1. Introduction to Asian Civilizations
From ancient times
Up to 1600

2. Class requirements
What you need to do to get a good grade in this class
a) attend all the lectures and participate in (not just attend) your discussion groups (We will use the iclicker to check on attendance)
b) study at least two hours outside of class for every hour of class
c) write your term papers yourselves: plagiarism is a serious offense and will be treated accordingly. We will be using Turnitin.com to check for originality and plagiarism.
d) read the assigned pages of the textbooks before the lectures. You should keep in mind the questions on the lecture schedule while you are reading the textbooks.

3. Your textbooks
On East Asia: Ebrey, Walthall (and Palais), A Cultural, Social, and Political History
On Southeast Asia: Lockard, Southeast Asia in World History
On South Asia: Trautmann, India: Brief History of a Civilization
On writing: Story and Jones, Writing History: A Guide for Canadian Students
Richard H. Davis, Global India circa 100 CE, South Asia in Early World History
Tansen Sen and Victor Mair, Traditional China in Asian and World History

4. Unifying themes The emergence of cultural clusters
The emergence of states and empires
The emergence of trans-regional trading networks
The emergence of religions and philosophies
The emergence of social hierarchies

5. Tutorial Sections
In addition to coming to the lectures twice a week, you are also required to participate in a one-hour tutorial section/discussion group. (You must be registered for both ASIA 100 and ASIA L??)Those groups are led by one of the three teachings assistants for this class:
Peder Gedda, Jee-Yeon Song, and Ethan Windschitl
Get to know your TAs. They are serving as TAs for this class because they earned high grades in Asian Studies classes when they were undergraduates, and they want to help you do the same.

6. You will learn in this class
A) the basic facts of Asian history from the earliest signs of human communities to around Our focus will be on the emergence of distinctive civilizations, and what role regional and cross-regional interaction played in the way those various Asian civilizations evolved.
B) how to learn more in less time, and how to figure how which questions will appear on the exams.
C) how to think critically: that means you will learn
1) how to evaluate historical claims
2) how to draw conclusions from data and generalizations.
3) to view almost everything in this world along a historical dimension (defined by both change and continuity)
D) how to write a decent essay, one that makes and supports an argument.

7. challenging nationalistic histories
Many of you may have already learned some Asian history. If you learned it in classrooms in Asia or from your relatives or popular media, you may have learned a nationalistic version of history. Over the course of this term, we will challenge the frequent tendency of nationalistic history-writing to exaggerate the accomplishments of particular countries or peoples, or treat their history in isolation from the histories of their neighbors.
This may be painful, since your history, as you perceive it, is part of your identity. However, education is not intended to confirm what you think you already know but to show you new ways of thinking, and to help you re-define yourselves.

8. The Regions of Asia
How do we define Asia? What are its constituent parts?
South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan
East Asia: China, Japan, North and South Korea, Taiwan
Peninsular Southeast Asia: Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar (Burma). (Myanmar is grouped with Southeast Asia due to shared cultural traits, even though geographically it could be seen as part of South Asia.)
Island Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Brunei, Timor-Leste
Northern/Central Asia: Mongolia along with the peoples of the western regions of China and those with Asian ties living in the former Soviet Union. Tibet fits in here as well.

9. Questions for this lecture
How is“Asia” different from the rest of Eurasia? What role has geography played in Asian history?
On the mainland of Asia, all of the earliest major cultures from South Asia to East Asia originated along river valleys formed by rivers flowing out of the Himalayas.
South Asia: The Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra rivers
Southeast Asia: The Irrawaddy, Salween, and Mekong rivers
East Asia: The Yangzi and Yellow Rivers
In maritime Southeast Asia, sea-going trade between China and India stimulated the emergence of cultures and states.
Asian Civilizations as monsoon civilizations or vegetable civilizations High population density= group oriented rather than individualistic

10. Diversity across Asia Linguistic Diversity
Chinese, Altaic, Tibeto-Burmese,
Malay, Austroasiatic, Tai
Indo-European, Dravidian
Religious Diversity
Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism
Hinduism, Confucianism, Folk Religions
Ethnic Diversity Tamils, Sikhs, Malays, Tai, Vietnamese, Tibetans, Mongols,
Koreans, Chinese, Okinawans, Japanese, etc.

11. Commonalities across Asia
Are there any common elements across these ethnic, religious, and linguistic divides?
Buddhism [with some exceptions such as the Philippines]
Indic and Chinese civilization intermingled in Southeast Asia.
rice is an important part of the diet.
More than half of the world’s population is categorized by Westerners as Asian
Do your textbooks treat Asia as one geographic, cultural, or political unit?

12. Asia In World Population History
Year Asia Europe former USSR Africa America Oceana World
400 BCE million
Comparative populations over the centuries (in millions)
From Massimo Livi-Bacci, A Concise History of World Population, p. 31
Notice that Asia has always had over half the population of the entire world.