Can a painting outlive its authenticity? For art lovers and collectors, an artwork’s value is often inseparable from its status as a singular object. This is why the authenticity of the Mona Lisa is of paramount importance to the Louvre Museum. The painting’s “value” comes not just from its visual qualities, but it carries with it the…
As are many things regarding China’s developing place in the world, the “Belt and Road Initiative” (or BRI)—the term used for China’s international infrastructure investment programme—is contentious. Discussion about the programme’s objectives and efficacy are almost inevitably coloured by one’s geopolitical view of “China’s rise”. Those who are discomforted by the latter are prone to…
A near-desperate Chinese migrant mother, long estranged from her own cultural inheritance, takes her British daughter to China before adolescence makes history lessons an even harder sell. In Xi’an, they squat beside a flowerbed, sharing half a watermelon while the mother tries to bring ancient dynasties to life. The daughter spits out a few seeds….
The rise of Japan as a world power in the early 20th century produced in Great Britain a rethinking of geopolitics and world order. It marked a shift from Eurocentrism to a more global approach to thinking about world politics. Japan’s stunning victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, Cambridge professor Chika Tonooka…
For anyone who grew up on British and Hollywood war films of the 1950s to the 1980s, Percy Herbert’s face is instantly familiar even if his name is not. He turns up in The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Guns of Navarone, The Wild Geese and dozens of others: the reliable “oh, that guy”…
In the 1930s, up to 20,000 European Jews turned to Asia for refuge before Japan entered the war as an Axis ally. Shanghai was the best-known destination, but the Philippines also played host to hundreds of German-speaking Jews. Mark Sy recounts this lesser known example of geopolitical empathy in The Manila Poker Club: Eisenhower, Quezon,…
The British Indian Overseas Territory is the sort of place only a stamp-collector will have heard of. It’s more commonly and better known as Diego Garcia, in fact the largest of a group of islands (the Chagos Archipelago) smack dab in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and home to a major US military base…
First published in Japan in 2009, then followed by a second volume in 2023 written in the shadow of a terminal diagnosis, these two books appear here together in English for the first time, translated by Sam Bett. When Ryuichi Sakamoto was asked as a child what he wanted to be when he grew up,…
The years immediately following Indonesian independence were optimistic ones. The early 1950s are remembered as the “parliamentary period” of pluralism, when communists, socialists, nationalists, Islamists and the military vied for positions in the government. But debate between these parties was fierce from the beginning and quickly became vicious. After national elections in September 1955, a…
The rise of China as a global superpower, and the myriad impacts of “rising China” on Southeast Asia have energised a sizeable volume of scholarly literature and punditry. Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS)-Yusof Ishak Institute—one of the leading think tanks in Southeast Asia—has made notable efforts in explaining these impacts, especially in relation…
In Hindu mythology, the snow-capped region of Kailash in Tibet is believed to be the abode of Kailashpati or Lord Shiva. Mount Kailash is the source of four rivers and in its vicinity lies Manas Sarovar Lake. Derived from the Sanskrit word Kailāsa or Kelāsa meaning “crystal”, this mountain is sacred not only to the…
Daniel Ehrlich spent four decades as a laboratory head at MIT, leading national programs in semiconductors and optics. Beginning in 1987 and continuing for the next 32 years, he travelled to Myanmar almost every December, crossing twelve time zones, arriving alone in the dark, and checking into a modest Mandalay hotel called the Nylon Hotel…
When Alaric laid siege to Rome in 408 CE, the desperate city sued for peace, paying 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver … and 3,000 pounds of pepper. That a Visigoth warlord made a commodity from the Malabar Coast central to his demands shows the pervasive role of Asian imports in Roman affairs….
Electric Vehicles is a dense and chart-laden monograph; it is not for the faint-hearted. What makes it worth the effort, however, is its focus on developing countries (rather than the main players of China, the US, Europe and Japan) and that the “developing countries” in question are all in Southeast Asia. In addition to industry…
World War II, as Hans Van De Ven writes in his new book Blood Dawn, reordered Asia’s geopolitics. During the war, national independence movements in Asia whose origins dated back to the First World War and in some cases earlier, emerged stronger in the wake of Japan’s defeat. The surrender of Japan to the Allies…