Series ・ 10 parts

A History of Asia: A Continent's Rise, Fall and Return

In the 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution began, Asia accounted for more than half of the world economy. Qing China, Mughal India, and a Southeast Asia that thrived on trade. Episode 1 traces, through historical fact, an age of prosperity in which tea, silk, cotton, and vast amounts of silver changed hands.

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01 Asia, the Center of the World — Before the West Arrived In the 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution began, Asia accounted for more than half of the world economy. Qing China, Mughal India, and a Southeast Asia that thrived on trade. Episode 1 traces, through historical fact, an age of prosperity in which tea, silk, cotton, and vast amounts of silver changed hands.
02 The Shock of the West — The Age of Colonization A Europe that had seized the Industrial Revolution transformed the balance of power in the world. The Opium War of 1840, the colonization of India that began with the Battle of Plassey, and the partition of Southeast Asia. Episode 2 traces, through historical fact, the age of transition in which Asia fell from the center of the world into subordination at its margins.
03 Twilight of the Sleeping Lion — The Dusk of the Qing Defeated in the Opium War, the Qing was shaken from within by the Taiping Rebellion and carved up from without by the great powers. Even the Self-Strengthening Movement faltered with defeat in the 1894 First Sino-Japanese War. The Boxers, then the 1911 Xinhai Revolution—Episode 3 traces the path to the fall of an empire that had endured for two thousand years.
04 India's Awakening — The Empire and Gandhi India, known for its great wealth, had at some point become a colony of the British Empire. The great rebellion of 1857, a budding national consciousness, and Gandhi's nonviolence and civil disobedience. From the Salt March to independence, and the pain of partition—Episode 4 traces the long road of a people who confronted a vast empire with a force that was not weapons.
05 The Only One in Asia — Japan's Modernization and Expansion Racing toward a modern state through the Meiji Restoration, Japan defeated the Western great power Russia in the 1904-05 war and stunned Asia. Yet Japan itself would soon expand into an empire. We trace the modern Japanese path carefully, leaning toward neither side, holding together the ideal of liberation and the reality of aggression.
06 The Storm of Independence — The Birth of Postwar Asia After the Second World War, a storm of independence swept across the colonized lands of Asia. India's 1947 independence and the India-Pakistan partition, the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the independence struggles of Indonesia and Vietnam, and the 1955 Bandung Conference. We trace the turbulent decade in which a new Asia was born, from both its light and its shadow.
07 The Front Line of the Cold War — A Divided Asia An Asia that had supposedly won its independence was transformed into the front line where the two great blocs, the United States and the Soviet Union, collided. The division of the Korean Peninsula, the long war in Vietnam, the Sino-Soviet split that fractured the socialist camp, and developmental dictatorship. This is the shadowed era of an Asia tossed about by the vast dynamics of the Cold War, traced through the historical record.
08 The Miracle of Growth — The Rise of the Asian Economies Out of a scorched and divided Asia rose a growth that astonished the world. Japan's high-speed growth that ran at ten percent a year, the Four Asian Dragons — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore — and an industrialization that enriched nations through exports. But the miracle was not eternal, and the currency crisis of 1997 arrived as a trial. We read the rise of Asia from both its light and its shadow.
09 Two Giants — The Rise of China and India Two sleeping giants began to stir. Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up, China becoming the world's factory, India's economic liberalization born out of crisis, and the new path that IT opened up. Tracing how the rise of these population giants summoned the phrase 'the Asian Century,' through both its light and its shadow.
10 Toward the Asian Century — The Asia to Come The center of the economy is shifting back toward Asia. ASEAN, growing in presence amid the rivalry between the United States and China, and the heavy challenges of inequality, environment, aging, and division. Where is Asia, once the center of the world, headed beyond its revival? A final chapter that quietly closes a ten-part story of rise and fall, without rushing to an answer.