The book that started my challenge.
As a kid, I had been reading lots of books (for my age, that is), but I’d somehow lost that habit when I started going out more, playing sports, working part-time and just in general reduce my interest for reading. In my gap-year after completing my bachelor’s, I realized how little I knew compared to the people around me. Well, the employees of the Swiss Embassy in China probably weren’t the most average peer group to compare myself with. But still.
When I returned to Switzerland for my master’s, I decided to take my academic pursuits more seriously and challenge myself to read more and get more informed. It was at this time that one of my professors recommended “From the Ruins of Empire” to the class. So I went ahead and started the challenge that this account is meant to document.
With a keen interest in Asian history, this book was the perfect start for me. The way out of western imperial dominance and towards independence in Asia is a topic most of us don’t learn much about in school – with some important exceptions. But if we do know some things, it’s usually the most prominent stories and people like Gandhi or Mao. However, they were not the only important figures and they definitely weren’t the earliest.
This is why I appreciated Mishra’s approach so much. He tells the story of the very beginning of Asia’s rise through the biographies of two extremely important but lesser-known anticolonialists: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Liang Qichao. While Persian-born al-Afghani was one of the biggest influencers of anti-western Islamic rhetoric in the 20th century, Liang was one of the most influential Chinese thinkers of the early 20th century.
While I don’t agree with all of Mishra’s opinions and statements, I couldn’t have picked a better book to kick off my challenge.
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Did you read the book? What did you think? And what should I read next?