Lots in the news these days about China and North Korea. Still more involving South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia . . . and any number of Asian countries that it seems many of my countrymen and women couldn’t find on a map of . . . well . . . a map of Asia! How is it we’ve arrived at a place in our collective national consciousness where we know so little about the world around us? How is it we seem especially blind to and, in fact, ignorant of, such a large part of the world in which we live? How can we be so bereft of information pertaining to some of the longest-running civilizations on the planet?
What’s this, you ask, Asia has a history? Didn’t the entire continent just pop out of the ocean after the Nazis bombed Pearl Harbor back in the 80s? Don’t laugh, because it’s really not funny. It’s truly sad how much the average American knows about the Kardashians’ wardrobe, yet can’t be relied upon to find the Korean Peninsula on a map. (There’s a hint . . . it’s a peninsula!) We’re the beneficiaries of the single greatest stride forward in information sharing since the invention of paper, and we squander it sharing cat photos and drunken selfies.
The reality is, never before have we in the West had such access to the East. While our predecessors had to make do with the stories of sailors returning from foreign ports or soldiers back from far-away battlefields, we have an almost unlimited amount of information at—literally—the tips of our fingers. You and I have, through smart phones, tablets, etc., access to more information than any librarian in the history of the world. Why, then, don’t we know more about our co-inhabitants on this planet? Especially those whose foundations can be traced back beyond the establishment of Rome?
Aside from a basic intellectual laziness that plagues our society, our ignorance is reinforced by an education system that, by-and-large, only really teaches European and American history. Don't buy it? Think back to your days in elementary, middle, and high school and try to remember anything at all you were taught about Asian history. Blah, blah, silk road, blah, Marco Polo, blah, blah, Ghenghis Khan, blah, Boxers . . . ummm . . . Pearl Harbor. Yet much attention is given to the Greeks and Macedonians (though oddly not the Persians they both struggled against), the Romans, the Crusades, the Renaissance, Napoleon, the Industrial Revolution, and the events that led to two world wars. Sprinkled across this march of European history is a running narrative of American historical events . . . once the United States is finally established, that is.
The historical reality is that the consolidated Han Chinese state in 50 BC was one-and-a-half times the size of its contemporary Roman Republic, and included some 50 million people. At roughly the same time Japan was in its Yayoi period with a rough population of 5 million, and Korea was entering its three kingdom period, with the establishment of the kingdoms of Goguryo, Baekche, and Shilla. These were flourishing civilizations by any definition of the word, and yet we generally hear nothing about them at all.
Fast forward, then, to events we’re perhaps more familiar with, the scourge that was Ghenghis Khan and his Mongol armies, burning their way from the Pacific Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea and the plains of Poland. Did you know the Chinese resisted the Mongols for nearly 60 years? It took six campaigns from 1216-54 to subdue tiny Korea, and Japan never did submit, turning back two seaborne invasions in 1274 and 1281. By contrast, the Mongols ran roughshod over Russia from 1223-40, destroyed the powerful Abassid Caliphate in 1258, and crushed Poland and the Teutonic Knights which defended her in two campaigns culminating in 1260. Along the way the Mongols destroyed or significantly damaged the Kwarezm Empire, and the Kingdoms of Armenia, Bulgaria, Galicia, and Hungary, all of which maintained significant armies.
In addition to this direct assertion of East Asian activities onto the pages of Western history books, so much of what was taking place out east caused ripples that affected the European history we think we know so well. The vast migrations of people out of the steppes that placed relentless pressure on the Roman Empire emanated from north and northwest of China, resulting in waves of ever more destructive enemies, culminating with the Huns and Turks, inexorably chipping away at Roman strength. The Silk Road connected at its eastern terminus to a complex economy that not only produced goods that Europeans wanted, but produced them in exportable surplus. The bubonic plague which so ravaged Medieval Europe, germinated from somewhere deep in the bowels of Asia’s steppes, and killed between thirty and sixty percent of Europe’s population.
Knowledge of medicines, astronomy, horsemanship, and a vast litany of other fields all made their way west and contributed to the Renaissance as Europe climbed out of The Dark Age. The moveable type printing press and the automatic water clock, both invented in Korea, reached Europe and forever changed how people lived their lives. Japanese ceramics, as well as tea from India and spices from Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, once dominated the world economy, both inspiring and fueling what we call the age of exploration. And we all know this one, where was Columbus trying to reach when he landed in the Caribbean? India, of course. The bottom line, I guess, is that East Asian events and history have had a profound effect on the history of our own country, whether or not we realize it. And all this without even mentioning the direct immigration of people from China, then Korea and Japan, into the U.S. in the 19th century and the effects those people had on our developing culture.
Because we don’t understand the history of the region, we often misunderstand flare-ups of tension and causes of ongoing strife. Take, for example, the animosity that exists between Korea and Japan. The Japanese invasion of Korea in 1590, ostensibly to conquer Ming China, led to four years of warfare up and down the peninsula that drew in all three East Asian powers. The destruction wrought upon Korea spawned a hatred of the Japanese that survived well beyond the lifespan of the people directly affected, creating a cultural rift, of sorts, that persists to this day. We in the West look with simplicity at what Japan did to China and Korea just before and during World War II and ask why everyone can’t just get over it, never really realizing that the animosity goes way, way, WAY beyond the 1930s.
So what, you respond, what does any of this prove? Well, in my mind, at least, it is strong incentive to want to know more about these people of Asia. I want to understand their history, the development of their culture, the ins and outs of what makes them tick. I want to know all I can about them in order to better understand and predict how their way of conceiving of, and thus shaping, the world around them will affect my own. How China and North Korea see themselves, their neighbors, and us, is derivative of their own historical experiences in the region. As such, these countries follow a logic born of their history, not necessarily one born of ours. Seems to me, we should be putting the vast storehouses of information available to us to good use in trying to understand that history and, by extension, that logic. All the more so since recent events once again highlight the enduring historical truth that, unlike Vegas, what happens in Asia simply does not stay in Asia.
M. G. Haynes