Shouldn't we give more coverage to Asia?

================= ECONHIST.TEACH POSTING ================= As an Americanist, I'm in a hopelessly provincial field -- we don't give sufficient coverage to interconnections with Europe, let alone anywhere else. Not to mention the nations that inhabited what became the United States BEFORE the English showed up. Yes, I really think that economic history needs to catch up with historians and figure out how to incorporate non-"western" regions into the narrative. IN particular -- as I think was coherently pointed out in Arizona -- we are so overfocused on a single periodization stemming from the history of Europe, that we are missing important information as to why and how economies change over time, and why and how they are organized differently. I find it particularly glaring that there is little to be said of the Islamic Empire, the various Indian empires, or the history of China, or the east African trading citystates, or Latin America either pre or post Columbus. It's not just ethnocentric -- it also perverts the conclusions we can draw from economic history. Having now told everybody else what they SHOULD be doing, I'm going to retreat back safely into my American historian nest and pull my ethnocentric blanket over me. :-) Mary Schweitzer ============ FOOTER TO ECONHIST.TEACH POSTING ============ * To post a message to this list, send it to ECONHIST.TEACH@cs.muohio.edu. * To get all the messages posted to this list only once a day, send the message "set ECONHIST.TEACH mail digest" to lists@cs.muohio.edu. * To view past posting to this list, look in the directory "List Archive" in the Cliometric Society Server. The address is: cs.muohio.edu. * For more information and instructions, send the message "info ECONHIST.TEACH" to lists@cs.muohio.edu. ==================================================== >