The LONG History of America-China Relations

so I always like to introduce our my Stanford colleagues because you know most of the time you know we see each other in committee meetings and you know looking at graduate files and doing all sorts of busy work and we we forget how how brilliant we all are and and Gordon is is is no exception in fact he's the paradigm he's the professor of American history and the all of H Palmer professor in humanities he's also the director of the Center for East Asian Studies and he was also the first director of Asian American Studies here at Stanford in fact he helped not only found Asian American Studies but Co sorry so he's had a proven leadership skills and talents from the very beginning of his his tenure here at Stanford his particular area of interest is trans-pacific relations the interconnections between East Asia and America treating the political social and cultural interactions from the earliest days of America to the present and I urge all of you students in fact some of our faculty to take a course that he's offering this winter called the Pacific world and which he'll addressed a lot of the issues that he'll talk about today and more he's a prolific and wide-ranging scholar and he has so many books on his resume I'm not going to read them all but I will read off some titles to sort of give you a sense of his breadth which is quite astounding he's the author editor of a number of books including friends and enemies the United States China and the Soviet Union 1948 to 1972 Morning Glory evening shadow Yamato ichi ichi hoshi and his internment writings asian-americans and politics perspectives experiences prospects asian-american art history so he's very well-versed in the field of art history Chinese railroad workers which is part of a long-standing project that he has helped organize here at Stanford and is an amazing transnational project of historical recovery and advocacy and I don't want us to lose sight of Gordon's role in being an advocate and activist in all of his scholarships so please the development of the Chinese railroad workers project I don't know if you know that Richard Salah in his state of the school address yesterday specifically mentioned that so I wanted to call that in particular and finally the book that we'll be talking about today fateful ties a history of America's preoccupation with China Gordon Chang has been and continues to be an indispensable resource for us here at Stanford in all these scholarly activities as well as his leadership roles in the Academy and on the national and international scene so we're very very privileged to have Gordon here today to tell us about his latest work so please join me in welcoming Gordon China thank you David for that very kind flattering introduction thank you very much and thank you Mauryan Thank You CEO sorry for hosting this and C's and others who have co-sponsored it's great to be here CF sorry CCS re is a second home for me and wonderful to see so many good colleagues that I haven't seen as much in the past couple of years sure okay all right all right well what I'm not going to do what's sometimes done in book talks which is to read from the book which I find not very stimulating but rather I'm gonna sort of summarize some of the book give you some of the background for how it came to be and to give you some of the content but you have a lot of images here to Sun illustrate the some of the arguments and some of the points that I try to make in the book now David mentioned a couple of the books that I've issued before and I would like to tell you a little bit about my intellectual history my trajectory of how I got to this point I originally started out in Chinese history here in graduate school at Stanford many many years ago and overlapped was the colleague here being chan we were both in the in the history department but I didn't chip Ming's stuck it through I didn't stick it stick it out and I left after a year and a half to do other things join the revolution yes that's okay mingle speak for me so that's what I did for a long time and after ten years there's more I came back and then I switched to US history so I've continued to sort of have interest in both fields disbands both those areas now my first my first book which upon which came out of my dissertation was a book that really looked at high-level thinking about the trying at a relationship between the Soviet Union China and the United States it's sort of a background history to Nixon's trip to China which occurred in 1972 which has been said to sort of acknowledge the tensions between China and the Soviet Union in the u.s. taken advantage they're exploiting that relate that split in the Communist world but this this book sort of looks at the history of this triangular relationship a big power relationship and for some of you who are in Asian Studies or Chinese history so it sort of plays on the romance of the three kingdoms you know which is interesting as also as this sort of a study of geopolitics but the book continues to have residents and has been translated several times in China most recently this is the cover of the most recent non pirated edition in China but Anna so you can see are those who can read Chinese you'd see that this title in Chinese is rendered differently than in the English and it's more point to title I think my book sort of is more historical and sort of suggests the ability to become a friend or an enemy or vice versa but in the Chinese title he's translated is friend or foe question mark so either one or the other and this always sort of a more contemporary focus but as David mentioned I've worked on other things including Asian American history in Chinese American history in particular and since the time of working at the geopolitical level I've move further and further away from that focus to look more at social and cultural history and trans-pacific histories so therefore the and these are two of the books that have come out of that 15 or that migrating interest I think to what pulls these different studies together is now what I would call my interest more in the what I would say the mental context of international relations or trans-pacific relations so it's not I'm not interested just in calculations that's strategic or political or economic or military matters but I'm interested in patterns of thinking and attitudes values biases and assumptions and how they underlie how nations and peoples interact with each other one could say that therefore I'm moving away from political history to thinking more and more about cultural idea or cultural or ideological or mentality history and I'm also trying to think more and more about long-term historical interactions and I think today's talk is so it suggests that I'm trying to talk about the long history of America China relations and under my long I mean going back to Christopher Columbus to today so I'm looking about hundreds of years and looking at patterns and connections and developments over a long span of time and not just the short span of a political history so this book that I have issued is one might say a book about mentality and the durable mental attitude that helps explain past and present fascinations with China in America now this book came about because several years ago was five six years ago an editor at Harvard University Press called me up and said Gordon we recommend some names of authors who can write a book about the history of us-china relations because already there was so much interest in this topic and she wanted to have my advice of who would be good to commissioned for such a study so I gave her different names and then she came back to me the week or so later she said no I don't like any of them why don't you do it so and so she was very persuasive as Estelle knows or and I think on Anozie we know having to share it editor this person is very persuasive she got me into the book and I said thought to myself I should do this because I don't do it I'm not going to do it and this is sort of like a culmination of a careers interest in us-china relations but then I thought well I'm gonna say because there's so many books about us-china relations and I said well look I'm a historian so when I write a history book and a history book that will speak to this current fascination in America about China and so what the book is is a history of now there's a history of the present moment which is to say that today you look around and China's everywhere in every newspaper and the webpage is everything with this source so there's a fascination a preoccupation with they they wanted to you that Harbor press wanted to put up obsession with China in the title I thought it was a little strong but this is to give some history of the present moment so that's how this book came about now so I won't tell you how I approached this book by showing a few images that may surprise you they'll start off with this one oh did I make a mistake there's another lecture no no this is the right way who who are these people where are they and when was this taken if you know the answer is anyone know the answer don't don't shout out quite yet no one knows no one uuugh no no don't don't yell it out yet just to say I wanted to see how okay wrong you all are you know in reading your society pages or entertainment pages all right so this is Beyonce and jay-z right on the red carpet somewhere looking very elegant okay custom-made gown for Beyonce continuation of the same evening Rihanna you know front cover of The New York Times magazines past Sunday beautiful gown some people think by design by Chinese designer people when it came out and she appeared and of course the critics pan they pan everything like this it look like a walking egg omelette let's not think like that alright you know too much cheese on the pizza something like this but that's what we are and then Sarah Jessica Parker looking very unsexy in the city here and this getup and I had to throw in a guy and there's Justin Bieber so but if you're looking at anybody can get the gist of this you know looking at what look at their gowns don't look at the celebrities themselves is will give it away and then the ever President Kim Kardashian knows also here showing herself or too much of herself again as usual and elegant Kate Hudson here all the same event well that now who knows where this is the Matt Met Gala back in May of this past spring the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened a blockbuster show 334 zuv the museum 300 items displayed to show to explore the influence they say of China on Western fashion and it was one of the biggest shows in their history I think second only to Tutt this but it was purported to show as I said the influence or the the connections between stylistic idioms and fashion Chinese origin aesthetics and a Western fashion and this is sort of the cover page of the the program here's China through the looking-glass which I think it's a nice title so it sort of suggests both a mirror as well as something that sort of transformative as Alice in Wonderland type of thing is a little bit disorienting but it's also a reflection on self and even this graphic over here is I think interesting it it looks sort of like a blue and white porcelain Ming Boss but it's actually a dress so this is sort of the theme now 800,000 people came to this and they had to extend it a month longer in the end it's just last month but when I sleeve this show or when I think about the show I think about other things I think about in 1838 when when a wealthy Philadelphia Nathan done opened his Chinese Museum was the first big show about China in America in 1838 Nathan Dunn had made his money in the China trade and brought back hundreds maybe thousands who items from China and opened up this big Museum in Philadelphia to display every day where fashions paintings implements artwork and so forth about China - a very fascinated American audience one hundred a hundred thousand people in 1838 in Philadelphia over three years attended that Museum show so the mesh show is not new I mean it's a canoe it brings up the echo in my mind of this earlier moment I also think about Helen Taft and Julia grant julia grant beanie lysias grants wife and Helen Taft had been William Howard Taft's wife and our inaugural balls for the presidents they both wore gowns inspired by Chinese fashion and if you go to the Museum of American History in Washington DC and go up to the third floor or whatever it is and there's a big room there that shows the first the gowns of the first ladies presented and you can see these gowns are very interesting so that resonated with me about this show that making these connections I also look at things like this which some of you have seen and it business pages and who knows where this is Shanghai all right this is in the opening a flagship store of Apple one of the flagship stores of Apple they went into China big in the a few years ago and then now there are scores of these big Apple stores apples is huge in China I kind of like it because it sort of reminds me of I am paise crystal pyramid in the in the plaza of the Louvre or you go into the Louvre and go downs so this is sort of a round but it sort of has a hologram up there of the Apple and you go down into the Apple store when this store opened Tim Cook was in China the CEO of CEO of Apple said the sky's the limit for Apple in China and he said one day Apple will sell more products in China than in the rest of the world certainly in the United States already last year about 30% of apples revenue 30% of apples revenue total revenue came just from sales in China alone so approaching the sales in the United States Google 30% of Apple sales in China is already surpasses the worldwide revenue of Google there you show you some sense of this and Apple has big many fans in China this was people waiting to get into that store and the store some of you may have been in it is probably like the downtown Palo Alto store it may be five times the size of that store something like that is huge and they have many of these in Beijing in Shanghai other cities other business elites are fascinated about China and Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are interested in China beyond ping pong we've seen them here and both of them have marveled at both the Chinese economy in the growth over the past 20 years our big investors in China they have many interests in China but was I look about this big current business interests it speaks to me about the long-standing American interest of commercial ties with China going back to the earliest days of the US which I'll talk about in a moment the old China trade well all it's not positive and sort of glowing in this relationship by any means and you can see by some of the titles of books I've just pulled off the internet that speak to what is commonly called the China threat and the China threat is sells a lot of books probably a lot more books than my book will sell that people want to read about this China threat on Saturday I spoke to homecoming and a big crowd of over 300 alums came back and that was in Cubberley and over folks overflow cloud and a lot of questions at the end of the session had to deal with with with these fears and anxieties about what China is and what it means for the United States and sort of really playing upon the threatening aspect of China this fear of China and you can see there's these motifs in there in the book these themes in the book covers are are so strong I didn't pick these for any particular purpose other than the titles were sort of extreme but all the say you look at them and they're all sound the same and you all sort of look this thing they all has snarling dragons on the cover and the contents of these by in many ways are very similar they all play upon each other and speak to these these fears and if it's some of the colleagues you know about the Yellow Peril you know they really use a lot of the language of the Yellow Peril so either more of these kind of sort of books about dragons and danger and war and all this thing coming about I sort of like this book over here title it about being unbalanced you know the codependency of America and China I think that's kind of a humorous way of talking about I think there might be actually something there that two are locked into maybe unhealthy relationship well now that's sort of the current moment this is the now but I go back in the book to look at some of the long history in this interaction and I look at particular moments I go back to Jane I begin with actually Christopher Columbus which I'll get to in a moment but I'll talk about the Jamestown Jamestown the first hopefully they hoped permanent settlement British settlement in North America there were two two mandates for the Jamestown colonists one was to find gold and the second was to find the passage to Asia find the Northwest Passage that passes through this damned continent which is what they believed they didn't know they know why the heck did God create this immense this continent to block European access to Europe and they were convinced that there had to be some passage through this continent because this continent really didn't mean very much for them at the time despite what our high school history textbooks talk about the new world discovering development of it and so forth but you can see this also these important moments of where China is embedded in American history such as that here with the boss famous Boston Tea Party which incites in its sparks the American rebellion and to revolution and the Boston where Bostonians White's presumably dress up as Native Americans raid these ships in Boston Harbor that are loaded with tea and dump them overboard because they don't like taxation without representation well that what is being taxed is tea from China and what this tea is all about is from Fujian which makes a lot of the oolong tea would you go to a Chinese restaurant you probably drink along tea Americans drank principally tea at the time coffee was not a commodity of choice at the time but tea became a symbol of the imposition of what they believed to be unfair taxes on colonists to help support the British Empire and so the ich even the issue the control of the China trade by London was one basic one of the basic motivating forces within the American Revolution itself Americans wanted access to China directly rather than have to go through London now this is symbolized by a very interesting moment which is after the Revolution is one Americans are now celebrate and this is a 20th century rendering of this moment on February 22nd 1784 George Washington's birthday coming out of New York Harbor are two ships illustrated in this painting the first ship which is the first ship to leave an American Harbor flying the stock new stars and stripes as you can see prominently right in the middle of the painting well right in the middle of painting to you and it's called the end of the ship is the Empress of China and it's leaving New York Harbor to go to Canton because it wants to tap into that China trade interestingly behind the ship second to this merchant ship is a ship carrying a very valuable document which is the ratify Treaty of Paris that ends the hostilities between the colonies and London is the peace treaty it grants America independence but it is second the ship is behind the Empress of China and this the other ship is going to London with the Continental Congress signatures on the on the treaty so this gives you this was this was outfitted one of the principal backers owners was Edmund Morris I mean and serie the revolution has said what do you think was on this ship because Americans wanted to buy things from China at the time the merit American homes are full of China where elite homes were full of China where we go to Mount Vernon or Monticello and so forth you see the American elites had very fine china where commissioned with family seals and banners and so forth on these but also everyday Americans had lots of Chinese made items furniture home where goods I say China was sort of like the IKEA of the day that's it already was and that's no coincidence that you go to Ikea today and you see China stuff and there's a connection between this export tradition and talent if you will or of mentality 200 years ago in what we have today and coming from very similar regions of China but no Americans are buying this stuff but they want to sell something in China you know to make sure the trade is somewhat balanced what do you think is on this ship to China furs is a good guess you know Americans were selling furs and had lots of furs here God too often good guesses but wrong you know tobacco and cotton are not very big crops yet in the United States but it's good some people think guns which is a good guess you know exporting guns already back then but actually what was onboard the ship is American ginseng you know is talk about you know coals to Newcastle or something like this is it ginseng to try and that's because Americans knew that Chinese men liked ginseng and there is plenty of ginseng that grows while in the Adirondacks and native peoples had gathered ginseng and use it for medicinal purposes the French learned from the Indians about this and the Americans commissioned India they've got the trade and gathered tons of this stuff to put on board to take to chyna this this poster actually comes from Chinatown in San Francisco I saw it one day and it had took a picture of it but it was American ginseng that was on its way to China well this China trade was immensely profitable before and after the Revolution way up into the nineteenth century was one of the principal stays of the American economy which there were two of one was the slave trade in the Atlantic and in the China trade those are the two big mainstays of the early American economy and made the fortunes of the bluebloods of New England and - here are just a few and you look at the names down here and some of you've been to Harvard you know Harvard into the houses and hard Cabot Lowell Brown University Delano Franklin Delano Roosevelt Russell's Astor John Jacob Astor who was the wealthiest man in America for many many years and his name still evokes luxury the Waldorf Astoria or place such as Astoria Oregon which was the first permanent American settlement on the west coast of the continent ethic mouth of the Columbia River because John Jacob Astor was a fur trader and he commissioned with native peoples and others to gather pelts in particular at that time the poor sea otter who almost gets decimated from an ear down in the air down on your neck of the woods the poor low beautiful sea otter almost is wiped out by British and American and Russian trappers and they send all these value very very proud valuable pelts to China when the Chinese elite liked them because they were so warm and if you've been to the Monterey Bay Aquarium you know that 1,000,001 square inch of sea otter Pelt has a million hairs I got that right okay all right so these people make money and then of course we know here that our university was founded on a fortune of Leland Stanford who made his fortune in large part over being the domain director of the Central Pacific Railroad who employed principally Chinese work so there is also direct connections here and this was the painting that you here see if it Cantor Art Center showing the Palo Alto Springs which was their mansion before it burned down over sort near where the shopping center is and you see Leland and Jane and jr. there and then you have some fans and all the others are Stanford family and they're all identified except for the servants of course the workers are never given identities they don't have any names they're just their fans but the artist sort of puts the men which is interesting in the painting and I think they're both Chinese service because that's who the circus in in the Stanford home they had all agent I nice servings well at the same time there was also great animosity and fear about Chinese inundating America and a racial backlash against becoming a Chinese to the United States which is sort of illustrated in this magazine cover this cover of magazine published in San Francisco and you can see here literally a devilish looking Chinese person it's not sort of human and with all sorts of arms degrading exploiting oppressing white Americans taking jobs away from stealing spreading opium seducing white women all sorts of things up here this is the scourge on white civilization so even as Leland Stanford is trying to bring in Chinese workers here others including Stan for himself at times goes back and forth and plays to the anti Chinese movement and this leads to the Chinese Exclusion Act the Chinese restriction Act of 1882 which goes on as many of you know until 1943 so it was until 1943 that Chinese could become naturalized citizens of the United States but this sort of reflects the other side of this fascination with China that both America wants to embrace China in many ways connect with China but also distance itself and wall itself off from China in various ways sometimes simultaneously and you can see this in some of the different writing at the times in late nineteenth-century the China that war with the world is the cover of a book written about the Boxer Rebellion in 1989 and nine-time and this is when there was a boxer uprising in northern China with anti-foreign uprising and to suppress it a foreign power has formed a consortium one of the first international consortiums of military strength to actually invade China to go free their citizens and diplomats that were caught in Beijing and you know the story if you've seen Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner in 55 days of Peking so that's how you can learn your history about that incident but that's the the siege of Peking the very famous siege of Peking but China is being invaded but the book has it sort of reversed China at war with the world so Chinese is sort of the sense that china is now warring with everybody it's the Yellow Peril and this was a famous pamphlet produced by the Labour leader Samuel Gompers the fascinating title just in and out itself you can play around with it on so many different ways of whose strength whose powerful whose weak who's strong and whose male who's not and all this type of stuff which exemplified this sort of again this this fear of the yellow other well I'm gonna move more quickly here through some of the other side Kent to summarize entire book but these are just to illustrate different moments in this to show these different dimensions I do spend after about missionaries in China and it's a very very interesting story and I have to say after I did the research the book is is is directed to a non-specialists audience because I really wanted to speak to a more popular interest in China and not just to specialists but I think I hope that specialists will also appreciate it but it's meant to address you know more popular perceptions and interests in China and in America one of these is them about the missionary so maybe so many of us don't know very much about missionaries in China but thousands perhaps tens of thousands of Americans mainly white Americans went to China beginning around 1818 late 1820s all the way up to the next hundred and fifty years and one hundred forty 20 years to China to evangelize to proselytize to bring Chinese people to Jesus and many people went there for decades for their whole lives they died in China they served and I think most missionaries are sort of seen as being very patronizing and you're not arrogant to go save the heathen Chinese from from themselves but after I started reading more about these missionaries I came to have a different sense of many of them as much as I didn't care for their their their arrogance their their cultural or spiritual arrogance than many of them I thought actually were very dedicated and sincere people who wanted to help spread education many of them are medical missionaries and we just met right now a colleague the merit is right here from the religion department whose parents were missionaries in China and you were born in China and to in a missionary setting and the missionaries were very important because they live for a long time in China and then came back and talked to Americans about in every day all these churches all over the place about life in China and made a special bond I argue between everyday Americans not just business people and soldiers who would grow over there but every day mayor people in the churches in America say you see pictures like this and you go to Hoover Institution there are scores of papers of returned missionaries who talk about their lives in China sometimes in many times in very fond ways and this is sort of who I'm talking about I have a different view of some of the many of the missionaries who I think were quite dedicated to trying to improve life one of the most prominent these is this man here named john leighton stuart who was very well known in the country in the 40s and 50s his parents had been missionaries and he himself lived in China for 50 years he was born in China he grew up in China and we came back to his sent back he was a southerner he came back to I forget what school by his parents and they called him a and so four of like this because he had a Chinese accent but growing up in China and dressed a certain way and his body language was so sort of you know very Chinese and so he sais that he felt more Chinese that he did not American but he spent his almost his entire life in China and it was a missionary educator he founded yenching university which is a legendarium University in China that has now known as Peking University and his campus outside of the northwest of peak Peking which is where yenching university was is where Peking University is and Stanford Center at Peking University is just two blocks away from where he used to live this is the famous water tower of Peking University and some of you probably know of this tower is the symbol of the campus it's actually a water tower it's not a it's not as you know it's not a temple the thing of this and it was built by money given by the CEO of Alcoa aluminum in the 1920s so these ties between Americans and Chinese I think for very keen through through this period and through the missionaries when john leighton stuart was advancing in years he was made the ambassador to china in 1947 or 48 and so he was the US ambassador in china at the time of the revolution in 49 he had to withdraw he was recalled from from china and came back to the united states and died back East somewhere his dying wish was to have his remains returned and buried in China next to his parents and his siblings I mean this is quite remarkable that people identify so much and it's one of the themes in this book that there's these strong chords doing everyday people within the two countries the PRC did not grant his wish for many decades but a few years ago they said yes and his remains were returned and buried in China well there are many aspects of the story world war two in China and the United States were friends against a common enemy and many Americans thought the Chinese were just like other Americans they've all had similar values the famous book by Pearl Buck the Good Earth sort of presented Chinese as hard-working farmers very down-to-earth decent people who just want to be kind of left alone and this sort of resonated with many Americans during the Depression years that good earth came out in 1931 and then through the war years you can see service prototypic called nuclear family that Americans were encouraged to support the effort against Japan but then that changes very quickly of course who in the Communist rise and triumph in 1949 and this cover on Time magazine shows Mao as the so-called new read warlord surrounded by the locusts which is either could be the Chinese people it is sort of these minions of the warlord but also a simple biblical symbol of pestilence and damnation you have the locusts descending upon people or you also have a reference to Pearl bucks famous scene of the descent of the locust on the founder village anyway it's bad you're gonna have local you know you have you have locusts and you have have Mao there so now from friend becomes an enemy Time magazine itself the publisher was the famous Henry Luce the great publisher of time-life fortune and cosmopolitan sports villain off the whole time life henry luce what bra was brought up in china he had been the son of a missionary and his father henry lose his father and john leighton stuart were colleagues in helping build yenching university and lose had a very very deep attachment and fascination with china but he was unlike leighton stuart very very conservative and worked with others to try to rally americans against the PRC well there's a texture here and in some at the moment when many white Americans most vilified in China in the 1960s many believe that China was more dangerous than say the Soviet Union at the time because if China's appeal to the unwashed you know third-world to the revolutions to anti-colonial movements but other Americans particularly African American activists in this scenario here became fascinated with China and became enamored of Mao and revolutionary China and here you see the famous intellectual who's now a Ghanaian ian's citizen of Ghana WB Dubois who was invited to visit China in 1962 or so for his 90th birthday and so became a guest of the state and you see him here with Shirley grahame Du Bois up on the reviewing platform of China's National Day up there in the upper left standing next to them is dung Xiao ping standing next to dung shopping is Joanne lie and standing next to Joe ally is mounted or I mean you can't get much closer to power than that and his vet fastening photo here showing the voice was with Mao in an animated discussion but Du Bois was not the only one I mean Robert F Williams lived in China for many times when he died in Michigan after he wrote the Negroes with guns both for some of you who know this work he was buried in a mouse it because of his continuing fondness of revolutionary China and even Huey Newton you can see here in 1971 visited a chart I actually met Huey in China and I was in China 1970 why don't we cross paths several times the story goes a fun story so he he had this immense bodyguard and what he thought he needed a bodyguard for China I'm not sure but this guy was like you know New York Giants fullback I mean it's tackle or something he was huge and it was always round with Huey and the group I was with there was another Chinese American who was hefty hefty side and Huey came up to me and say I hear bodyguards almost as big as your pine but he wasn't he was just you know a friend or something well Revolution in China went its way after mile die and dung shall ping rose and you have that whole market revolution and again now Americans are reef connected China refasten ated and business in particular is interested as robert rauschenberg cover of Time magazine now designed this cuts of art piece to to celebrate dunk shell pingas Man of the Year twice in the late mid-eighteen 1980s and you'd see quotes businesspeople salivating to get back into the China market and one businessman said just think of it 1 billion armpits in need of deodorant you know so that's it so this is sue this again this Vince vision is attraction to still today the tube that's bigger well maybe didn't count shoulder maybe shoulder in didn't eating so you know he had Apple today back there you had you know ban or whatever right well to just to try to fit it up here I am going to read a little bit here for many Americans China for it was from Jamestown to the present quote now I begin a quote a beguiling destination and an immense trading entrepot but it also became seen in the eyes of many leading Americans through the years as essential for America's very own fate and the faithful ties our destiny which is why used in the book the idea of China the idea China became an ingredient within the developing identity of America itself and therefore America's national Dennett destiny which preoccupies can preoccupied and continues to preoccupy us Americans are always interested about American destiny and became inevitably linked to that of China America's destiny became linked to that of China in the great national enterprises and the expansive ventures of 18th 19th and 20th centuries the Far East was the reason to reach the far West the search for a Northwest Passage the Lewis and Clark expedition the coveting of the Oregon Territory the waging of the mexican-american war the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad the purchase of Alaska the conquest of an insular Empire in the Pacific including the colonization of the Philippines the Panama Canal and others were all inspired in various degrees by the lure of China and Asia and so on until we are here we are today so I also offer in this book a counter to the grand sore Western move narrative that we have in American history so this is not the end of the story in some sense at the end of the history but just the beginning but to go back to the beginning I give off you this these slides I'll ask some questions the beginning of the talk of who some people were or who is this very good at the other day on Saturday no one knew Hurley was 300 alums to know who this this is this person's this is Christopher Columbus so where is this Karen professor Wiggin gets the a for for her they had two correct answer Coit Tower now what is Christopher Columbus doing in San Francisco why is there a statue to him in San Francisco he never got close to San Francisco the Italians of San Francisco that's right he the closest Christopher Columbus got of course was somewhere near Cuba and his dying day he believed he did make it to Asia and he thought that where he was was sort of where Indonesia is if you think the latitude is sort of the same latitude the problem was that Christopher Columbus missed estimated by one-third the circumference of the earth and of course he didn't know the so-called new world on the Pacific much of the Pacific so that's why he thought he had made it the records with distance and was at the right latitude but he just didn't figure correctly in his calculations whose dying day he believed him came back to the new world twice after this and who's died he believed he went to he got to the new world but other people said no Chris you know you made a mistake but any case he's looking here out grand heroic a statue erected by the local italian-american community in San Francisco in the 1950s to celebrate one of their own and he's looking out as you know San Francisco out towards the west toward the Setting Sun and he has a mandate in his hand from Queen Isabella Stanford class of 72 Sigourney Weaver who plays Queen Isabella in in the movie 1492 with Christopher Columbus played by Gerard Depardieu if a long current movie except for one moment when Columbus meets native peoples at a fascinating moment you know changes the everything when do they meet but on his scabbard you can't see I don't speak Latin so I won't try to put up but it's it's translucence what he was supposedly has said as I said search for the east by way of the West his famous phrase search for the East capital e by going west and he's still going west Happy Easter he's still trying to go to the east by way of the West who are these people and where is this who said Sacrament yeah be up near your hometown yeah Sacramento the State Capitol building rotunda beautiful renovated and glorious and who's they who are these people can't see Queen Isabella and Christopher Thomas so what are they doing in the state capitol building I mean it's the same sort of thing which we've you all have you will be generous with me is this or Italian so maybe that's true it but it's the idea that again California and the West is embedded in this ambition this vision this impulse to get to the east and we here are away station America is in a sense intimately can linked to that impulse I'll stop here and welcome your comments and questions or criticisms

Channel: Stanford

Views: 9,646

Rating: 4.6090226 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: vW747IAz154

Length: 48min 32sec (2912 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 24 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/ting_bu_dong]

The first ship to sail out after the end of the America Revolution was The Empresses of China, headed for China, laden with American Ginseng. The second ship contained the ratified Treaty of Paris.

Neat!

[u/rockyrainy]

Gordan Chang, the Elliot Rodger of Sino American relations.

[u/kulio_forever]

same guy? I think probably not, never saw Stanford next to the author's name...could be wrong though