Eurocentric Ideas on East Asian History

Paper Summary:

This paper makes use of three cases to show the incorrectness of the past notion of East Asian isolationism. Eurocentric ideas about Tokugawa, Japan, Qing, China, and Choson, Korea are examined as examples of these incorrect notions of static Asian societies. The paper includes notes on different stereotypes to emerge from different approaches to East Asian history.

From the Paper:

"A basic error of Eurocentric ideas of East Asian history can be seen in thumbnail sketches of Tokugawa Japan, Qing China, or Choson Korea. First of all, they upset ideas of static Asian societies in which little changed till the arrival of Westerns, as in ideas of Asian xenophobia in Japan and China, in particular, or references to a chronic isolationism that, actually, can be seen as ordinary protectionism. Blaut explained how models of European or other Western diffusionism have had a strong power over ideas of the West's impact upon the non-Western world, for good or ill, towards several assumptions that have only been upset, in the last few decades."

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