Seminars/Symposia:FY2009
October, 2009
- Special Seminar
-
- Date & Time:October 22, 2009, 14:00-17:00
- Place: Inamori Center, Chukaigishitu (Middle Room), Center for Southeast Asian
Studies
- Title:‘Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Asia’
- Speaker: Anthony Reid
Anthony Reid is a Southeast Asian Historian, currently a Research Fellow
at CSEAS. His permanent base is now again at the Australian National University,
after periods as founding Director of CSEAS at UCLA (1999-2002) and of
the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore (2002-7).
His most recent book, the subject of this talk, is Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism
and political identity in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, Dec.
2009).
- Abstract:
The mid-twentieth Century marked one of the greatest watersheds of Asian
history. The relatively brief Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia and
much of China, and its sudden ending with the atomic bombs of August 1945,
telescoped what might have been a long-term transition into a dramatic
and violent revolution. In essence, imperial constructs were declared to
be nation-states, the sole legitimate model of twentieth century politics.
The growing literature on nationalism would suggest that the winners from
the collapse of empires should have been ethnically homogeneous nation-states.
Yet each major Asian state looks like an anomaly, failing to undergo the
kind of culturally homogeneous national assertiveness that broke up empires
in Europe under the new pressures of industrialisation and print capitalism.
Imperial borders were sanctified by China, India, Indonesia, Burma and
the Philippines, though each experienced modernity under radically different
conditions.
How do we explain this curious alchemy generated by nationalism in Asia?
In a book just finished I have used Indonesia and Malaysia as models for
two kinds of alchemy in Southeast Asia, revolutionary/unitarian and evolutionary/federal.
This talk will discuss a typology which may help us understand Asian nationalism
more generally.
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