Empire's End: A History of the Far East from High Colonialism to Hong Kong

With an astute eye for psychology, a well-honed British wit, and an appreciable gift for language and storytelling, Keay has contributed an informative and engrossing account of what remains for Westerners today's most important and misunderstood geopolitical region. Drawing on extensive English-language sources, he has tackled a vast and heterogeneous subject: the colonization of Asia spanning from the first Dutch endeavors in 1595 to the handover of Hong Kong this year, and has succeeded in what surely was a labor of love. He succeeds admirably in giving the history and the region a human face through profiles of the personalities--both colonizers and native players--whose personal plans and ideologies often influenced the fate of each region more than their governments or peoples. Anecdotes about the people who lived it are key to this history, people like Thomas Raffles and Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore; Tunku Abdul Rahman in Malaysia; Hubertus van Mook and Sukarnoin Indonesia; Ramon Magsaysay and Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the Phillipines; Landsdale and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam; and Cecil Clementi in China. These aggregate thoughts and observations reveal the complex nature of events more faithfully than details of Western policy objectives or of the battles and treaties involved, and are fascinating to read. Keay remarks, ""in 1980... it remained possible to detect in the region's still soft political alluvium the distinctive imprint of each imperial dinosaur."" One need only know what to look for, and for that, this book is an informed guide. (May)