授業関係のお知らせ

In this week we discuss our approach to the past and how to understand history, especially from the post-colonial perspective. An empirical approach is certainly important but we need to constantly guard ourselves against taking data as an established fact, as data can be described, collected, and analyzed in a certain perspective. Discussion with others helps keep us falling into the fallacy of self-righteousness. Hence, the importance of history in the public sphere.

After a fruitful time of discussion, we covered the first half of Osborne's Chapter 7 The Asian Immigrants in Southeast Asia. Early settlers in pre-modern times may be discerned as language groups, that is, the Austronesian group in insular Southeast Asia, the Austro-Asiatic group in Vietnam and Cambodia, the Tai-Kadai group in Laos and Thailand, and the Tibeto-Burman group in Myanmar. The last two groups migrated to the present areas relatively later than the first two.

In modern times, the two most important Asian immigrants are Chinese and, to a lesser degree, Indians. They were brought to Southeast Asia by a pull factor of western colonization and by a push factor of the social conditions (which were also caused by western impact) of their home countries. The immigrants originally came as sojourners but then part of them became settlers.

We will look more into the social conditions of Chinese immigrants next week.