From the Ruins of Empire

From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia by Pankaj Mishra, 310 pages

In From the Ruins of Empire Pankaj Mishra examines the careers of three prominent Asian intellectuals from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, all of whom struggled with the cultural, economic, and military dominance of the West - not only as such power was deliberately, oftentimes violently, exercised, but also as the uncritical embrace of the mechanistic, utilitarian Western worldview by modernizing elites in their homelands.  Each of the three represents a third of non-Russian Asia - itinerant journalist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani for the Islamosphere, scholar and activist Liang Qichao for the Sinosphere, and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore for the Subcontinent.  Each sought freedom for his people, but also a form of modernity that preserved the values of his own culture.

It is possible to go on at great length about the problems of perspective in this book, problems that are only somewhat excused on the grounds that the perspective is that of the subjects.  Understandably, in writing about anti-colonialists Mishra concentrates on the negative impact of colonialism on Asian nations and cultures, but at times he oversimplifies to the point that he falsifies - even a casual reading of Finkel's Osman's Dream (which Mishra cites in his bibliography) demonstrates that the problems of the Ottoman Empire were not only - or even primarily - the result of Western imperialism.  That the reality was somewhat more complicated than Mishra's default narrative of Asians fighting for liberty from Western injustice is implied in the fact that both al-Afghani and Liang were persecuted by their native governments, and both took refuge in the oppressive, racist West - the only one of the three who was consistently safe in his homeland was Tagore, who lived under British rule (and was celebrated in the West, lecturing to packed halls and winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913).

It is possible, again, to go on at great length about the problems of perspective in From the Ruins of Empire, but to do so would obscure the very real value of the book.  Beginning in the eighteenth century, the great civilizations of Asia were confronted with the reality that they were not, after all, the center of the world or of history.  How they adapted not only helps explain the world of today, it also has lessons to teach the West as it begins to discover the same truth.

Culloden

Culloden: Scotland's Last Battle and the Forging of the British Empire by Trevor Royle, 360 pages

In 1746, the predominantly Scottish army of the Young Pretender - Charles Stuart to his foes, Prince Charles to his supporters, and Bonnie Prince Charlie to legend - was defeated in battle at Culloden by an army of British soldiers and foreign mercenaries fighting for the Hanoverian dynasty.  Subsequently, the restoration of the Stuarts to the thrones of Scotland and England receded into the realm of fantasy.  Never again would an armed revolt come so close to deposing a reigning British monarch.

The Jacobite revolt of 1746 was sponsored by the French as part of the War of Austrian Succession, itself an episode in the century-long struggle for supremacy between Great Britain and France that began in the aftermath of the Thirty Years War and effectively ended at Waterloo.  Although Culloden gives Trevor Royle's book its title, that book is more about the episodes that followed than it is about the Jacobites and their struggle - the battle itself takes place less than a hundred pages in, and the Stuarts essentially disappear between then and the epilogue.  After a chapter describing the pacification of the highlands, even Scotland is mostly left behind.  This is somewhat justified in that many of the men who fought in subsequent wars in America and India were veterans of Culloden, and Royce certainly writes interesting and engaging military history, but it still seems to be a bit of a bait-and-switch.

The St. Lucia Island Club

The St. Lucia Island Club by Brent Monahan   306 pages

Since 2000, author Brent Monahan has been penning the John Le Brun detective series. The St. Lucia Island Club is the fifth novel, and the latest, novel in the series. If I had realized that when I agreed to review, I’m not sure I would have.  However, Monahan does an excellent job in not having to have read the four previous investigations to enjoy this effort.  He did make several references to the first book, which were really unnecessary.

In this episode the “retired Southern sheriff-turned-New York City detective John Le Brun and his wife, Lordis, set sail in 1910 for a long-awaited honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, they expect to find relaxation in paradise.” They are traveling with another couple, but I don’t think that was their intention. The two couples seem to annoy each other.

Once there, they discover that they have been recruited to take the island’s perks back to their friends in Manhattan as a place they should vacation. The book, set in 1910, regales the reader with the lush descriptions of the island’s beauty, decades before it became an international commercial paradise that boasts more than 50 resorts. I loved this aspect of the story, and set against the racial, economic and social tensions of the island, it made for a wonderful dichotomy that many books today don’t have. The writing also has that slow, old-fashioned feel to it. It’s not a page-turner, but a book to be savored, even when the topic is murder.

Soon after their arrival, Le Brun is invited to join the wealthy planter’s at the Club (not sure why Monahan is fixated on men’s clubs). Then a planter’s family is horribly murdered, in what the guilty parties hope to appear as an accident. It’s a clever murder method that I rarely see used.

It’s not hard to figure out who-done-it.  And, for what I could gather, this is the first time that our hero allows his wife to help him as much as a female on that island can.

I enjoyed The St. Lucia Island Club and give it 4 out of 5 stars.

Ancillary Sword

Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
391 Pages

"The sequel to Ancillary Justice, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, British Science Fiction, Locus and Arthur C. Clarke Awards. Breq is a soldier who used to be a warship. Once a weapon of conquest controlling thousands of minds, now she has only a single body and serves the emperor. With a new ship and a troublesome crew, Breq is ordered to go to the only place in the galaxy she would agree to go: to Athoek Station to protect the family of a lieutenant she once knew - a lieutenant she murdered in cold blood."

I actually had this book checked out since November and kept putting it on the back burner, partially because there were no holds and partially because I find it difficult to get invested in Leckie's books right away.  But after the reader gets through the first few chapters the reader is engrossed in the world Leckie has created.  I look forward to her next book which is due out later this year.