non of an imperial self-presentation thereafter.
eBook - PDFHow the East Was Won
Barbarian Conquerors, Universal Conquest and the Making of Modern Asia
- Andrew Phillips(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
These achievements arguably constituted the most important political developments of early modern Eurasia. These empires together transformed Eurasia’s landscape, and provided the larger system into which European maritime traders eventually infiltrated. It is to a consideration of this process of infiltration, its divergent trajectories in South versus East Asia, that I now turn. 181 Crossley, A Translucent Mirror, p. 221. 126 The Rise of Asia’s Terrestrial Empires
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