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"ASIAN CIVILIZATION"
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The Huns, Rome and the Birth of Europe
The Huns have often been treated as primitive barbarians with no advanced political organisation. Their place of origin was the so-called 'backward steppe'. It has been argued that whatever political organisation they achieved they owed to the 'civilizing influence' of the Germanic peoples they encountered as they moved west. This book argues that the steppes of Inner Asia were far from 'backward' and that the image of the primitive Huns is vastly misleading. They already possessed a highly sophisticated political culture while still in Inner Asia and, far from being passive recipients of advanced culture from the West, they passed on important elements of Central Eurasian culture to early medieval Europe, which they helped create. Their expansion also marked the beginning of a millennium of virtual monopoly of world power by empires originating in the steppes of Inner Asia. The rise of the Hunnic Empire was truly a geopolitical revolution.
eBook
The Huns, Rome and the birth of Europe
\"The Huns have often been treated as primitive barbarians with no advanced political organisation. Their place of origin was the so-called 'backward steppe'. It has been argued that whatever political organisation they achieved they owed to the 'civilizing influence' of the Germanic peoples they encountered as they moved west. This book argues that the steppes of Inner Asia were far from 'backward' and that the image of the primitive Huns is vastly misleading. They already possessed a highly sophisticated political culture while still in Inner Asia and, far from being passive recipients of advanced culture from the West, they passed on important elements of Central Eurasian culture to early medieval Europe, which they helped create\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Orientalism in early modern France : Eurasian trade, exoticism and the Ancien Régime
Francis I's ties with the Ottoman Empire marked the birth of court-sponsored Orientalism in France. Under Louis XIV, French society was transformed by cross-cultural contacts with the Ottomans, India, Persia, China, Siam and the Americas. The consumption of silk, cotton cloth, spices, coffee, tea, china, gems, flowers and other luxury goods transformed daily life and gave rise to a new discourse about the 'Orient' which in turn shaped ideas about science, economy and politics, and against absolutist monarchy. An original account of the ancient regime, this book highlights France's use of the exotic and analyzes French discourse about Islam and the 'Orient'.
eBook
Asian American culture : from anime to tiger moms
\"Providing comprehensive coverage of a variety of Asian American cultural forms, including folk tradition, literature, religion, education, politics, sports, and popular culture, this two-volume work is an ideal resource for students and general readers that reveals the historical, regional, and ethnic diversity within specific traditions. -- Provides readers with a broad understanding of the variety and commonalities in Asian American culture, enabling a fuller comprehension of Asian American history, experience, and cultural expressions -- Offers comprehensive, in-depth, and accessibly written coverage that addresses a wide variety of Asian American cultural forms such as folk tradition, literature, religion, education, politics, sports, and popular culture -- Highlights differences among Asian American cultures and identifies important achievements through biographies of key figures as well as spotlights on historical events, legal cases, and significant artifacts in sidebars -- Presents sources for more information on the subjects discussed with Further Readings for each entry \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Go East, Young Man
\"[Francaviglia's] book is of great value, particularly in its illuminating showcasing of the degree to which the American West was consistently compared to aspects of the Middle East, from desert sands and rock formations to camel caravans and mirages. These comparisons helped to establish the West as an exotic locale, markedly different from the Europe-focused eastern half of the country and having a fascination of its own.\" Journal of Folklore Research
eBook
American Orient
Surveying the American fascination with the Far East since the mideighteenth century, this book explains why the Orient had a fundamentally different meaning in the United States than in Europe or Great Britain. David Weir argues that unlike their European counterparts, Americans did not treat the East simply as a site of imperialist adventure; on the contrary, colonial subjugation was an experience that early Americans shared with the peoples of China and India. In eighteenthcentury America, the East was, paradoxically, a means of reinforcing the enlightenment values of the West: Franklin, Jefferson, and other American writers found in Confucius a complement to their own political and philosophical beliefs. In the nineteenth century, with the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy, the Hindu Orient emerged as a mystical alternative to American reality. During this period, Emerson, Thoreau, and other Transcendentalists viewed the “Oriental” not as an exotic other but as an image of what Americans could be, if stripped of all the commercialism and materialism that set them apart from their ideal. A similar sense of Oriental otherness informed the aesthetic discoveries of the early twentieth century, as Pound, Eliot, and other poets found in Chinese and Japanese literature an artistic purity and intensity absent from Western tradition. For all of these figures the Orient became a complex fantasy that allowed them to overcome something objectionable, either in themselves or in the culture of which they were a part, in order to attain some freer, more genuine form of philosophical, religious, or artistic expression.
eBook
Voices of Southeast Asia : essential readings from antiquity to the present
\"A primary source reader featuring 24 selections from a variety of genres and designed as a resource for teaching Southeast Asian civilization courses, whether their emphasis be historical, literary, philosophical, or broadly cultural, and as a means of integrating Southeast Asian civilization into broader world history coverage ... Selections range from the Cambodian medieval version of the Ramayana to the 16th century Javanese tales to modern Thai short stories. The region is represented both temporally and geographically with selections from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Philippines, and Burma. These readings represent a fair selection of Southeast Asia's ancient and modern classics of thought and expression. This volume constitutes a unique combination of poetry, novels, short stories, drama, and political and philosophical treatises. Although not every selection is a complete work, the material presented is both substantial and representative\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
We Are One: Repositioning the Peranakan within the Asian Civilisations Museum
The Peranakan are a minority group in Southeast Asia whose legacy has provided Singapore’s Asian Civilisations Museum (ACM) with a collection of unique cultural material. This article contends that the inclusion of the Peranakan within the ACM was an iterative and non-teleological process, evidenced by the fact that the Peranakan were not included in the government’s original cultural strategies to link Singaporean ancestral cultures to contemporary Asian values. This article further argues that the narratives representing the Peranakan within the ACM have shifted from a focus on their historical and artistic legacy to positioning them as a vibrant, inclusive living culture with the potential to symbolically represent what it means to be a Singaporean, reflecting a broader social change in the small island nation.
Journal Article