Book Review: Far East: South and East Asia since 1800
| Author | Alexander Woodside |
| Published date | 01 September 1966 |
| Date | 01 September 1966 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070206602100330 |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
BOOK
REvIEws
393
Japan.
The
book
falls
between
two
stools:
it
is
insufficient
as
an
in-
formation-supplying
text
and inadequate
as
a
status
report
on
current
work
on
Japan
in
the
twelve
disciplines.
It
more
nearly
fulfils
the
objective
of
supplying
newcomers
with
the factual
background,
how-
ever,
than
the
goal of
acquainting "students
with
the
aims,
materials,
and
methods"
of
the
various scholarly approaches.
Such
fields
as
re-
ligion,
philosophy
and
sociology
appear
to be
slighted.
Overall,
the
impression
is
that
the
book
is
too
general
for
the
specialist and
vwce
versa;
but
the
beginmng
graduate
student
admittedly
works
in the
limbo
between
generalization and
specialization.
Perhaps
the
shortcormngs
of
this
ermnently
useful
volume
bear
out
the
fallacy
of
attempting
to
produce
the
"complete
area
specialist"
in
today's
sophisticated
academic milieu.
No
longer
can
we
even
try
to
capture
the
"whole
Japan,
any
more
than
we
can
grasp
the
whole
Britain
or
the
whole
Russia.
Should
we
instead not
attempt
to
learn
a
few
closely
related
disciplines
well,
and
strive
to
apply
their
insights
to
various
geographical
areas,
rather
than
persisting
in
our
efforts
to
focus
all
disciplines
on
a
single country
in
the
vain
hope
of
producing
true
"area
specialists
9"
Univer8ity
of
Toronto
THOMAS
R.
H.
HAVENS
SOUTH
AND
EAST
ASIA
SrNCE
1800.
By
Victor
Purcell.
1965.
(Cambridge:
Cambridge University
Press.
Toronto:
Macmillan.
228pp.
$4.25)
This
book,
which
is
mainly
intended
for
"persons
living
in
South-
east
Asia,
might
more
accurately
have
been
entitled "Southeast
Asia
and
Its
Neighbours
Since
1800,
since
135
of
its
228
pages
are
devoted
to
a
chronicling
of
recent
Southeast
Asian
history
Obviously,
it
is
excruciatingly
difficult
even
to
provide
a
con-
spectus
of modern
Asia's
history
from
India's
to
Japan's,
in
a
book
of
228
pages.
But
the
author
successfully
brings
a
disconcerting
multi-
plicity
of
events
firmly
under
his
control,
necessarily
assessing most
of
them
by
the
measuring
rod
of
Asian
nationalism,
which he
briefly
de-
fines.
The
finest
chapters
in
his
book
are
the
ones
which
outline
the
development
and
evolution
of
European
colonies
in
Southeast
Asia
from
1869
to
1939.
In
the
author's
hands
a
chaotic political
situation
like
the
multiracial
decentralization
of
the
Malay
States
in
the
1870's
becomes
well
lighted,
and
the historical
story
is
reinforced
by con-
densations
of
the
theories
of
important
scholars,
like Furmivall's
con-
cept
of
the
"plural
societies,
those
medleys of
ethnic
groups
who
mingled
in
the market
places
under
Southeast
Asia's
new-fangled
colonial
r6gimes
but
did
not
combine
politically
and
culturally
The
tragedy
of
the
book's
brevity
however,
is
that
it
often
attenu-
ates
the
substance
of
the
author's
generalizations.
On.
page
85,
for
example,
the
author
writes
that,
"in
copying
the
West
the
Japanese
singled out
only
those
things
for
imitation
that
they thought
would
strengthen
their
country and
aimed
(with
success)
to
keep
their
basic
institutions
essentially
Japanese.
This
was
what
the
Chinese
had
failed
to
do:
their
reforms
were
purely
superficial. Bookshelves
of
recent
scholarship delineating
the
crucial
differences
in
social
struc
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