The term “Industrial Revolution” entered modern parlance in 1799, courtesy of the French diplomat Louis-Guillaume Otto. What began with incremental improvements in steam power and textiles would sweep the world, freeing societies from the Malthusian trap while upending the distribution of political power. But for all that epochal significance, scholars have never arrived at a consensus on why it began in Western Europe and not, say, East Asia. After reading Mehran Gul’s The New Geography of Innovation, one suspects that the present revolution in silicon and algorithms will also evade simple explanations.
Author: James Herndon
In his book Tianjin Cosmopolis, Pierre Singaravélou remarks that “The history of modernity is a history of possible futures as much as a study of the processes of modernization.” Thanks to a new translation from the original French, English readers now have a chance to consider one possible future of China that never came to pass. Hewing to primary sources and refraining from simple narratives, Singaravélou details the agency and dynamism of the late Qing response to Western intrusion.
For over two decades, Chinese leaders have sought to rebalance their economy away from dependence on investment and exports and towards growth based on domestic consumption. In that context, few developments could have been more propitious than the explosive growth in internet commerce. While the benefits for consumers are obvious, digital marketplaces also allowed small manufacturers to proffer their wares nationwide. These “Taobao Villages” promise to alleviate China’s stubborn rural-urban inequality in the bargain. Lizhi Liu’s new book From Click to Boom explains the origins and effects of China’s vast e-commerce sector, while shedding light on its heretofore ambiguous relationship with the authorities.
Sir John Seeley once claimed that the British had “… conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind.” This would have bemused the many adventurers, mercenaries, and administrators who dedicated their lives to displacing indigenous power across India. More pragmatic than perfidious, Albion accommodated hundreds of princely states ruled by sundry begums, nawabs, nizams, and maharajas.
Despite a reputation for abstruse thought, the French intellectual Michel Foucault once explained his research in a straightforward manner: “I set out from a problem expressed in the terms current today and I try to work out its genealogy. Genealogy means that I begin my analysis from a question posed in the present.” Keyu Jin took that approach to heart in The New China Playbook, a work that explains China’s present by tracing its economic genealogy since 1978.
After years of diplomatic pressure from the United States, China placed all fentanyl-related chemicals under an enhanced regulatory regime in 2019… only to see India emerge as a new source for the drug’s precursors the next year. Since then overdose deaths have continued to surge, prompting one US Senator to declare that “The flow of deadly synthetic opioids across our southern border is a public health crisis and a national security threat.” Peter Thilly’s new book, The Opium Business: A History of Crime and Capitalism in Maritime China, shows that a rising tide of addiction can indeed threaten a nation. It also shows why government attempts to disrupt the drug trade so often fail.
“Thou art the ruler of the minds of all people, dispenser of India’s destiny. Thy name rouses the hearts of the Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat and Maratha, of the Dravida, Orissa and Bengal.” Thus begins Rabindranath Tagore’s Jana Gana Mana. In 1939, Jawaharlal Nehru traveled to Calcutta and received Tagore’s blessing to make it India’s national anthem. That meeting took place in the home of Prasant Chandra Mahalanobis. Equal parts flawed, driven, and brilliant, Mahalanobis went on to steer the Five-Year Plans that promised to catapult India into modernity. Nikhil Menon’s new book Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development captures this technocrat in full: how he amassed and exerted influence, and how reality fell short of his ambitions.
In 1980, the Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman noted “It is somewhat ironic that Hong Kong, a Crown colony of Great Britain, should be the modern exemplar of free markets and limited government. The British officials who govern it have enabled Hong Kong to flourish by following policies radically at variance with the welfare state policies that have been adopted in the mother country.” That explanation serves well enough for Hong Kong’s manufacturers, but how to account for businesses more aligned with the state? Private airlines, for example, inevitably depend on public infrastructure. Moreover, the government’s ability to negotiate landing rights is inescapable when every flight is international by definition. Hong Kong Takes Flight, a new book by John Wong, explores how that city’s flagship carrier adapted and grew for decades amid explosive growth and turbulent politics.
In May 2022, Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State, outlined the Biden administration’s approach to the People’s Republic of China. Blinken closed by speaking directly to the Chinese people, vowing “We’ll compete with confidence; we’ll cooperate wherever we can; we’ll contest where we must.” Between Blinken’s maxim and the actual conduct of foreign policy lie countless trade-offs, debates, and decisions. Scott Moore is familiar with those details, having lived in China before serving in the State Department’s Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs. His new book, China’s Next Act, offers guidance for how the US should decide when to cooperate and when to compete with China.
China’s Pearl River Delta recently surpassed Tokyo as the world’s largest urban area. Amid that vast conurbation of over 60 million people stands the city of Zhongshan. The birthplace of Sun Yat-sen, Zhonghsan’s factories supply China’s middle class with consumer goods like lighting, furniture, and appliances. Looking east across the Indian Ocean, one finds Antalaha, a small harbor town on Madagascar’s eastern coast. Bordered by three national parks and without a paved road to the nation’s capital, Antalaha’s 67,000 inhabitants might seem remote. But thanks to a tree growing in those parks, Antalaha found itself fueling Zhongshan’s furniture industry. Annah Lake Zhu’s new book Rosewood: Endangered Species Conservation and The Rise of Global China, explores the consequences of this unexpected connection.
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