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Date(s)： 2019/07/02
Time： 10:00~12:00
Venue： Archives 2nd Conference Hall
Speaker：Prof. R. Bin Wong（Director of the UCLA Asia Institute and Distinguished ）
Organizer： Hu Shih Research Group
Abstract: This presentation offers a complement to my frequent comparison of Chinese and European political and economic change. It focuses on comparing patterns of political change in the Americas and relates the forms of historical change across the America to European influences and connections as well as to situations specific to the Americas. The comparisons recognize that there are different ways to create the basic categories for identifying comparisons, using both geography and political & cultural connections as bases for dividing the Americas into two world regions. The presentation goes to explain the contrasting kinds of state transformation taking place in different parts of the Americas. It concludes with comparisons to China that can be made without directly including European comparisons as a point of reference, thus exemplifying a larger point of contributing to a more general understanding of how modern patterns of political change across the globe have emerged out of longer historical pasts that cannot be understood simply in terms of their similarities to and differences from political changes in Europe—an assumption that continues to inform much contemporary evaluation of differences in governance globally.