Co-hosted by RASBJ and Yale Center Beijing. This talk is part of the Greenberg Distinguished Colloquium.

Event Time

May 8, 2024 | Wednesday
8:00 am - 9:00 am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)

May 8, 2024 | Wednesday
8:00 pm - 9:00 pm China Standard Time (CST)

Participation Format 

Registration is required to obtain a ZOOM meeting invitation, which will be sent to your registration email or phone. Please enter the Zoom meeting room 15 minutes before the starting time. When the room is full, latecomers will not be able to access the conference.

Registration and Fees

Registration:
Please click “HERE” further below to register.

After successful registration you'll receive a confirmation email with a link to join the event online. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder.

Ticket: Free (Invitees of Yale Center Beijing)

LANGUAGE

The language of the event will be English.

The Event

After Da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Indian Ocean port of Sofala in modern-day Mozambique in January 1498, he connected with a sea route that had already been in use for some 700 years. Professor Valerie Hansen, author of The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began, will delve into a trading system that existed centuries before European explorers first took sail.The sophisticated trading system is rarely referenced in the West. For one, most records are in Arabic and Chinese. And the unnamed Asian sailors who braved storms and survived shipwrecks to venture into new waters did so without the sponsorship of monarchs — quite different from Europe's first explorers.

On May 8, Professor Valerie Hansen will be joined by Jeremiah Jenne, writer and historian, for an online discussion on "The Age of Exploration Before Columbus and Da Gama: When Asia Dominated the Sea." 

The Speaker 

Valerie Hansen
Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Yale University

Professor Valerie Hansen teaches premodern Chinese and world history at Yale, since 2017 as Stanley Woodward Professor of History. Hansen published Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1279 in 1990. Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, 600-1400, came out in 1995. In 2000, she published The Open Empire, arguing that contrary to the widespread view that no outsiders influenced traditional China, Indian Buddhists and northern nomads shaped traditional China throughout its long history. In 2012, Hansen published The Silk Road: A New History, in which she argued that Silk Road trade was small-scale and usually involved local goods. Her most recent book, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began (Scribner, 2020) has been translated into fifteen languages so far.

The Moderator

Jeremiah Jenne
Writer
Historian

Dr. Jeremiah Jenne has been based in Beijing for more than twenty years. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and taught Late Imperial and Modern Chinese History for over 15 years while also leading educational and research trips to every part of China. His essays and articles have appeared in The Economist, South China Morning Post, and numerous other publications. 

Greenberg Distinguished Colloquium

Thanks to the generosity of Mr. Maurice R. Greenberg, Chairman and CEO of Starr Insurance Companies, and a member of Yale Center Beijing’s Advisory Committee, Yale Center Beijing is pleased to host the Greenberg Distinguished Colloquium, which convenes thought leaders from all sectors who, in the spirit of Mr. Greenberg, play pivotal roles in building bridges among China, the U.S., and the rest of the world.