China
Monthly Digest: January 2023
Monthly Digest for January 2023.
“Making a Great Profit”: Historical Imagination and the Opium Trade
A discussion of teaching the opium trade to understand the different ways opium shaped the nineteenth century.
“Addicted to the Coffeehouse”: Snapshots from the Ottoman Empire
A discussion of the challenges of teaching the Ottomans in world history courses and how to use an Ottoman coffeehouse to teach about the empire
Stepping Out from Zheng He’s Shadow: World History, Ming China, and Greater East Asia in the Fifteenth Century
Most authors of world history textbooks and world history teachers seem to love the voyages of Zheng He. The treasure ships dwarfed all contemporary ships, the two main individuals (the Yongle Emperor and Admiral Zheng He) were larger than life characters, and there were African giraffes being mistaken for mythical
Eurocentrism and the Myth of East Asian Isolation
Explores the eurocentric tendency to describe early modern China and Japan as isolationist. Instead of thinking of these states as isolationist, we should view them as simply having a different model of foreign relations.
