1994年，總統李登輝提出南向政策，許多重要的知識分子，從理論、歷史或自然等面向，著文為「南進」背書。學者陳光興由此感受到台灣思想及學術界的局限：在這塊被日本殖民五十年的土地上，大多數人竟閃爍著相同的帝國主義慾望。

由此出發，美國學術訓練出身的他，開始將視角轉向亞洲，檢視同樣遭受殖民歷史的地區，是否也產生相同的思想局限。

在十餘年闖蕩亞洲的思想實踐中，陳光興指出幾個曾經影響亞洲的重大歷史事件（帝國主義、殖民、冷戰體系），依舊發揮強大的影響力，牢牢地控制我們對世界的想像。

於是陳光興發展出去帝國、去殖民、去冷戰三位一體的的問題意識，並且明確指出，要逃離這種歷史宿命，就必須以「亞洲作為方法」：透過亞洲視野的想像，亞洲間的各個社會可以相互看見，轉化自身，提出根植亞洲經驗的世界觀。

在英國跨國出版社Routledge出資的狀況下，陳光興開始參與創辦 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies國際刊物，希望發展出亞洲知識分子的思想交流平台。對他來說，這就是「亞洲作為方法」的實踐。

From celebrated Yale professor Valerie Hansen, a groundbreaking work of history showing that bold explorations and daring trade missions connected all of the world’s great societies for the first time at the end of the first millennium.

In history, myth often abides. It was long assumed that the centuries immediately prior to AD 1000 were lacking in any major cultural developments or geopolitical encounters, that the Europeans hadn’t yet discovered North America, that the farthest anyone had traveled over sea was the Vikings’ invasion of Britain. But how, then, to explain the presence of blonde-haired people in Mayan temple murals in Chichen Itza, Mexico? Could it be possible that the Vikings had found their way to the Americas during the height of the Mayan empire?

Valerie Hansen, a much-honored historian, argues that the year 1000 was the world’s first point of major cultural exchange and exploration. Drawing on nearly thirty years of research on medieval China and global history, she presents a compelling account of first encounters between disparate societies. As people on at least five continents ventured outward, they spread technology, new crops, and religion. These encounters, she shows, made it possible for Christopher Columbus to reach the Americas in 1492, and set the stage for the process of globalization that so dominates the modern era.

For readers of Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens , The Year 1000 is an intellectually daring, provocative account that will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how the modern world came to be. It will also hold up a mirror to the hopes and fears we experience today.