Princeton's Elman sparks regional-global approach to East Asian history
Princeton University scholar Benjamin Elman has studied the history of East Asia for most of his intellectual life. Instead of getting easier, it has become more complicated — which for him is a good thing.
Elman's ongoing interest is to re-examine our understanding of China and Japan by rethinking how the history of East Asia has been told, especially in the West, but also in China, Japan and Korea.
To do so, he and other scholars are paying particular attention to the early modern period in East Asia and India — around 1600 to 1800 — to understand key developments. For Elman, this endeavor is crucial because it focuses on a time when this part of the world had advanced in many spheres, before the so-called ascendancy of Europe as an economic and political power over the course of the 19th century....