Wang Gungwu

Academic research is essentially a collaborative work. By the time a book manuscript is completed one has to draw on and becomes indebted to numerous people who either directly assist in the research and writing or indirectly do so through their pioneering publications. The bibliography at the end of this book is an acknowledgment to many in the latter group. Here I would like to express my...

Between 25 April and 1 May 1924, the renowned Chinese intellectual Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929) delivered several talks in Beijing to welcome the Indian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) to China. In one of these talks, titled “The Fraternal Relationship between the...

The circulations of knowledge, including such wide-ranging aspects as geographical knowledge, astronomy, medicine, manufacturing techniques, market demands, and grammar and linguistics, were key components of the historical interactions between South Asia and China. These circulations were linked to several broader facets of cross-regional connections, including the travels of Buddhist monks, the...

Archaeological evidence indicates that routes and networks of material exchange between parts of South Asia and the Yellow River Valley in China existed as early as the second millennium BCE. Cowries originating from the Maldive Islands in the Indian Ocean reached Anyang, the Shang capital, through these routes and networks that traversed the present-day regions of Bengal, Assam, Burma, and Yunnan...

This and the following chapter demonstrate the extensive and diverse nature of connections between India and China during the period between the fifteenth and the early twentieth century, a phase that was marked by both Asian and European imperialism.As noted in the introduction, in this chapter and the next the term...

The first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period in Asian history in that it witnessed the emergence of an Asian consciousness or “Asianism,” fostered by the spread of ideas related to pan-Asianism that emphasized Asian unity and solidarity.For a good overview of pan-Asianism and a review of the...

From the late eighteenth century, when George Bogle embarked on his mission to meet with the Sixth Panchen Lama, to the Asian Relations Conference of 1947, Tibet had remained a region of contention and concern for the governments in India and China. Although disagreements continued shortly after the founding of the PRC, the...

Several aspects stand out in a study of the longue durée connections between the entities called India and China and their subsequent geopolitical incarnations, the ROI and the PRC. The contribution of Buddhism in connecting most of the Asian continent, the role of commercial exchanges in integrating the Afroeurasian region, the notable impetus to global circulations brought about by...

Abu-Lughod, Janet L.,2.6 , 2.24 ,

Tansen Sen is director of the Center for Global Asia and professor of history at NYU Shanghai and Global Network Professor at NYU. He received his MA from Peking University and his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600–1400 (2003, 2016) and India, China, and...