Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-15T11:19:51.687Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Asia Redux: Conceptualizing a Region for Our Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2010

Get access

Extract

How has Asia appeared as a region and been conceived as such in the last hundred years? While there is a long-standing and still burgeoning historiography of Asian connections through the study of the precolonial and early modern maritime trade, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are generally not seen as a time of growing Asian connections. The recent rise of interest in Asian connections in the current time is thus unable to grasp the continuities and discontinuities that form the present. Even more, it is unable to evaluate the risks and possibilities of the present moment.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, trans. Nicholson-Smith, Donald (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)Google Scholar.

2 See Hobsbawm, Eric J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 102Google Scholar; and Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), 152–53Google Scholar. Arguably, even after World War II, during the Cold War, the political mechanism that was developed to compete for global resources was national imperialism, or the means whereby a national superpower exercised its hegemony over subordinated nation-states.

3 Ray, Rajat K., “Asian Capital in the Age of European Expansion: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914,” Modern Asian Studies 29, no 3 (1995): 449554, 464, 472CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abu-Lughod, Janet Lippman, “The World System in the Thirteenth Century: Dead-End or Precursor?” in Essays on Global and Comparative History, ed. Adas, Michael (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1993), 911Google Scholar. For the precolonial Asian networks, see also the magisterial study of Chaudhuri, K. N., Asia before Europe: Economy and Civilisation of the Indian Ocean from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

4 Ray, “Asian Capital in the Age of European Expansion,” 553; see also Bose, Sugata, A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Takeshi, Hamashita, “The Tribute Trade System and Modern Asia,” in Japanese Industrialization and the Asian Economy, ed. Latham, A. J. H. and Kawasatsu, Heita (London: Routledge, 1994)Google Scholar.

6 Takeshi, Hamashita, “Kōsa suru Indokei nettowaku to Kajinkei nettowaku: Honkoku sōkin shisutemu no hikaku kentō” [Intersecting networks of Indians and Chinese: A comparative investigation of the remittance system], in Gendai Minami Ajia 6: Sekai Sisutemu To Nettowâku [Contemporary South Asia 6: World system and network], ed. Shigeru, Akita and Mizushima, (Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2003), 239–74Google Scholar.

7 As quoted in Marshall, D. Bruce, The French Colonial Myth and Constitution-Making in the Fourth Republic (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1973), 44Google Scholar.

8 Eichengreen, Barry and Frankel, Jeffrey A., “Economic Regionalism: Evidence from Two Twentieth-Century Episodes,” North American Journal of Economics and Finance 6, no. 2 (1995): 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 222–23. This racist ideology seemingly authorized the Germans to annex or dominate territories belonging to other states. At the same time, Nazi racism excluded such large numbers of people that even the rhetoric of anti-imperialism or solidarity of cultures was made impossible.

10 See Overy, Richard, “World Trade and World Economy,” in The Oxford Companion to World War II, ed. Dear, Ian C. B. and Foot, M. R. D. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

11 Hamashita, “Kōsa suru Indokei nettowaku to Kajinkei nettowaku,” 261–67.

12 Tenshin, Okakura, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Arts of Japan (Tokyo: ICG Muse, 2002)Google Scholar.

13 Ibid, 7–8.

14 Viren Murthy, “Nationalism and Transnationalism in the Early Twentieth Century: Zhang Taiyan's View of Asia;” unpublished manuscript; see also idem, “The Myriad Things Stem from Confusion: Nationalism, Ontology and Resistance in Zhang Taiyan's Philosophy” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2006).

15 Tagore, Rabindranath, “Nationalism in the West,” Nationalism, ed. Guha, Ramachandra (New Delhi: Pengium Books, 2009), 49Google Scholar.

16 Hay, Stephen N., Asian Ideas of East and West: Tagore and His Critics in Japan, China, and India (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 323–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Saranindranath Tagore, “Postmodernism and Education: A Tagorean Intervention,” paper presented at “Tagore's Philosophy of Education,” conference dedicated to the memory of Amita Sen, Kolkata, India, March 29–30, 2006.

18 Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons, 260–65.

19 Alagappa, Muthiah, Asian Security Practice: Material and Ideational Influences (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

20 Peter A Petri, “Is East Asia Becoming More Interdependent?” Paper prepared for the session on “European and Asian Integration: Trade and Money Issues,” American Economic Association, Boston, January 8, 2005.

21 Asian Development Bank, Emerging Asian Regionalism: A Partnership for Shared Prosperity (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2008), 70, 97–98Google Scholar.

22 See “Cabinet Nod for ASEAN FTA,” Times of India, July 25, 2009, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Foreign-Trade/Cabinet-nod-for-Asean-FTA/articleshow/4818081.cms (accessed August 10, 2010). On the China-ASEAN free trade agreement, see Collin Spears, “SINO + ASEAN = East Asian Unification? Not Quite Part I,” Brooks Foreign Policy Review, May 20, 2009, http://brooksreview.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/sino-asean-east-asian-unification-not-quite-part-i/ (accessed August 10, 2010).

23 The Straits Times (Singapore), Review and Forum, May 5, 2009.

24 Asian Development Bank, Emerging Asian Regionalism, 153–55.

25 Selden, Mark, “China's Way Forward? Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Hegemony and the World Economy in Crisis,” Asia-Pacific Journal, March 24, 2009Google Scholar.

26 Gunn, Geoffrey and McCartan, Brian, “Chinese Dams and the Great Mekong Floods of 2008,” Japan Focus, March 21, 2009Google Scholar.

27 Chellaney, Brahma, “China-India Clash over Chinese Claims to Tibetan Water,” Japan Focus, July 3, 2007Google Scholar.

28 See Goldsmith, Benjamin E, “A Liberal Peace in Asia?,” Journal of Peace Research 44, no. 1 (2007): 527CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Wee, C. J. Wan-Ling, “‘We Asians’? Modernity, Visual Art Exhibitions, and East Asia,” boundary 2 37, no. 1 (2010): 91126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Asian Development Bank, Emerging Asian Regionalism, 225; see also http://www.scalabrini.asn.au/atlas (accessed August 10, 2010).

31 “Inter-Referencing Asia: Urban Experiments and the Art of Being Global,” workshop directed by Aihwa Ong and Ananya Roy, International Conference on Inter-Asian Connections, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, February 21–23, 2008.

32 “Paper sons” were Chinese immigrants who claimed to be the sons of American citizens using false papers. See Duara, Prasenjit, “Between Sovereignty and Capitalism: The Historical Experiences of Migrant Chinese,” in The Global and Regional in China's Nation Formation (London: Routledge, 2009), chap. 7.Google Scholar

33 For instance, female domestic workers are required to undergo pregnancy and HIV tests every six months in Singapore. Those who are pregnant often face dismissal and deportation. See Human Rights Watch, “Maid to Order: Ending Abuses against Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore,” 2005, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/12/06/maid-order (accessed August 10, 2010).

34 Sirkin, Harold, Hemerling, James, and Bhattacharya, Arindam, Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for Everything (New York: Business Plus, 2008)Google Scholar.

35 Chua, Beng-huat, “Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (August 2004): 200221Google Scholar.

36 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Other Asias (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008), 217, 220Google Scholar.

37 Duara, Prasenjit, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 2.

38 Abu-Lughod, “The World System in the Thirteenth Century,” 11.