This project addresses the topic "Colonialism and Empire in India and China", part of the course USC: Societies in Transformation - India and China, taught at Jacobs University Bremen during Fall Semester 2012 by Prof. Dr. Dominic Sachsenmaier and Dr. Jörg Himmelreich.
Official Course Description:
The rapid rise of India and China as political and economic powers will certainly change the international order in the years to come. China’s and India’s societies are experiencing a radical process of socioeconomic change, each in its own way. The path to modernization of the world’s biggest democracy, India, is in many regards dissimilar from the Chinese one, which is anchored in a profoundly different political system.
This USC will look at the various drivers in society, culture, economy and the political system that determine the countries’ respective transformation processes. It will study the relations between processes of globalization and some transformations taking place in India and China. It will also investigate how both societies have attempted to deal with transnational and global exchanges in the past and in the present.
The first part of this course addresses some historical and religious aspects of China and India in a global context. Subsequently the course will zoom in on Chinese and Indian cultural, social, economic and political phenomena of the present. Here the USC will cover a wide range of topics, many of which lead to a critical reconsideration of the notion that globalization equals Westernization. Instead of positing a strict dichotomy between “the global” and “the local”, the USC will emphasize the complexities and ambiguities of socioeconomic and other transformations in China and India.
Official Course Description:
The rapid rise of India and China as political and economic powers will certainly change the international order in the years to come. China’s and India’s societies are experiencing a radical process of socioeconomic change, each in its own way. The path to modernization of the world’s biggest democracy, India, is in many regards dissimilar from the Chinese one, which is anchored in a profoundly different political system.
This USC will look at the various drivers in society, culture, economy and the political system that determine the countries’ respective transformation processes. It will study the relations between processes of globalization and some transformations taking place in India and China. It will also investigate how both societies have attempted to deal with transnational and global exchanges in the past and in the present.
The first part of this course addresses some historical and religious aspects of China and India in a global context. Subsequently the course will zoom in on Chinese and Indian cultural, social, economic and political phenomena of the present. Here the USC will cover a wide range of topics, many of which lead to a critical reconsideration of the notion that globalization equals Westernization. Instead of positing a strict dichotomy between “the global” and “the local”, the USC will emphasize the complexities and ambiguities of socioeconomic and other transformations in China and India.