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Book Reviews
Warren Cohen, East
Asia at the Center: Four Thousand Years of Engagement with the World
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2000). 516 pages
Reviewed by Scott B. MacDonald
Click here to purchase East Asia at the Center directly from Amazon.com
Warren I Cohen, Distinguished Professor of History at University of Maryland Baltimore County and Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars, has written an ambitious historical tour de force, East Asia at the Center. The main thrust of his book is that East Asia, often dominated by China, has long been at the center of its own international relations system. Indeed, China throughout its early dynastic history was usually the only major global civilization, surrounded by "barbarians". By the time, the European arrived to "open up" China and the rest of Asia, the region had a well-established international relations system. Over time, China lost power in a relative sense and other East Asian countries, such as Japan, Korea and Vietnam emerged as largely sinofied civilizations. The barbarian threat, however, remained in the vast hinterland of Central and northern Asia, first with the Mongols, and later with the Europeans.
Yet, as Cohen amply demonstrates, China and other Asian countries have a long history of international relations. As he notes: "Realpolitik and machtpolitik as concepts of international politics may evoke images of amoral Germanic statesmen, of Otto van Bismarck and Henry Kissinger, but the Chinese were practicing — and critiquing — them while Central Europe was still populated with Neolithic savages."
East Asia at the Center also discusses often-overlooked facts, which supports his views. These facts include:
- A record of persistent Chinese imperialism in the region;
- Tibet's status as a major power from the 7th to the 9th centuries C.E., when it frequently invaded China, fought for domination over Central Asia and decimated Chinese armies;
- Japan's dependence on Korea for its early cultural development (a major point of discussion today in Japan);
- Egyptian and Ottoman military aid to their Muslim brethren in India and Sumatra against European powers; and
- Extensive Chinese sea voyages to Arabia and East Africa – long before such Westerners as Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus made their voyages of discovery.
What is refreshing about East Asia at the Center is that it is not filled with sweeping dramatic comments that often accompany such efforts. He presents a cogent and well-documented historical overview of East Asia’s place in the world. What he does particularly well is to demonstrate how China-dominated East Asia has dealt with other civilizations as reflected by the region’s relations with the Islamic world during the 13th-17th centuries and the emergence of an European-defined international system in the 18th and 19th centuries. His discussion of the differences between China, Japan and Korea in adjusting to a world dominated by European (eventually Western) powers is very worthwhile reading. Simply stated, Japan adjusted and more rapidly assimilated; China’s long and proud tradition of being the center of its own world order as the Middle Kingdom made such adjustment and assimilation more difficult and ultimately more painful. Korea had a much more difficult time in adjusting into a Western dominated international system, given its size and proximity to a competing China and Japan.
In the 20th century, Cohen acknowledges that East Asia underwent massive changes. Japan went from being a regional to a world power to a defeated country in the aftermath of the Second World War to an economic giant in the 1960s through the 1980s. China went from the dynastic rule of the Qing to warlords to the failed Republican period, invasion from Japan to civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. China’s years under the Communists, in particular, under Mao Zedong brought further upheaval, only settling into a more stable period in the post-Mao period, first under Deng Xiao-ping and later under Jiang Zemin. Today, China is resuming its place as a major world power, a process which is causing tensions with the other, largely Western and Westernized powers (like Japan). As Cohen states as a reason for his book: "The path to an understanding of the emergent international system leads through more than a thousand years of Chinese history." In other words, the approach to understanding the evolution of international relations, especially the current period, is usually done through the lens of looking at the Western powers, with Asia of secondary importance. That must change, especially as China increasingly seeks to play a greater role in the world and reassert its traditional dominance over East Asia. After reading Cohen one is reminded of that basic lesson of history — those that forget history are condemned to relive it.
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 Stephen Kinzer, Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001). 252 pages. $25.00.
Reviewed by Scott B. MacDonald
Click here to purchase Crescent & Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds directly from Amazon.com
For anyone interested in reading about modern Turkey, Stephen Kinzer has written an interesting and engaging book on the subject. A veteran journalist, having worked with the Boston Globe and now with the New York Times, he has spent considerable time in Turkey, traveling throughout the country. He obviously likes his subject matter and has developed strong opinions. Clearly he regards Turkey as a country with considerable potential, having already made substantial strides to creating a relatively modern (though volatile) economy and a complex society.
The challenge for Turkey, according to Kinzer, is to overcome "a dissonance, a clash between what the entrenched elite wants and what more and more Turks want…It frames the country’s great national dilemma. Until this dilemma is somehow resolved, Turkey will live in eternal limbo, a half-democracy taking half-steps toward freedom and fulfilling only half of its destiny". The nub of the issue is democracy, which is required to create a "truly modern Turkey."
Considering the strong military role in Turkish society and that institution’s long Kemalist and secular bent, there is great concern that any full liberalization of the political system will open the door to the election of hardline Islamists. As Kinzer notes, the military commanders and their civilian allies "fear democracy not on principle, but because they are convinced it will unleash forces that will drag Turkey back toward ignorance and obscurantism. Allowing Turks to speak, debate and choose freely, they believe, would lead the nation to certain catastrophe."
In explaining how Turkey got this point of half-democracy — half authoritarian state, Kinzer discusses the rise of Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. The strong secular bent of the military clearly stems from Ataturk’s move to modernize his country and jettison many of the things associated with the decadent nature of the Ottoman Empire. Part of this was to make the separation between church and state, provide a more open role for women in society, and do away with such things as the fez and headscarf that can be associated with the past "backward" nature of the Ottomans and Islam.
Kinzer is well worth reading, though there are a few minor mistakes. One mistake is his contention that the Battle of Gallipoli was the "only important Turkish victory" of the First World War. While it was a major victory and certainly is celebrated as one of Kemal Ataturk’s great victories, the Turks had at least one other major victory and that was Kut al-Amara in 1915 in which the British expeditionary forces under Major General Townsend were surrounded and forced to surrender. Some 10,000 British and Indian troops were taken prisoner in this battle, which defeated a British attempt to conquer Mesopotamia. Beyond such minor details, Crescent & Star is worth the read for a country that Kinzer regards as "very much a work in progress."
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