Rarely would one read a history of thought and one of an evolving continental identity as exciting as Sugato Bose’s “Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century”. The book is a wonderful “concise new history” of a century of struggles to define Asian identity and express alternatives to European forms of universalism. But the real appeal of the book is that it encompasses many pointers to the future, the most important being you cannot imagine Asia differently from the West until you break free of the shackles of European colonial era map making.

The shift of global power balance that raises hope of an ‘Asian Century’ in our time has always demanded rigorous examination of what constitutes an Asian identity and a closer look at efforts to define it over centuries of servitude during the long phase of European colonial subjugation of the ancient Continent.

Fellow Bengali Nobel laureate Amartya Sen is right in describing the book as a “brilliant history of continental connections which offers vital lessons for Asia’s shared future.”

The balance of global power has changed profoundly over the course of the twentieth century, above all with the economic and political rise of Asia. “Asia after Europe” is a bold new interpretation of the period, focusing on the conflicting and overlapping ways in which Asians have conceived their bonds and their roles in the world.........

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