The “Global” and the “Local” in Early Modern and Modern East Asia presents a unique set of historical perspectives by scholars from two important universities in the East Asian region—The University of Tokyo (Tōdai) and Fudan University, along with East Asian Studies scholars from Princeton University. Two of the essays address the international leanings in the histories of their respective departments in Todai and Fudan. The rest of the essays showcase how such thinking about the global and local histories have borne fruit, as the scholars of the three institutions contributed essays, arguing about the philosophies, methodologies, and/or perspectives of global history and how it relates to local stories. Authors include Benjamin Elman, Haneda Masashi, and Ge Zhaoguang.

Written by two expert and highly esteemed authors, this is the much-anticipated textbook on the early modern history of Southeast Asia.

This collection of essays, in honour of Erik Zurcher, provides new information on various aspects of intellectual and social development in China, Japan, and Korea from approximately 1400 to 1800.

How did Asia come to be represented on European World maps? When and how did Asian Countries adopt a continental system for understanding the world? How did countries with disparate mapping traditions come to share a basic understanding and vision of the globe? This series of essays organized into sections on Jesuit Circuits of Communication and Publication; Jesuit World Maps in Chinese; Reverberations of Matteo Ricci's Maps in East Asia; and Reflections on the Curation of Cartographic Knowledge, go a long way toward answering these questions about the shaping of our modern understandings of the world.

The Princess of the Flaming Womb, the Javanese legend that introduces this pioneering study, symbolizes the many ambiguities attached to femaleness in Southeast Asian societies. Yet, despite these ambiguities, the relatively egalitarian nature of male-female relations in Southeast Asia is central to arguments claiming a coherent identity for the region. This challenging work by senior scholar Barbara Watson Andaya considers such contradictions while offering a thought-provoking view of Southeast Asian history that focuses on women's roles and perceptions. Andaya explores the broad themes of the early modern era (1500-1800) - the introduction of new religions, major economic shifts, changing patterns of state control, the impact of elite lifestyles and behaviors - drawing on an extraordinary range of sources and citing numerous examples from Thai, Vietnamese, Burmese, Philippine, and Malay societies.

This book offers a comparative and polycentric approach to the formation of global trade networks and goods that circumnavigated China, America, and Europe in the so-called process of “early globalization” during the early modern period. Based on a pioneering archival strategy developed by GECEM Project (Global Encounters between China and Europe www.gecem.eu) and funded by the European Research Council (ERC), the chapters in this volume deploy innovative methodology built on the process of clustering new empirical evidence on geostrategic locations to analyse complex socioeconomic systems. Each chapter in this volume focuses on a specific case study that validate the usefulness of this methodology for a more accurate analysis of the self-regulating institutions, social networks, circulation of global goods and information, and smuggling activities that characterised the nonlinear markets of early modern China, Europe, and the Americas. These studies constitute a clear example of the new directions of global (economic) history and how a bottom-up approach through new data mining and comparative method helps to unveil big research questions. The designing of GECEM Project Database (www.gecemdatabase.eu) stands out as cutting-edge Digital Humanities tool used in this book. This book is an insightful resource for scholars of Global History and Atlantic studies, including those interested in China’s trade and history, and its global encounters with the West. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Atlantic Studies: Global Currents.

Song examines the transformation of East Asia through Tumen River border disputes in a period of disaster, turbulence, and war.

The 'Opening of Japan' has been central to the retelling of Japan's modern history. Reopening the Opening of Japan fundamentally reconsiders what that historical moment entailed. What did intensified connections between Japan and the world mean both inside and outside of the country, and what does this tell us about Japan's historical significance on a global scale? The chapters excavate a rich array of surprising cross-border connections, from the global trade in mummified mermaids to the Japanese-Russian intellectual links underpinning the work of Akira Kurosawa. Re-thinking connectivity through non-state transnational perspectives, the book guides readers to new ways of doing and writing history. Contributors are: Lewis Bremner, Natalia Doan, Manimporok Dotulong, Maki Fukuoka, Eiko Honda, Sho Konishi, Mateja Kovacic, Joel Littler, Chinami Oka, Yu Sakai, Olga Solovieva, and Warren Stanislaus.

This book presents extensive new research findings on and new thinking about Southeast Asia in this interesting, richly diverse, but much understudied period. It examines the wide and well-developed trading networks, explores the different kinds of regimes and the nature of power and security, considers urban growth, international relations and the beginnings of European involvement with the region, and discusses religious factors, in particular the spread and impact of Christianity. One key theme of the book is the consideration of how well-developed Southeast Asia was before the onset of European involvement, and, how, during the peak of the commercial boom in the 1500s and 1600s, many polities in Southeast Asia were not far behind Europe in terms of socio-economic progress and attainments.

The labyrinthine BRI projects, aimed at realizing win-win benefits, have created new challenges for the host countries. Economic aspirations must be shielded and protected by security umbrellas, thus making these countries partners of the China-dominated security architecture. Nowhere is this more evident than in the countries of Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Despite Southeast Asian nations being viewed as within the ambit of China's historical sphere of influence, Myanmar and Thailand provide experiences different from their neighbours. This book analyzes China as an economic juggernaut, undergirded by global ambitions, expanding its economic footprint across South and Southeast Asia through trade, technological supremacy and territorial acquisitions. The authors also navigate China's policies at home and abroad, providing a futuristic perspective on China's path to victory. The book provides answers to compelling questions as: