The History of East Asia

In the year 1000, East Asia held the most advanced economy on Earth. Song China was printing books, casting iron at scale and paying its bills with paper money while much of Europe was still counting harvests. This timeline follows the region through the Mongol conquests that briefly stitched Eurasia together, the Ming voyages and their deliberate ending, Japan under the shoguns choosing seclusion, and Korea inventing its own alphabet by royal decree. The nineteenth century brings gunboats, unequal treaties and the Meiji sprint to modernize; the twentieth brings war, revolution and division; and the decades since have returned East Asia to the center of the world economy. Every event below links to a full page with date and context.