HIST 283 Modern China

Major Requirement: History of Asia
For millennia the Chinese viewed their emperor as the Son of Heaven and their empire as the center of the world. Following Columbus and the Age of Exploration, however, in the sixteenth-century Europeans began arriving in China in unprecedented numbers, precipitating a crisis in Chinese society. This course examines the dynamics of China’s relationship with the outside world and the subsequent transition that China made from empire to nation. Modernization continued in the twentieth century and with it came social revolution and conflict with the United States, a legacy that continues to inform our relationship with the world’s most populous nation.