"History from the Asian perspective" (#53, Topic H)

Discussion over Google's search service for China (#43, #52) is still going on strong in the media. Over CNBC today, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich was sympathetic to Google's position. A member of an on-line publishing forum, holding an extremely negative view, directed his fellow members to a column in Market Watch, which I dutifully did; the columnist was sarcastic. A side-bar accompanying the column was written by an alarmist: yielding to China would result in her rise; "when China rules the world, history will be written from the Asian perspective." Though he did not realize it, he actually made several confessions. One, at the moment (and, for the last century and half or so), the world is ruled by the west; this is ok. Two, history written from the western perspective is ok. Three, when China rises and rules the world, watch out; history written from the Chinese or the Asian perspective is a no-no. This reminds me of an episode. Goethe, responding to a friend of his ignorant of China's literary heritage, famously said: When they were reading novels in China, our ancestors were still living on trees. So, I have a question: when ancestors to western historians were still living on trees, who wrote the world's history?
Posted at 7:33 pm, Thursday, January 26, 2006