The World of East Asia

For most of its past, East Asia was a world unto itself. The land we now call China sat roughly at its center and was surrounded by a number of places we now call Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Mongolia, and Tibet, as well as a host of lands absorbed into one of these. The peoples and cultures of these lands interacted among themselves with virtually no reference to the outside world before the dawn of early modern times. Although all was not always peaceful or harmonious, there were rules (explicit and implicit) governing interactions long in existence when Westerners arrived on the scene. The World of East Asia is a book series that aims to support the production of research on the interactions, both historical and contemporary, between and among these lands and their cultures and peoples. It purposefully does not define itself by discipline or time period; the only criterion is that the interaction be either within East Asia or between East Asia and its Central, South, and Southeast Asian neighbors.