CHANGING PERSPECTIVE

As a university-level instructor in Japanese and Chinese history, Lee has always been aware of the desireability of presenting the East Asian past as much as feasible from an "insider's" point of view.  That is, instead of looking at history in Japan or China from the perspective of an American or other Westerner, he always attempted to portray it in a specifically Japanese or Chinese context.  This approach encouraged students to attempt, at least, to see things -- cultural constructs; particular events; the process of change, growth and development -- from another, often unfamiliar and strange, angle.  The upshot: whether or not the historical content of the course itself stuck, students would at the very least take away with them the ability to empathize with other points of view, to consider the possibility of another perspective, whether or not they agreed with it.

For him, the dicotomy considered was the gap between "East" and "West" -- the world of East Asia on the one hand versus the European / American perspective on the other.  In so doing, he created another gap as well, one just now becoming obvious.  He omitted from consideration altogether the interplay between East and West that marks the historical narrative impacting life and cultural developments in what is often termed "the Middle East" of which Turkey comprises a large proportion.

As the locus of the Ottomon Empire (1259 - 1924), modern Turkey controlled large parts of Africa, the Arab world, South and Central Asia, its authority even reaching well into modern Europe.  Any contemporary map of Turkey illustrates this centrality equally well: the modern state is surrounded by Bulgaria, Russia, Albania, Iran, Iraq, Syria and the Greek islands.  

About the only indication of this important intermediary position Lee recalls considering in teaching about interactions between Europe and East Asia came in establishing the role played by "the Arab world" in the transmission of Christianity to China during the Tang Dynasty and the bureaucratic ideal from China to Venice in the sixteenth century.  Otherwise, this part of the world remained terra incognito throughout his teaching career.

Reading about the challenges Turkey has faced over the past couple of centuries as first the Ottoman Empire and then the modern Turkish state attempted to modernize without westernizing itself out of (cultural) existence has instilled a greater appreciation for this area of the world as an important part of the global historical narrative.  Even taking this perspective into account fails to do justice to all the earlier history centered here as wave after wave of change swept over the area from every conceivable  direction.  

A new and enlarged historical world view is clearly in the process of emerging!  Stay tuned for more revelations ...