Comment by Hyunhee Park

In today’s academic landscape, the growing emphasis on globalization has amplified the demand for non-Western curricula, prompting a reexamination of how Asian history is framed. Increasingly, institutions incorporate Asian studies into broader world history frameworks, grouping diverse histories into regional surveys that highlight Asia’s cultural, political, and economic diversity while emphasizing its historical connections to global processes. These approaches challenge the outdated notion of Asia as a collection of isolated civilizations, presenting it instead as a dynamic, interconnected region. The think pieces in this forum expand on this shift, urging a reconsideration of Asia’s historical boundaries and interactions. This commentary contributes to that dialogue by exploring “Big Asia” as a framework to move beyond static portrayals and uncover the region’s diversity, fluidity, and integrative contributions to global history. To begin with, the concept of “Big Asia” compels us to rethink Asia’s boundaries and historical definitions. As Nile Green observes, Asia has never been a fixed entity; its meanings and contours have shifted across time and cultures, shaped by the priorities of those who conceptualized it. With regard to my own research, premodern societies like China and the Islamic caliphates developed “geoconcepts” that situated Asian regions within broader frameworks of world understanding. Building on flourishing trade connections across Asia, their scholars crafted geographical texts and maps that divided the world into vast regions rather than defining Asia as a distinct entity. This integrative approach is exemplified by Sima Qian’s (145–86 BCE) official histories, which categorized foreign societies and described them in relation to China, as well as in the geographic works in the Islamic world, which synthesized knowledge into comprehensive worldviews, centered on their respective societies.1

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