Asian
History is largely a story of power and subjugation. Being unfree and disempowered as been unfortunately normative, which is why the last vestiges of what Dahl, Nexo and Prendergast call "unfreedom" stand out in the modern era. North Korea is perhaps the most potent and extreme example of unfreedom in the world. As Daniel Gordon shows in the documentary feature A State of Mind, the people of North Korea blame "imperial America" for problems originating within the dysfunctional power structure of their own authoritarian regime. However, the North Korean regime did not originate or evolve in isolation. Global forces and powers, as well as more specific events have aided and abetted North Korea directly or indirectly.
Even in Western democracies, the degree to which the average person is free is variable, due to the structures and institutions that govern a capitalist society. The people of the United States pride themselves on choosing their own government, and yet have no real control over what that government does. People in power and the institutions they form are the primary movers and shakers in history. The extent to which Eastern and Western leaders alike have contributed to global unfreedom is vast. The people of North Korea as well as their Chinese neighbors would be able to recognize that there is mutual complicity in their respective oppression.
As Waley-Cohen points out in The Sextants of Beijing, China had resisted engaging with the west for several centuries of its existence, preferring an isolationist foreign policy and an insular worldview. The Age of Imperialism shifted global balances of power to a degree that China could not fail to recognize, but it was not until the eighteenth century that China would reckon with the new world order. The resulting series of trade agreements and treaties were often one-sided, skewed in favor of Western powers like Great Britain. In a stunning...
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