Makers of Modern Asia, edited by Ramachandra Guha

Abstract

Makers of Modern Asia, edited by Ramachandra Guha. Cambridge, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014. 385 pp. $29.95 US (cloth). In his volume Makers of Modern Asia, Ramachandra Guha has brought together an impressive assembly of scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals tasked with authoring a series of biographical essays about Asia's major leading political figures of the twentieth century. The list of figures, while in many ways predictable, is notable for its inclusivity. In it, the reader finds three Indian (Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi) and four Chinese (Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping) leaders, as well as one each from Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh), Indonesia (Sukarno), Singapore (Lee Kuan Yew), and Pakistan (Zulfikar Ali Bhutto). The list reads like a roster of the veritable heavyweights of Asian statesmen (and a token woman) of the recent past. In keeping with the volume's theme of makers, nearly all the selected individuals were key movers in the nationalist movements that gained independence (de jure and de facto) throughout Asia during the middle decades of the century. Makers of Modern Asia begins with a short introductory essay authored by Guha himself, where he lays out the structure and logic of the book. The book's aim is to bring to the fore the now somewhat obscured history of agitation and consolidation that created unified, stable (or more or less stable) nation-states out of fragmented territories and fractious social groups (4). The work, then, is most decidedly that of political biography. As such, it returns to a version of history rather long passe within the profession, namely that of big-man history. Yet the authors use this form to reflect on wider social and political issues that their subjects both shaped and were beholden to. Taken individually, the eleven essays offer contributions of somewhat uneven character. Some, such as James R. Rush's chapter on Sukarno and Odd Arne Westad's on Deng Xiaoping, provide a chronological biography of their subject from birth to death. Others, such as Sophie Quinn-Judge's contribution on Ho-Chi Mirth, more tightly focus on particular episodes of the individual's life, in this case the years between the end of WWII and the outbreak of the Second Indo-China War. Consequently, the essays fail to set a collective tone for the volume, as each reflects the individual voice of its author. Some take a relatively light tack vis-a-vis the details of the historical narrative, while others provide what is at times an overwhelming wealth of information. …