Some books just stick with you. Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is one of them. It was one of only two books that I was assigned to read in multiple classes in college. At Om Ben’s memorial service, my colleague Isaac Kramnick called it the “second-most important book […]
Category: Asia
What Does it Mean to be “Western” in the Netherlands? [Updated]
Some time ago I wrote about the curious case of Japanese colonial subjects in the Dutch East Indies. The interesting observation is that After concluding a Treaty of Trade and Navigation in 1896, the Netherlands and Japan recognised each other as most favoured nations, and subsequently the Tokyo government pressed the Dutch to accord its […]
