On 9 August 1965, Singapore was expelled from Malaysia, which had itself only become an independent country two years earlier. But Malaysia insisted that Malaysian troops be permitted to remain in Singapore. Singapore’s future Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew later said that Malaysia’s insistence “stiffened our resolve” to “build up the Singapore Armed Forces”. The…
For New Year’s Day, we re-broadcast a podcast with Kerry Brown, now Chairman of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs. In the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I tried to send several letters to her Chinese counterpart, the Wan Li Emperor. The letters tried to ask the Ming emperor to conduct trade relations with faraway England;…
Xi Zhongxun’s career spanned the entirety of China’s modern history. Born just two years after the 1911revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, Xi was an early member of the Chinese Communist Party, took part in the Second World War, became an early leader of the PRC, was purged, survived the Cultural Revolution, was rehabilitated, and…
In Egypt’s eastern province, the annual Arabian Horse Festival celebrates the deep historical connection between the province, the Arabian horse, and the settlement of Bedouin tribes in Egypt during the 7th century. Except that, according to Yossef Rapoport’s new book, Becoming Arab, this perceived connection doesn’t represent a historical event, but rather a lengthy process…
You come across them in used book stores, with their fading, cloth covers, their saccharine prose, with black and white photos of palaces and tennis courts. These are the memoirs of princesses from the house of Muhammad Ali of Egypt, of Zog of Albania, or the Dogras of Kashmir. It’s easy to forget that behind…
The Great Wave is perhaps the most famous piece of Japanese artwork: a roaring blue wave and three boats on the ocean. And far in the background is Mt Fuji. And that’s actually what Hokusai’s famous woodprint is about: Mt Fuji, volcano and Japan’s tallest mountain.
Best-known for her award-winning novels, Anuradha Roy’s first work of non-fiction Called by the Hills: A Home in the Himalaya, is a well-written book that goes beyond the boundaries of memoir and travelogue to examine the shifting life of a Himalayan valley through both anthropological and social lenses. The author and her partner retreat from…
Ringed by a snow-coated massif, the Dal Lake shimmers under the bright sun as the shikara canoes skim over its iridescent waters: this snapshot of Srinagar is almost ubiquitous on the Internet. Millions of vacationers who visit this place every year to unwind probably imagine this city as little more than a summer retreat.
The Assassins and the Templars: two groups that are now part of popular legend–and not just because of Assassin’s Creed, the massive video game franchise starring the former as its heroes, and the latter as its villains.
In few countries is the contrast between buried riches and visible squalor as great as in Afghanistan. Ancient towns like Balkh and Ghazna present scenes of desolation which belie the wonderful objects and architectural elements that archaeologists have recovered from them. Other rich sites, like Ai Khanum, lie below the surface of a featureless plain….
Of all the examples of Cool Japan’s global reach—from sushi to Hello Kitty to anime and manga—perhaps the most iconic of all is Hokusai’s print, The Great Wave. The huge curving wave has taken on a life of its own, reproduced and recreated on coffee mugs and tea towels and across the internet in the…
In 1924, the Al-A‘waj, also known as the Crooked, set sail from Kuwait on a trading journey around the Persian Gulf, through the Strait of Hormuz, to Western India and, eventually, back to the Gulf. Dhows had sailed this route for centuries—and would continue to sail it for a few more decades still.
In Western collective memory, Moscow, Peking, Pyongyang, Havana and Hanoi are remembered as centres of socialist revolution during the tense decades of the Cold War. Yet another Asian capital is often overlooked: Jakarta. After all, Indonesia was home to the largest non-ruling communist party in the world, and the country’s left-nationalist President Sukarno was a…
In 2016, Ludovic Orlando, a genetics researcher, embarked on the Pegasus Project, an ambitious endeavor to use genetics to discover the origin of the modern horse. There were plenty of theories as to who domesticated horses first–but Ludovic’s team came up with their answer: They emerged on the western Eurasian steppe around 4200 years ago.
Over the past decade or so, Indian popular history publishing has seen a welcome trend. After a run of strong biographies on the great Mughal emperors, writers have begun to explore the lives of secondary figures, from the formidable empress Nur Jahan and the powerful princess Jahanara to the philosopher-prince Dara Shukoh and the chronicler-princess…