History

Short Period: The Asia-Pacific in the 19th Century

Module code: V1480
Level 5
15 credits in autumn semester
Teaching method: Lecture, Seminar
Assessment modes: Essay

This module surveys the emergence of the Asia-Pacific. We explore the long 19th century, from Europe’s Pacific voyages of ‘discovery’ culminating in the 1790s to Asia’s ‘Wilsonian moment’ of the 1920s.

It starts at a critical moment in this dynamic region’s history. Encounters with Europeans presented its various communities – forged through Indo-Pacific trade and commerce, religion and culture, politics and war – with previously unimaginable opportunities and challenges. Topics include:

• Malay-Arab-Chinese relations
• European imperialism in Asia
• The Opium Wars
• Imperial China and the Meiji Restoration
• Settler colonialism in the Antipodes
• America’s Pacific empire
• Asian migration and Yellow Peril
• Asian political thought
• the rise of Japanese fascism.

The module concludes with the rise of a revolutionary ‘Asian underground’ and pan-Asian movements in the early 20th century. Throughout, we seek to understand how people began to think of themselves as both ‘Asian’ and ‘modern’ while taking back and transforming the world around them.

Module learning outcomes

• Deploy existing knowledge of topics of broad historical significance to the analysis of the national history of a particular country or region.
• Apply understanding of the historical concept of change over time to varied and contested national and regional chronologies.
• Deploy existing knowledge of historiographical debates to questions specific to particular national histories.
• Communicate information, arguments and analysis relating to national and regional history in written forms suitable for an informed audience.