Asia

J.J. Saunders describes the Papal envoy to the Mongol conquerors who travelled through Russia to eastern Asia in 1245-7.

Hilda Hookham introduces an astronomer prince who was a grandson of Tamburlaine.

S.G.F. Brandon analyses the differences that divide the Eastern and Western views of man’s nature and destiny, concluding as to their urgent significance today, as mankind becomes more closely interrelated and interdependent.

C.R. Boxer writes that, taken in conjunction, the Portuguese and Spanish voyages of discovery in the fifteenth century form one of the watersheds of history, comparable to the twentieth-century conquest of space.

When Alexander assumed the despotic state of the Eastern monarchs he had overthrown, he aroused growing resentment among his loyal Macedonian followers. E. Badian carries the story on, to his early death in the year 323 B.C

John Villiers describes the rich exchange of artistic ideas between Europe and the Far East during the seventeenth, eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. 

George Woodcock describes how, in opposition to Portuguese, Dutch and British intruders, the highland kingdom of Kandy in Ceylon flourished under a succession of Buddhist rulers almost until the year of Waterloo.

Just over a thousand years ago Chinese printers completed the publication of the Confucian Classics—an event as important in the history of civilization as the printing of the Gutenberg Bible. By Adrian L. Julian.

Some commentators predict that the 21st century will be the ‘Asian century’, marking a significant shift in power from West to East. If so, it will not be so different from the global order of the 19th century, says Thomas DuBois.

Raymond Dawson reflects on 2,000 years of historical composition in China, beginning with Ssu-ma Ch’ien.