Current course offerings

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Course description

Over the last century East Asia has become an economic powerhouse, and Australia's economic and strategic well-being is heavily dependent on the region. This course will ensure that students have a sound understanding of the broad contours and themes of the modern history of East Asia, including China and Taiwan, Japan, Korea and the countries of Southeast Asia. The course aims to introduce students not just to what happened, the individuals, incidents, sequences of events, and dramas of East Asia's modern history, but also and more importantly to major problems of modern East Asian history. Over the last century and a half East Asia has played a pivotal role in world history. In the nineteenth century the Western imperial powers and Japan gradually replaced Chinese hegemony in East Asia. All of Southeast Asia with the exception of Siam (Thailand), came under European colonial rule. Japan emerged as an economic and imperial power in its own right. This led to the rise of national liberation movements throughout East Asia, based both on indigenous traditions and Western political philosophies, which challenged both indigenous rulers and colonial states. Ideas of social and gender equality and political freedom were central to the political platforms of many of these movements. The Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and Southeast Asia at the end 1941 set in place a train of events that would lead to Japan's own defeat in WWII, the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, and the independence of Southeast Asian nations in the 1940s-1960s. The economic transformation that took place during the post-war period, first in Japan, then other East Asian nations, and then in China, would reintegrate the East Asian region economically. This course shows students how contemporary events in East Asia have their roots in the tumultuous history of the last century and a half.

Archived offerings