Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Ashok Gopal, A part apart: The life and thought of B.R. Ambedkar. Navayana Publishing, 2023, 731 pp. (ISBN: 978-81-95838-51-6). Almost 70 pages into an unceasing focus, I found that the author has “dared to write” as a non-Dalit on the most iconic Dalit figure in history (p 53). A […]
Reviews
Asia in 2025: Great power rivalry, contested polities, and global disorder
Anno di pubblicazione: 2026
Zhou Enlai: A Man of His Time
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Chen Jian, Zhou Enlai. A Life, Cambridge, MA; London, UK: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2024, 817 pp. ISBN: 9780674659582. Zhou Enlai (1898-1976), the former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Premier of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), remains widely regarded abroad as one of China’s most respected […]
The Translocal Island of Okinawa. Anti-Base Activism and Grassroots Regionalism
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Shinnosuke Takahashi, The Translocal Island of Okinawa. Anti-Base Activism and Grassroots Regionalism, SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan, London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024, xii+180pp. (ISBN 9781350411531). £26.09 (PDF) In The Translocal Island of Okinawa, Shinnosuke Takahashi brilliantly tells the story of the anti-base movements’ struggles against the militarization of […]
Reframing displacement in Cold War Asia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Yumi Moon (ed.) Cold War Refugees: Connected Histories of Displacement and Migration across Postcolonial Asia, Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, xi+252 pp. (ISBN 9781503643130) Over the past decades, scholars have repeatedly underlined the risks of treating the «refugee» as a universal humanitarian figure, and many have instead invited […]
Rice, Power, and Policy Legacies in Southeast Asia
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Jamie S. Davidson, Rice Politics in Southeast Asia: Legacies of the Green Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2026, 332 pp. (ISBN: 9781009624640) Jamie S. Davidson’s Rice Politics in Southeast Asia offers a compelling and ambitious re-interpretation of the political economy of rice in three key Southeast Asian states: Indonesia, Malaysia, […]
How Islam Rules in Iran: Theology and Theocracy
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Mehran Kamrava, How Islam Rules in Iran: Theology and Theocracy in the Islamic Republic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024, (ISBN 9781009460880). Mehran Kamrava’s How Islam Rules in Iran: Theology and Theocracy in the Islamic Republic extends a long research agenda on the Islamic Republic’s historical formation and legitimacy narratives. The author’s […]
An Economic Empire in the Indian Ocean: French Strategy in Asia and the Journals of Boutin (1782-1786)
Available also in pdf – Download Pdf Massimiliano Vaghi, Claude-François-Parfait Boutin en Inde et aux Mascareignes (1782-1786). La France en Asie à l’époque de la révolution américaine, Sesto San Giovanni, Mimésis, 2024, 220 pp. (ISBN: 978-8869764196). Massimiliano Vaghi is currently one of the leading specialists on French policy and presence in India in the eighteenth century, a subject to […]
