Australia has engaged with the peoples and spaces of the Indo-Pacific even before the earliest days of European settlement. The Indo-Pacific region has given rise to great civilisations in mainland and maritime Asia and provided a home for major world religions. The region has been significantly shaped, from the sixteenth century, by interaction with several European countries and, from the nineteenth century, with the United States. This course will enable students to obtain a foundation of knowledge of the region, its geography, cultures, religions and changing political orders as well as contemporary challenges in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
The course will focus on four themes: the region and its historical geography; cultures and religions; political orders from European involvement in the sixteenth century to the US-led order in the Cold War; and contemporary challenges and developments, including globalisation, great power contestation and indigenous reactions. This course forms the first compulsory first-year unit for the major in Indo-Pacific Studies and is a pre-requisite for Indo-Pacific IB: the Contemporary Indo-Pacific Region: Actors Politics and Institutions (ZHSSXXXX). It allows students to build on this foundation and undertake upper year electives focussing on specific aspects of the region. The course also includes comparisons with other world regions to enable a better appreciation of the peoples and spaces of the Indo-Pacific.
