Will Europe's Past Be Asia's Future

Abstract

For the first time in the modern era, Asia is emerging as a distinct regional state system – a cluster of strong, prosperous, independent nations dealing intensively and continuously with one another in diplomatic, strategic and economic matters. Prior to the nineteenth century, geography and technology combined to keep these Asian interactions at a comparatively low level. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the region was largely dominated by outside imperial powers, then divided by the Cold War.