Customer Reviews

East Asia at the Center

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Mr. Cohen is an able historian. The 400 pages of history flow by effortlessly. One of the most interesting byproducts of such scale is that historic ebb and flow are easily seen. I especially liked how Mr. Cohen broke out different areas, like Japan, to focus on in context of the time being discussed.

Take for example the cycles of military might and success, followed by decadence and the loss of territory to other conquerors or to various groups reasserting their independence. Often we're told that nothing lasts forever, it's fascinating to be able to watch it happen over and over.

It's also instructive to see the economic cycles. The coastal cities that would flourish with trade, only to be taxed into poverty. Since there was no wealth to support the authorities efforts to tax, piracy would flourish. With the piracy came greater wealth, which again attracted the tax man in an ever-repeating sequence.

The awful scale of the murders of millions of people by Tojo, Mao and Pol Pot only seem to be glossed over until one realizes that this same kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years. Individuals in the Eastern cultures have never had the moral importance of those in the West.

Unfortunately, Mr. Cohen is not an economist. While his historical reporting and context are excellent, when it comes to modern times the book fails. Mr. Cohen preaches interventionist monetary policy and fiat currency without being aware that the modern economic failures he decries are the result of just such actions by the governments of Asia in the latter half of the 20th century.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a general background of China and its environment, especially to anyone who was educated in China and wants to know the history that the Party has suppressed in their textbooks.

I've only casually browsed through this book after receving it a few days ago. Yet an obvious error came up. Mr Cohen repeatedly used the phrase "the Thais of Nanchao (Nanzhao)". It appears that he was unaware that the identification of the medieval semi-Sinicized kingdom of Nanzhao in Yunnan with the ethnic Thais have been already disproved for several decades. The people of Nanzhao were a mixed group, with the ruling class being mainly of the Bai ethnicity. The Bai people speak a Tibeto-Burman language, not a Daic language. I hope that as I read on, there will be no further errors of this kind. I suppose Mr Cohen is more of an expert on modern history.