Historical Archaeology of Early Modern Colonialism in Asia-Pacific: The Asia-Pacific Region
Maria Cruz Berrocal and Cheng-hwa Tsang
Abstract
The history of Asia-Pacific since 1500 has traditionally been told as one of stagnation and decline imposed on by the superiority of Europeans in the region, who, since their arrival, have allegedly opened the era of “the Rise of the West” by establishing themselves and capitalism and achieving political and economic domination. In the last decades, as ever earlier world-systems have been defined in Asia (with particular attention paid to China’s economy), there has been a rejection of the academic paradigm that placed Europe as the key player in the formation of a globalized, capitalist world ... More
The history of Asia-Pacific since 1500 has traditionally been told as one of stagnation and decline imposed on by the superiority of Europeans in the region, who, since their arrival, have allegedly opened the era of “the Rise of the West” by establishing themselves and capitalism and achieving political and economic domination. In the last decades, as ever earlier world-systems have been defined in Asia (with particular attention paid to China’s economy), there has been a rejection of the academic paradigm that placed Europe as the key player in the formation of a globalized, capitalist world. The relevance of this task can hardly be overemphasized: a decentralized global history is being delineated, and the mechanisms by which European colonialism eventually managed to bend existing “world-economies” and resources in order to raise a truly global, thriving, and exploitative economy must be made clear. Asia-Pacific deserves, as much as any other region, a place in global history as a key player not only before Europeans landed there but also after (practically until the nineteenth century). With such an undertaking, European colonialism becomes a comparatively tiny event.
The book aims to gather different points of view from varying disciplines in order to outline the development of colonialism and its implications in Asia-Pacific and to shed light on relevant topics for a holistic understanding of the colonial processes.
Keywords:
Asia-Pacific,
History,
Colonialism,
Decentralized global history
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780813054766 |
| Published to Florida Scholarship Online: May 2018 |
DOI:10.5744/florida/9780813054766.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Maria Cruz Berrocal, editor
University of Konstanz
Cheng-hwa Tsang, editor
Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica
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