Message from ashapiro

[Anonymous]

Although Clay had to leave in the middle of the morning session, I appreciated the "assignment" that he gave us to work on while he was gone. He asked us to come up with a list of the big questions for 19th/20th century East Asia. I wish we had had more time to touch on some of the ideas that were brought up as a result of the assignment.

I found the information about 19th century global trade very interesting. People tend to associate globalization with the 21st century when, as I found out from Clay's lecture, there was significant global trade in the 1800s, which led to significant structural and long-term changes for China. The major conflict in China during this time was balancing the expansive west with tradition-bound China. This conflict creates an imbalance in Chinese society that leads to internal disorder and rebellion.

I think it would be interesting to take this concept - expanding west vs. tradition - and see if my students could see the same pattern in different situations, time periods, places in the world. I think this concept could fit in either a comparative government or comparative economics unit.