Modern Asian history may be the most important subject that most educated Americans know almost nothing about. With the center of gravity of world politics now firmly located in the Indo-Pacific, many are looking for ways to deepen their understanding of the most populous, fastest-growing and potentially most dangerous region in the world. Tim Harper’s “Underground Asia: Global Revolutionaries and the Assault on Empire” is an excellent place to start. It is a clearly written, brilliantly researched examination of the people and movements that shaped Asia’s course in the 20th century and continue to influence the continent today.
In the early part of the century, when Mr. Harper’s narrative begins, European colonialism seemed permanently established in Asia. In 1906, the power of the Netherlands in what is now Indonesia reached its grim apogee as Dutch forces shelled the royal capital of the ancient Balinese kingdom of Badung until the battered, unarmed defenders, in a final act of defiance, “processed out of the palace and threw themselves, singing, at the Dutch automatic weapons.” An estimated 1,000 were killed.
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