https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-63414872

 Israel and Lebanon has agreed to set their borders in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel and neighboring countries had been in a dispute over rights to a gas field since the founding of Israel. The powerful militant and political group in Lebanon Hezbollah had menaced to attack Israel when it extracted gas before the deal. Both countries benefit economically from the gas field. The signed agreement covers 330 sq miles of sea off their coasts. Nether countries were able to utilize the area’s natural resources due to a disagreement over where the boundary is up until now. Disputed areas subsume part of Karish, a confirmed gas field, and part of Qana, a prospective gas field. Israel maintained full rights to Karish under the US-brokered deal, and Lebanon’s rights to Qana were also recognized. Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who fighting a general election next week, deemed the agreement as a diplomatic achievement. “It is not every day that an enemy state recognizes that State of Israel, in a written agreement, in front of the entire international community,” he stated. Yet, Lebanese President Michel Aoun regarded the deal as “technical work that has no political implication.” Mr. Lapid’s political rival Benjamin Netanyahu, hoping to return to power, has stated the agreement illegal. This agreement between two countries is more than crucial as it raises hopes that there could be real change in the relationship between the two countries. Some deals are signed to stave off war, yet some are signed to start one.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-63333542

This is BBC news about India and Pakistan’s relationship in cricket, which is different from the cases outside the field. There had been issues in the Indian and Pakistani past including the independence of Bangladesh, wars on the land of Kashmir, and the Partition of British India. Despite the fact that there were conflicts between the two nations, cricket players themselves were not affected along the way. According to Sunil Gavaskar, a former Indian cricket player, there was no tension between Pakistanis and Indians. Instead, they had good memories and admired each other. Nevertheless, the outside conflict, wars in 1965 and 1971, caused India and Pakistan unable to play against themselves for the next 17 years. After the conflict has lost its steam, they were tied in sports for the next two decades until India rejected playing with Pakistan due to another conflict in Kashmir. The theme of religions, Hinduism and Islam, and the tension caused by them which divided India and Pakistan are affecting the areas of sports though the sports spirit surpasses the fight between the two nations.

Today, we continued studying the Middle East’s multifaceted and complex history. We learned the importance of the Middle East as a bridge between Africa and Asia and a bridge for both culture and empire. Through the rise of Islam and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, the Middle East became a prevalent and powerful region in the world. The rise of the Middle East also grew the increase of xenophobic beliefs and Islamophobic ideals in Europe. European Christians believed that Muslims were violent and pursued a false religion. They claimed the Prophet Muhammad (alayhi as-salam) was the antichrist. Islamophobic ideas seen today can be traced back to the Roman Empire. The Ottoman Empire began to decline in the 1600s. In 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt, signifying the start of European expansion into the Middle East. The Middle East today is shaped but the long-lasting rule of the Ottoman Empire, the growth of Islam, and the expansion of Europe. We are just scratching the surface of a region with so much history.

The topic I chose to write about from today’s class is the complex, interwoven history of empire and nation building in Japan and Korea. In the span of less than a century, Japan transitioned from an agrarian empire restricted by choice to its own archipelago to a fully-industrialized imperial superpower on the global stage–only to be toppled and forced into submission by the USA in WW2. In the same time span, Korea went from a largely independent tributary kingdom of China to a mere colony under oppressive Japanese rule to a divided nation used as the staging ground for a proxy war between the USA and USSR. Such rapid and wide-reaching changes are bound to leave many people displaced, and among such displaced peoples were the Zainichi, a population of 600,000 ethnic Koreans living in Japan who were unwilling or unable to be repatriated to the new Korean states after the end of the war. As a contradiction to the image of postwar Japan as a unified ethnostate, the Zainichi were and are subjected to intense social and legal discrimination, which the Japanese government has been sluggish to combat.

Today’s discussion and last night’s reading were very interesting to me and provided a very good insight into China and its continuing imperialism.

The Chinese for a long time conquered non-Han territories like Vietnam or Korea, but the Qing dynasty dramatically expanded China to mostly similar frontiers as today. The Qing were ruled the Manchus, a minority ethnic group from northeastern China, making their rule over the mostly Han Chinese quite imperialist in terms of controlling a different people. The Qing didn’t encourage assimilation into the new territories and a good chunk of their culture survived the Qing era. Though after the 1911 Revolution, it’s leader Sun Yat-Sen encouraged assimilation among the minorities to ensure the survival of Chinese civilization. A lot of these ideas weren’t fully put through though, as Sun Yat-Sen only ruled China for a year or two. After the Chinese Civil War and the conquest of Tibet, a dilemma confronted the PRC in their new vast territory; how to treat the many ethnicities. At first they used a stalinist approach in giving them autonomy and also used western writings to scale down the number the number of ethnicities based on shared languages. However, in recent years, due to growing calls for equality and independence, Yat-Sen’s idea of assimilation has been revived, and some of the means of assimilating have garnered the justified scorn of the international community.

     In class, Monday October 3, we began our unit on East Asia with Professor Bonk. When discussing the region Professor Bonk emphasized the importance of looking at it as a zone of shared cultural and economic interactions rather than current national borders that may encompass areas outside of the interwoven history of east Asia as a region. The shared written language of Chinese for state affairs, works of philosophy, and other areas of interest often geared toward the elite/ formally educated helped to facilitate the exchange of ideas across trade routes. These included ideas of religion such as Mahayana Buddhism , governing philosophies such as Confucianism, the preparation of teas like mocha, and technologies like the dragon kiln. Japanese and Korean speakers also adapted the scripts to better suit their inflective languages in variations that became common in lower class and women’s’ literary work. While there is plenty of cultural overlap and a shared historical fate in the region, conflict as far back as the late 1500s with Hideyoshi leading Japan’s invasion of China’s subordinate state, Korea, has led to deep resentment and animosity.

Today October 3rd, we had a guest speaker who is a professor that teaches in the Chinese department. He lead the class lecture on East Asia. We learned that East Asia is a zone of cultural and economic interaction. Chinese is the written language of this region, but the spoken language is Japanese. During the early 1500s ceramics and rice were key resources at the time. However, if it wasn’t for a good irrigation system between the community the rice industry would not have flourished. Also, political ideals drawn from Confucianism, which is a fundamental theory of how Confucius wanted his government to run. Confucius envisioned a small state or government that ruled through virtue rather that law. This was a good thing for the civilians at the time because they had low taxes to worry about and were willing to follow the state. Additionally, stability was incorporated and many people stayed in East Asia instead of migrating somewhere else. Lastly, East Asia’s religious practices drawn from Mahayana Buddhism, which meant the great vehicle. This was important because everyone had access to Enlightenment.

Anti-colonialism had gained lots of momentum due to the ramification of World War II. Increased consciousness of the weaknesses of colonial powers and increased awareness of colonial injustice and inequality compelled Africans to actively fight for independence. What Africans learned throughout the World War was communication and ability to work together. One of the reasons why Africans were colonized by European countries was the lack of unity among African countries and people. This unification strengthened African nationalism. African nationalists’ voices were loud enough to be heard by the world, and this torn down European colonialism in Africa. The Second World War also imposed psychological changes which aided in the decolonization of Africa. This war changed and shaped the way Africans view Europeans. The Africans recognized that white man, just like everyone else, fears and dies. This observation shattered the idea of white supremacy which had existed in the minds of Africans. Africans thought that Europeans were insurmountable and unable to be defeated. For the first time in centuries, Africans began to develop genuine hope that freedom was not a fantasy and see that independence from European countries was feasible.

Today in class we covered the effects of Eurocentric ideology on African history. Europeans looked down on African history due to the lack of written sources and the inability to translate the sources present. However, scholars like W.E.B. Du Bois challenge this narrative by bringing attention to oral history that is passed along generation to generation. This is paired with African historian, Cheikh Anta Diop’s work that challenges the idea that “less black” Africa is the only place with history. Then we covered that in the 1950’s African Studies rose to popularity and gained more attention as the discipline covers the written, oral, and archaeological history of the entirety of Africa. In the 1960’s, as African nations gained independence, many African Universities were established and focused on centering the thoughts of Africans rather than Europeans when it comes to African history. This continues today as the perspectives of the past are constantly challenged and the UNESCO’s General History of Africa updates the recent volume with current events.