World History: Asia

Longest river of China and Asia, and third longest in the world, flowing about 6,300 km/3,900 mi from Qinghai on the Tibetan Plateau to the Yellow Sea. It is a major commercial waterway and, with its tributaries, is navigable for 30,000 km/18,640 mi; Yichang is considered the head of navigation, but ocean-going vessels can reach inland as far as Wuhan.

Since the 2d millennium B.C. a unique and fairly uniform culture has spread over almost all of China.

A table of the Chinese Dynasties from c. 2205 B.C.E. to the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).

Fortifications, c.1,500 mi (2,400 km) long, winding across N China from Gansu prov. to Hebei prov. on the Yellow Sea.

From Greenwood Encyclopedia of International Relations
The second half of the Eastern Zhou dynastic period witnessed emergence of about 170 city-states in north central China, ultimately reduced by war, conquest, and merger to fewer than ten, and then to one: Qin, which began the classical period of Imperial China.

Two wars, the First Opium War (1839–42) and the Second Opium War (1856–60), waged by Britain against China to enforce the opening of Chinese ports to trade in opium. Opium from British India paid for Britain's imports from China, such as porcelain, silk, and, above all, tea.

Series of great political upheavals in China between 1911 and 1949 which eventually led to Communist Party rule and the establishment of the People's Republic of China.

Mao Zedong (1873–1976) was a founding member of the Chinese Communist Party and the architect of China’s Communist revolution. Some of his socialist polices failed and caused much suffering and devastation for the people, but his legacy as a firm nationalist leader and the “founding father” of an independent China still inspires post-Mao generations.

An island nation which is part of China.

Paved open space in central Beijing (Peking), China, the largest public square in the world. On 3–4 June 1989 more than 1,000 unarmed protesters were killed by government troops in a massacre that crushed China's emerging pro-democracy movement.

The divine design of the empire—supposedly founded in 660 B.C. by the emperor Jimmu, a lineal descendant of the sun goddess and ancestor of the present emperor—was held as official dogma until 1945.

The citizens of Japan (capital Tokyo), who numbered over 127.5 million in 2002.

The samurai was the professional warrior class that ruled Japan for almost 700 years, from the end of the 12th until the middle of the 19th century.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Aborigines of Japan who may be descended from a Caucasoid people who once lived in N Asia. More powerful invaders from the Asian mainland gradually forced the Ainu to retreat to the northern islands of Japan and Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in what is now the Russian Far East.

It is the second largest, northernmost, and most sparsely populated of the major islands of Japan.

The largest of the four main islands of Japan, between the Pacific and the Sea of Japan; regarded as the Japanese mainland.

An island of SW Japan: the southernmost of Japan's four main islands, with over 300 surrounding small islands; coalfield and chemical industries.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Smallest of the four main islands of Japan, south of Honshu, east of Kyushu; area 18,800 sq km/7,250 sq mi; population (2000 est) 4,154,000.

the world's largest continent with about 3.3 billion people, nearly three fifths of the world's total population.

A Constitutional Monarchy, Cambodia is bordered by Thailand on the west and north, by Laos on the north, by Vietnam on the east, and by the Gulf of Thailand on the south.

Country in southeast Asia, made up of 13,677 islands situated on or near the Equator, between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It is the world's fourth most populous country, surpassed only by China, India, and the USA.

A peninsula, 600 mi (966 km) long, Korea separates the Sea of Japan on the east from the Yellow Sea. On the south it is bounded by the Korea Strait (connecting the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea) and on the north its land boundaries with China and Russia.

independent federation in Southeast Asia. T

Country in east-Central Asia, bounded north by Russia and south by China.

Country in southeast Asia, off the tip of the Malay Peninsula.

Occupying a central position on the Southeast Asia peninsula, Thailand is bordered by Myanmar on the west and northwest, by Laos on the north and east, by Cambodia on the southeast, and by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia on the south.

A landlocked nation, Laos is bordered by China on the north, by Vietnam on the east, by Cambodia on the south, and by Thailand and Myanmar on the west.

Occupying the eastern coastline of the Southeast Asian peninsula, Vietnam is bounded by China on the north, by Laos and Cambodia on the west, and by the Gulf of Tonkin and the South China Sea on the east and south.

Geographical region covering the territory of five nation-states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. These republics were part of the Soviet Union before gaining their independence in 1991.

This region has 10 independent countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

The Korean War—considered the forgotten war by some because it fell between the “good” war, World War II, and the “bad” war, Vietnam—was the first time in the nuclear age when the United States committed its forces to combat.

Beginning in the aftermath of World War II and lasting into the 1970s, U.S. involvement in Vietnam, indeed throughout Southeast Asia, grew progressively from an advisory effort into a major war.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide Major river of India and Bangladesh; length 2,510 km/1,560 mi. It drains a fertile and densely populated basin, approximately a quarter of the total area of India, and is the most sacred river for Hindus.

Ancient civilization that flourished from about 2500 B.C. to about 1500 B.C. in the valley of the Indus River and its tributaries.

Literary works written in Sanskrit constituting the main body of the classical literature of India.

Gandhi’s significance as a twentieth-century philosopher, pilgrim, world leader, and writer lies in his uncompromising reliance on ahimsa—the Hindi and Buddhist doctrine of nonviolence and restraint from harming all forms of life—as a moral force for reforming and transforming unjust established authority.