Brief notices of other histories of East Asian and Southeast Asian countries that I’ve been reading
Tuttle Publishing’s “Brief History of…” series
Tuttle Publishing says that its core mission is “to publish best-in-class books informing the English-speaking world about the countries and peoples of Asia.” Founded in Rutland, Vermont, back in 1832, they now have offices in Vermont, Tokyo, and Singapore. Their “Brief History” series provides popular one-volume histories of various countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Current titles in this series cover the following countries: China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea (including North and South Korea), Singapore and Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. An although Bali is part of Indonesia, there’s also a separate book on Bali in this series.
I’ve read all these titles except the ones on Bali and Japan. I can affirm that each book I’ve read gives exactly what they promise: a brief introduction to the history of each country. Each one is competently written and entertaining, and each one generally relies on secondary (and tertiary) sources rather than primary sources. If you want something more than a Wikipedia article, but something less than a dry scholarly history, these are the perfect books to read. While the quality of the books is consistently high, I’ll offer brief comments on the relative strengths of each volume. Then I’ll discuss two other books published by Tuttle that offer more in-depth accounts of two polities.
A Brief History of China by Jonathan Clements (2019) provides a solid introduction to the broad outlines of Chinese history. You just have to remember that trying to cover five thousand years of the history of what’s perhaps the greatest of all human civilizations in 300 pages means that you’re going to miss lots of the details.
A Brief History of Indonesia by Tim Hannigan (2015) is perhaps the weakest of the “Brief History” series. Each chapter begins with an anecdote, which I suppose is entertaining, but too many of these anecdotes feel pointless. And the writing style tends to be a little too “goshwow” for my tastes. Still, the book provides a decent overview of the history this huge and diverse nation.
A Brief History of Korea by Michael J. Seth (2019) devotes about 130 of its 243 pages to Korean history since 1945. Yes, I could have wished for more coverage of older Korean history. But 130 pages is barely sufficient to outline the complexities of recent Korean history. Since this is supposed to be a brief history, I guess I can’t complain that the book isn’t long enough.
A Brief History of Singapore and Malaysia by Christopher Hale (2023) covers both Singapore and Malaysia in one volume because for much of history they weren’t separate countries. I have two minor disappointments with this volume. First, Malaysia receives less coverage than I would have liked. Second, Brunei, which is now an independent city-state but which once was as much a part of Malaysia as Singapore, gets almost no notice at all. It’s still a good one-volume introduction to these two countries.
A Brief History of Thailand by Richard A Ruth (2021) might be the best of the books in the “Brief History” series. It’s written by a professor of Southeast Asian history, so you get the benefit of reading someone who has actually dived into primary sources. Yet it’s entertaining, and not written in a dray academic style.
A Brief History of Vietnam by Bill Hayton (2022) relies heavily on Christopher Goscha’s monumental Vietnam: A New History (2016). So if you want to get past late twentieth-century American interpretations of Vietnamese history without having to read Goscha’s 460 page monster, Hayton’s book is the book for you.
Two more books on Asian history from Tuttle publishing which are not in the “Brief History” series are worthy of special notice.
A History of Japan (revised edition), by R. H. P. Mason and J. G. Caiger (1972/1997) is a serious history rather than a popular history. Written by two scholars — R. H. P. Mason and John Caiger, both professors of Asian studies at Australian National University — the book offers a well-written overview of Japanese history from archaic times through the Second World War. It was originally written as a part of the Cassell Asian Histories series, which also included histories of China, India, and Indonesia; this series was aimed at both undergraduates and the general reader.
No doubt current scholars of Japanese history would consider this volume to be dated. Nevertheless, as a general reader who doesn’t worry much about current scholarly debates, I found this to be a useful overview of Japanese history.
Okinawa: The History of an Island People (revised edition) by George H. Kerr, with an afterword by Mitsugu Sakihara, must be the only book in the English language that tells the history of Okinawa and the Okinawan people. Kerr was an Asian affairs specialist who worked for the U.S. government, and he wrote this history after the Second World War, when the United States still had control of Okinawa and was trying to understand what exactly they were in control of.
Since the U.S. still has large military bases there, we should still be concerned to understand Okinnawa. Today, if we Americans think of Okinawa at all, we think of it as the site of one of the worst battles against the Japanese Empire during the Second World War; we might also remember how U.S. Marines based on Okinawa kidnapped and raped a 12 year old girl in 1995. Yet Okinawa had a long history as a tiny island nation. Although more or less independent, Okinawa had to pay tribute to China for several centuries, and the kings of Okinawa derived their legitimacy in part from being recognized and authorized by the emperor of China. When Japan grew into a major power, Okinawa found it expedient to pay tribute to that country as well — but the Okinawans did their best to hide that fact from the Chinese, and similarly tried to hide from the Japanese that they were also paying tribute to the Chinese. The experience of the Okinawans is common to small weak countries — as a small country, you have to do whatever is necessary to keep in the good graces of powerful neighbors.
Today, the history of Okinawa helps me understand the current conflicts in the China Sea. Okinawa is not just one island, but a chain of islands stretching from Formosa (Taiwan) to Japan. While Okinawa today is a prefecture of Japan, not so long ago it was a vassal of China. Not surprisingly, then, the People’s Republic of China drags out this old history to give some legitimacy to their claims to various islands in the China Sea. And not surprisingly, the United States, concerned with Chinese expansionism, wants to maintain its military bases on Okinawa.
All that aside, this is probably one of the best books on Asian history I’ve read recently. It’s well written, which helps. It tells a story that you simply won’t hear elsewhere, a story that sheds light on current events. And it’s written with great sympathy for the Okinawan people, to the point that you begin to feel that you want to go visit Okinawa and get to know some actual people.