• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.235-253
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• 2015

It has been about twenty years since world history in a new sense was introduced to Korean academia. At first, it was the educators who showed a lot of interest in world history. But, before long, world/global history came to exert an important influence on history research and teaching in Korea. Even though certain unfavorable conditions still exist, the need for world/global history is growing and a number of academic institutes and scholars are putting in a great deal of effort to advance it in Korea. Here, we examine the changing meanings of world history on the basis of the history of concepts and provide a general idea of its introduction and diffusion in historiography and history education in Korea.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.11-35
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• 2015

Far from being a recent world, the concept of "a [one] world" did slowly emerged in a post-prehistoric Antiquity. The actual knowledge of the world increased through millennia leaving aside large continents (Americas, part of Africa, Australia, etc.-most areas without written history), and writing history in Antiquity cannot be a synchronal presentation of the most ancient times of these areas. Through a few case studies dealing with texts, archaeology and history itself mostly in BCE times, the paper will try to perceive the slow building-up of a physical awareness and 'moral' consciousness of the known world by people of the Middle East (e.g. the Bible, Gilgamesh) and the Mediterranean (mainly Greeks).

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.59-80
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• 2015

The paper is oriented towards a reflection on the epistemological extension of world history. This discipline is currently opening up for new subjects and new foci of interest, with environmental history being one of them. The paper debates the interaction between the global and the local as one of the main issues of world history. It analyses the impacts of the interconnectivity of diverse regions as well as different geographical and cultural complexes, during the period between 1500 and 1800. Assuming that the sea in its economic, cultural and environmental dimensions contributed actively to world history, and is, in itself, a major factor of globalization, the paper intends to highlight interdependencies which fostered connections between the local and the global. It further submits to discussion which was the impact of an on-going globalization process, based on maritime dynamics, on the environment. Through an analysis centered on the impact of European overseas expansion, some environmental impacts will be analyzed. The paper aims at questioning environmental history as an emergent theme of world history, based on the historical experience of connecting worlds developed in the First Global Age (1500-1800).

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.113-135
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• 2015

The word 'urbanity' literally means 'quality or state of being urban' where the criterion of urban economic and civic culture is assumed despite the general celebration of cultural uniqueness of urban centers. The narratives celebrating the uniqueness of urban centers since the ancient past till recent times could not get rid of the broad categorization of the urban models depending on their contextual networks of trade, mobility and culture. This paper attempts to explore whether the urban cultures in South Asia even preceding a global phenomenon like colonialism were actually reflecting an idea of urbanity where the urban culture, including planning and architecture reflected a trans-national model. This paper particularly concentrates on the medieval period when a pattern of urbanity took shape in this subcontinent under the influence of Islam, which could be explained by its particular idea of urban model, cultural exchange and vibrant trade networks.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.37-58
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• 2015

The paper examines, in the light of current historiography, the recent trends in the application and applicability of the World Historical studies on the Indian Ocean scenario. Calling for the combination of the breadth of the World Historical studies with the analysis of a historical scenario in its specific spatio-temporal context-instead of a synchronic approach-the present study takes a close look at commerce and politics in the western Indian Ocean in the light of an early 14th century Latin Crusade tract, How to Defeat the Saracens by William of Adam (Guillelmus Ade, Tractatus quomodo Sarraceni sunt expugnandi), a Dominican friar. The text offers remarkable insights into the interlocking of the Indian Ocean and the South Asian subcontinent with the Mamluk Sultanate, the Ilkhanid realm and the Crusades. The paper argues for what is now termed as braided and connected histories.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.47-80
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• 2014

After the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, the US included the Republic of China on Taiwan (Taiwan hereafter) in its Asia-Pacific containment line, and restored the military and economic aid to Taiwan for the sake of regional security. The US aid to the countries along the Asia-Pacific defense line was not only in the form of supplying munitions, but also linked these countries together in an economic dimension. Taiwan is one of the 120 countries which had accepted US aid and also successfully moved from "dependence" to "independently sustained growth." This article will firstly review the historical background of US aid to Taiwan and related institutional development; secondly, this article will illustrate how Taiwan used US aid, and which economic sector the US aid affected; thirdly, it will trace the impact of US aid on Taiwan's foreign trade, and finally, to make a conclusion.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2014

This paper examines the historical relationship between the Little Ice Age and the Anthropocene, which has not yet been studied. The Little Ice Age is the coldest multi-century period in the Holocene. The reforestation of huge farmlands, abandoned due to pandemics in the Americas, aggravated the cooling weather of the Little Ice Age. It was in the long and severe cold of the Little Ice Age that the transition from renewable energy to non-renewable energy was completed in Britain in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and when the pattern of linear growth in greenhouse gas concentrations was forged in the ecosystems of the Earth. The Little Ice Age forced humans to depend on fossil fuels while the advent of warmer and more stable climate in the Holocene enabled them to start agriculture in an energy revolution 11,000 years ago, thus making the coming of the Anthropocene possible.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.17-45
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• 2014

Okakura Kakuz$\bar{o}$ (1863-1913), the founder of the Japan Art Institute, is best known for his proclamation, "Asia is One." This phrase in his book, The Ideals of the East, and his connections to Bengali revolutionaries resulted in Okakura being remembered as one of Japan's foremost Pan-Asianists. He did not, however, write The Ideals of the East as political propaganda to justify Japanese aggression; he wrote it for Westerners as an exposition of Japan's aesthetic heritage. In fact, he devoted much of his life to the preservation and promotion of Japan's artistic heritage, giving lectures to both Japanese and Western audiences. This did not necessarily mean that he rejected Western philosophy and theories. A close examination of his views of both Eastern and Western art and history reveals that he was greatly influenced by Hegel's notion of dialectics and the evolutionary theories proposed by Darwin and Spencer. Okakura viewed cross-cultural encounters to be a catalyst for change and saw his own time as a critical point where Eastern and Western history was colliding, causing the evolution of both artistic cultures.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.117-149
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• 2013

The purpose of this essay is threefold. First, to highlight research of Seonmin KIM, whose 2006 Ph.D. dissertation elucidates complex relationships among Ming China, Choson Korea, Tokugawa Japan, and mountainous ginseng-producing "borderlands" between Korea and China; her story concludes with the remarkable rise of a borderlands power that overthrew Ming China, there-by establishing dominance that lasted into the $20^{th}$ century - the Qing Dynasty. A second purpose is to showcase application of a non-standard-model - the Hydraulic Metaphor - that elucidates economic components of Professor KIM's history via visual and intuitive mechanisms designed to be understandable for non-specialists. Last, an outline of East Asian history is placed within context of centuries of monetary evolution that eventually yielded the late-$16^{th}$-century birth of globalization.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.85-116
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• 2013

The theory of terrestrial impact which has been developed by the astronomy scientists since 1970s is employed for this article in a new angle that atmospheric conditions of our planet should be adopted in the interpretation of the history of mankind. Large and small terrestrial impacts must be acknowledged as key tasks in terms of the study of 'world history'. The Society of Interdisciplinary Studies has already advocated that the 'Bronze Age Civilization' was strongly influenced by the long term terrestrial impact phenomena. Based on historical materials from Korea, the present study was able to identify the years 680-880, 1100-1220, 1340-1420, and 1490-1760 as periods in which territorial impacts occurred.