A Documents-based Approach to Asian History

This gateway course to the study of history will be an immersive exploration of sources written in and about Asia between 1500 and 1900 CE. Students will study major scholarly debates in Asian history on the nature of early modernity, the agency of marginal actors, and the interpretive work of modern researchers. We will focus on India and China by dwelling on the themes of kingship and court culture, Jesuit writings, women and gender, and the tea and opium trades. Students will write three short papers: one on methods and two based on close and critical reading of these clusters of primary sources in translation.