The Big Picture: Major Influences - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 6

Second, environmental determinism colored his-
toric and geographical accounts well into the twentieth
century . Ellen Churchill Semple (1863-1932), an American
geographer who taught at the University of Chicago and
Clark University , was complimentary to China and Japan,
yet described the people of India as ignorant and supersti-
tious. She saw tropical peoples as servile and inferior due
to the high temperatures in which they lived. According
to Semple, anyone who went to tropical areas would soon
be reduced to the lethargic state characteristic of those
residing in these debilitating regions.
Derogatory assessments not only generated xenopho-
bia (fear of foreigners) but also contributed to ethnocen-
trism and the we-they syndrome. Ethnocentric people
judge foreign cultures by their own standards and often
speak in we (better) versus they (not as good) terms. Eco-
nomically developed, democratic Western nations have
viewed themselves as superior to less developed, politi-
cally alternate Eastern ones. As you will see, this notion of
cultural superiority continues to pervade East-West rela-
tions. Furthermore, the history of cartography reveals a
long-established practice of centering the world on
Europe. This promoted a Eurocentric worldview , the
antithesis of China' s Sinocentric (China-centered) view .
Recently , I purchased a school notebook printed in
Vietnam. On the back cover is a Eurocentered world map
captioned by the words, “The World of [the] Future.”
What sort of maps are in your classrooms and academic
topics? Examine some world geography , world history , or
world civilization textbooks and note how many pages are
devoted to Eastern versus Western civilizations. What
does all this say about Western perceptions of Asia? And
what does it say about European influence in Asia?
European notions of Asia were also colored by reli-
gious beliefs. After all, the Garden of Eden was there, the
Three Wise Men came from the east, and the sun, the
light of salvation, rises in the east. Prester (Presbyter)
John, a wise Christian king, was believed to have ruled
somewhere in Asia. In the Middle Ages, countless pil-
grimages were launched to find his kingdom. In that vein
of thought, the Orient was a source of light and goodness
and, conversely , the Occident was dark and evil.
Beyond these scripturally-inspired conceptions, Asia
was portrayed as a mysterious place of dog-headed men
and other freakish beings, as well as the heathen tribes of
Gog and Magog, poised to pounce upon the unwary . More
significantly , the Orient was thought to possess unbounded
wealth in spices, jewels, incense, and other exotica—an
idea underpinning numerous land and sea explorations.
It is important to recognize that this collective, con-
flicting imagery of an ill-defined Asia derived from both

real and imagined experiences with a region extending
eastward from Egypt into Ukraine and the Russian grass-
lands and southward into India. At the time, China was
merely a fabled land on the periphery of this vast expanse
called Asia. As exploration fostered increasing contacts
between East and West, more places were added to the
European knowledge map. Asia, as a conceived region,
ultimately stretched eastward and southward into the
Pacific Ocean, incorporating Japan and such far-flung
islands as those in Indonesia and the Philippines.
By the nineteenth century , European powers were
not only entrenched in many Asian countries for political
and economic gain but were also struggling with defining
their own boundaries. A series of wars, the rise and
demise of assorted political powers, and ever-shifting
national boundaries necessitated the revision of European
frontiers. This was accomplished at the Congress of
Vienna in 1815. The division between Europe and Asia
was demarcated from Russia' s Ural Mountains, through
the Caspian and Black seas, and along the eastern end of
the Mediterranean Sea to the African continent. T Today, ,
Asia is recognized as part of the geographical landmass
known as Eurasia. And so, there is a continental Asia in a
Eurasian context. However, cultural, political, economic,
and environmental regions, as we know them today , are
no more coincident with these boundaries than with spa-
tial constructs of earlier times. This is why it is preferable
to consider smaller, more cohesive realms. Although
South, East, and Southeast Asia are the regions designated
for discussion, I will use the term Asia when referring to
these collectively , or the Asian continent in general.

Reading Place Names

There are many ways to spell toponyms or place
names, especially in the case of Asia. This is, in part,
because of varying transliterations of regional scripts
into the Roman alphabet. Some of the spellings for
the Chinese capital city of Beijing are: Peiping, Pei-
ching, and Peking. Westerners' inability to pro-
nounce indigenous place names led to alternate
spellings. Singapore is the English version of Singha
Pura that was formerly known as T Temasek. Different
ethnic groups may have their own versions of
toponyms. For example, Urumchi in northwestern
China is a Uyghur name. The Chinese call it Wu-lu-
mu-chi. Sometimes places disappear and reappear as
something else. For instance, East Pakistan became