After finishing a 400 page atlas of world history I realized I couldn't tell you how any of the countries between China and Russia came to be, nor what countries or civilizations occupied Africa beyond Egypt and Carthage - the only African civilizations the atlas deemed worthy of covering.

Meanwhile something like 8 pages out of the entire book were devoted to China and Japan.

Korea was not mentioned outside of the Korean War.

Absolutely nothing on the -Stans except for brief mentions in a section on the USSR.

The Mongol Empire had 2 pages all to itself.

Pre-Mughal India was non-existent, and the Mughals didn't get all that much attention either. India might as well not have existed prior to British colonization as far as I could tell.

So all in all about a tenth of the book was devoted solely to non-European history. And this was an atlas of world history.

I'm not a historian by any stretch of the imagination but I remember that as the moment when I lost interest in Western history.

Short answer, I'm Asian American with immigrant parents.

Long answer, I wanted to know more about my mother's cultural background, plus Mao is really interesting. I wanted to know more about the environment that she and my grandmother grew up in. Learning more about the history that led China to become what it is today is fascinating to me. I hope to someday ask my mother about her own personal experiences, because I don't know much about our family history, and I really want to know more.

Of course, I'm going to have to get better in Cantonese first before I get to ask her questions. At the moment my vocabulary is really limited to taking about school and chores around the house, because we never had a need to talk about anything else. But someday.

Also, admittedly, I knew more about European history than I did my own cultural history, and that was kind of embarrassing in my opinion. :P

I started out in British maritime and imperial history. I quickly realized that the real story was out in the colonies, where people were interacting. My parents worked around the African continent in the 60s and 70s,and told stories, but they always seemed incomplete. My career has been an effort to understand the colonial encounter and the emergence of the modern Africa we know. It's not stuff students usually learn unless they seek it out, but it explains a lot of what developed later.

I'm a first-generation Chinese immigrant, always knew that I liked medieval history, but at university I took a few Byzantine modules and ended up loving them - mostly because I know so little about it, so everything I read was new and exciting for me. Oddly, I really want to specialise in ecclesiastical history too, particularly that of various eastern churches, even though I'm an atheist. I'm a strange one!

My main area is Rome,, but my specific topic (Indo-Roman trade) beings me into contact with Indian culture and history, and in my personal time I read a lot about China and Oceania. The interest for me is that it pushes my boundaries and presents something of a challenge--Rome is relatively easy to deal with because simply living in a Western society means you encounter Rome very often. This is less true with, say, India and I enjoy pushing myself to try to understand a non-Western reference frame.

I also really like Chinese food.

I'm neither French nor a Pacific Islander; but circumstance and a strong back ground in environmental conservation and protection from my high school biology teacher has gradually lead me to my current field.

Being in the Pacific, studying the Histories of the Pacific or Pacific World just seemed a natural field to do and one in which I made many good friends and met tons of great people.

A background in French Empire/Colonialism really comes from my time as a French MA graduate student before embarking on a History PhD. I learned the literature of empire and the enlightenment and became fascinated by it.

Otherwise; Environmental History was a focus during my Undergraduate when I focused on Environmentalism in Asia and so when I moved on to a History PhD exploring the writing of environmental histories and the narratives within them seemed almost a natural progression- as if I was just coming back to something from High School which reappeared in my undergrad and had remained dormant for some time.

I also studied World History (we had to pick 4 fields of specialization); which explains why sometimes I dive into other fields to answer questions- I hear many of them on a semester basis (though even then they are usually linked somehow to French or Environmental histories)

So geographical location- being in the Pacific; knowing a language- French; having a passionate teacher in high school- biology/environmental science; all played a role in bringing me to my current field.

One of my focuses is Chinese history. Like another person mentioned above, part of it is my heritage. Being Chinese, I was always surrounded by my cultural history growing up [watched lots of Hong Kong-made historical drama series and movies, my grandma often told me about her experiences growing up in Japanese-occupied China, etc.] and naturally it grew from there. I'm most interested in contemporary Chinese history - to be more specific, from the late-19th / early-20th century to the Cultural Revolution.

Another focus I have is Australian Aboriginal history. My interested really started when I took a compulsory unit on it in my first year of university. I find it sad that it's still a neglected part of most of Australian history [although it's much better now than say, 20 years ago] because it's almost insulting how little many of us know about our indigenous population. I'm particularly interested in Aboriginal history from settlement to the present day.

I've been very interested in ancient history and religious history. Due to my background I knew plenty of Christian history but very little about Islam. I started learning Arabic 2 years ago and am currently studying in Jordan where I've been able to learn by experience in addition to my studies. Right now I'm really interested in pre-Islamic history. This has very interesting connotations within Islam and for a lot of Muslims. Also learning history of the region and between different ethnic and religious divides is very impertinent to contemporary politics, especially in the States where we witness many Islamophobic sentiments in reaction to current events.

What attracted me to Assyriology was precisely how overlooked it seems to be. It's such an interesting period - the first in which human cultures started to bear a resemblance to modern life, in a wave of urbanization and change that could almost be seen as "Civilization Version 1.0" - and yet there's almost no public awareness of any of it but for a few passing references in biblical tradition. Nearly 4000 years of complex and wonderful history that has had barely any presence in our pop conception of the human narrative; maybe it's that vastness and distance through time that keeps people remote from Sumer and Akkad, but it's also what drew my interest.

I think there's a lot to learn about humanity from its oldest attempts at the endeavors we've been so successful in presently.

I am Canadian, with a typical prairie back ground (Ukrainian and English, pretty run of the mill out this way), and yet I always found Canadian history somewhat boring (it really is not, but to be honest, the way it was taught to me in elementary and high school made it seem pretty boring), and focused more on ancient history during those years whenever I could. This led me to an interest in mythology and foreign cultures, which ultimately led me to Japan. As an undergrad I pursued the Japanese language major, backed up with Asian and Japanese history, art history, and religious studies courses. I fell in with a really great Professor who really made the subject of Japanese history interesting and exciting, and my own interests led me to focus on the cultural and social history of Japan. Before I finished my BA, I realized that I was not nearly as finished with my studies as I wanted to be, so with the help of the professor who helped me redefine how I studied history, I applied and was accepted as an MA student, with him as my advisor. What really grabbed my attention in Japanese history was the way in which historical events and periods were reflected in popular culture, and how literature, manga, and film could serve as a supplementary source for historical information, and how the reflect the specific day-to-day realities of normal citizens in a way that many other scholarly and academic sources seem to largely overlook. I recently finished and defended my MA thesis, dealing with Japanese mystery fiction and the Japanese Post-war Experience.