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Scope
Westerners in China will focus on people from the West (Europe and the United States) who visited or lived in China during different time periods and left behind personal accounts, travel narratives, and other writings and related texts documenting how they perceived the country. The site will encompass primarily pre-twentieth century texts, in part because China has drastically changed in the last hundred years and in part because copyright issues are often less strict for older published works.3
Since not very many websites cover anything near what this topic encompasses, the majority of the content collecting will begin with the aid of several books. The following books will serve as a starting point for looking for people to cover and issues to explore:
Mackerras, Colin. Sinophiles and Sinophobes: Western Views of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
Mackerras, Colin. Western Images of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Mungello, David. The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500-1800 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999).
Spence, Jonathan. The Chan’s Great Continent (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998).
These books cover “Western Views” or “Western Images” of China broadly and generally cover a longer time period. However, since nothing substantial online covers this topic and students often do not have time to cover all the sources available, an appropriate cut off is the beginning of the twentieth century. If the site is successful in accomplishing its mission, and time and money are not a concern, it may be possible to expand by adding more materials. The database on the site would only require minor changes to add more sources or lesson plans.
The site’s main goal and genre will be a teaching resource—to provide information to students and teachers at the high school and undergraduate level for use in the World History (and Chinese/East Asian history) classroom. To make the content accessible to such a broad group of people, the site will follow specific National History standards for the high school level while at the same time being complex enough and provide adaptations for AP and college-level survey courses.
Each of the site’s sections will be structured at least in part by time period “eras” so as to follow the standards.4 This will also make it easily navigable for those teachers and students who may not be familiar with who was in China at different times. It also keeps lessons in a chronological framework which teachers who teach at these levels are already familiar with. However, the materials and lessons will not solely be based on these time periods (and this focus on chronological thinking) but rather will expand to also cover the following skills listed in the standards5:
- historical comprehension, through reading primary sources in context
- historical analysis and interpretation, through comparative analysis by reading multiple perspectives over many years from people of different backgrounds with various motives for going to China
- historical research capabilities, through reading eyewitness accounts and constructing their own narrative and arguments around the primary sources and with guidance from the teachers using the lesson plans
- historical issues-analysis and decision making, by analyzing various interests, motives, and perspectives of those “caught up in these situations” and making decisions based on reading more than one person’s perspective
These standards will be covered as much as possible in the lesson plans, and no lesson plan will be without any of these included. More detailed materials and lesson plans will be included so that AP World History and college-level instructors can use the site above and beyond the basic standards. For instance, more primary sources will be added so analysis can be more extensive and cover more territory. Links to contextual information will be provided, and some lesson plans will introduce more complex issues and themes to be discussed.
The first section of the site and main browsing feature will be an interactive timeline. The timeline will be broken up into three broad sections based on specific time periods listed in the standards: 1000-1500, 1450-1750, and 1770-1914. Each time period will be its own, self-contained, set of pages. Below each of these time periods will be a broad overview to provide some background information as well as a list of the people who lived in or visited China during the time period. This will make it easier if the user is looking for a specific person to explore and for viewing all potential sources. The advisory board, which will be contacted for initial research suggestions and ideas beyond the books already mentioned, will review the finalized list of people to include for each section.
The content within each time period section will contain a chronological list of the people who lived in or visited China during these years. The timeline will also include historical events in China and the West that were occurring at the same time these people were there. Exploring this contextual information allows teachers and students to analyze the reasons why people may have been visiting or living in China, as well as what impact a specific event had on them. Not surprisingly, the type of person from the West living in or visiting China has changed dramatically depending both on what was happening where they came from, and on what was happening in China. For instance, when the Black Death and a recurrent series of plagues struck Europe in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, relatively few Westerners were present in China, while during the Catholic counterreformation many Jesuits lived in China. However, how Westerners were treated depended heavily on the dynasty in power at the time—the Ming treated Westerners in a different way than the Qing. The nineteenth century saw an influx of western missionaries and businessmen into China that, due to a variety of political and cultural reasons, created increased tension and hostility towards foreigners. Issues such as these can only be fully discussed and understood when this other contextual information is present.
The general setup for each set of pages within a time period will be a scrollable timeline. When an item on the timeline is clicked, the content of the page will switch to display information about the item. The initial page for each separate time period will be an overview and a brief explanation of how to use the timeline. The timeline will be horizontal and color coded so that everything on the first horizontal line is in one color to represent the people who lived or traveled in China (with digitized sources on the site), everything on the next line in a different color will be an historical event in China, and everything on the last line in a third color will be an historical event that occurred in the West.
When a person is clicked on, the following will be displayed:
*a short biography
*any images associated with this person (entered into the database)
*a link to each of the sources on the site attributed to this person
*links to all related lesson plans that use or could use this person’s perspective
*a map of China at that time showing where this person lived and/or visited
The screen will always display the timeline along the bottom. The bio will The screen will always display the timeline along the bottom. The biography will include where the person came from, where he or she went in China, what his or her background was, possible motives for going to China, and themes/issues to explore when reading this person’s writings. When clicked on, all links to sources and lesson plans will pop up in new windows so the user can simply close them and return to the timeline when finished.
If an historical event from China or the West is chosen, a background to and overview of the event will be provided. This information, as well as any maps and images that may accompany the event, will be derived from other educational online sources, publicly available archives, and books. External links to additional information on topics will be provided and, when clicked upon, will show in a pop up box so the user does not need to leave the site.
In providing all contextual information, but in particular regarding the events in China and the West, it is assumed that students will have at least some knowledge to work with if they are navigating the site on their own, either from a textbook or lecture. The materials on this site will be geared at complementing and providing information to what is being discussed by a teacher or professor, whether or not he or she is using a lesson plan from the site. The site’s timeline is not aimed at being the only source students go for learning about issues surrounding Westerners in China.
The second feature of the site, working in conjunction with the timeline, will be a section containing web-based lesson plans. The initial page will divide lessons for browsing by time period or topic/issue/theme. Using topics, issues, and themes, lessons can combine different time periods for comparative discussion. Since the lessons will be dynamically generated, a keyword search will also be added to the page so that a search can be performed through the lesson plans table in the database. If a teacher or professor does not plan to use the site with students and would rather just have a lesson plan, he or she could come to this section and be provided with all necessary materials.
The lessons will be developed by a core group of teachers and professors currently teaching World History, Chinese History, and East Asian History courses at both the high school and undergraduate levels. Each lesson plan will have defined sections and the format will be identical (too often teaching sites that use lesson plans do not follow a specific format and therefore lose usefulness). The aim is for twenty lesson plans but eight will be required before publicizing the site for use by others.
A central requirement to each plan will be that they have direct links to the primary sources used from the database and a list of the world history standards that it fulfills. Discussion questions and other relevant information for teaching the materials will be included as will other features normally found on lesson plans—instructional steps, activities, amount of time it takes to complete, a bibliography (for copyrighted and non-web sources) and external links to more information or other online sources. If other online sources exist they can be linked from directly within the lesson plan. Also, a short half-page reflection of use in the classroom (if previously used or taught) and reactions from students to the materials can be included in the plan but will not be required. This could be very beneficial to those who have never taught with these materials.
The last feature of the site will be a primary source database search. The ways to search will be by person, time period, topic, and/or keyword search. The person search will be a drop down menu with the names of all the people who have sources in the database, while time period and topic will be series of checkboxes where multiple boxes can be checked. After searching through the results and clicking on a particular primary source, the display of the source will be in the same format as in the popup boxes on the timeline.
Other sections on the site will include: about, contact, links. The about section will include a description of the site project and materials that are or will be available on it, how to use the site as a student and as a teacher, and site credits. The links section will contain external links to other educational resources, helpful primary source sites, and bibliographies located elsewhere on the web for more resources. In addition, a form in this section will allow and encourage broken links to be reported and new links to be submitted for review.
The contact section of the site will be where feedback can be provided. Although the contact section will provide an e-mail, and it is likely some people will use it to submit their own lesson plans, the site will not specifically solicit for lesson plans here. This is for a variety of reasons, but mostly for consistency. If a person wishes to submit a lesson plan, he or she will be encouraged to e-mail his or her credentials first. A follow up of requirements with a specific format to use will be sent back. The advisory board will conduct a periodic review of lessons.
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3 I easily located and checked out many potential sources from the George Mason University library, the Washington Research Library Consortium, and InterLibrary Loan. Most copyrights date prior to 1950, and about half date before 1900.
4 See: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/standards/dev-5-12e.html for the specific time periods defined.
5 These are discussed in detail at: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/standards/thinking5-12.html.