Hardly more than a decade old, the twenty-first century has already been dubbed the Asian Century in recognition of China and India's increasing importance in world affairs. Yet discussions of Asia seem fixated on economic indicators-gross national product, per capita income, share of global trade. Makers of Modern Asia reorients our understanding of contemporary Asia by highlighting the political leaders, not billionaire businessmen, who helped launch the Asian Century. The nationalists who crafted modern Asia were as much thinkers as activists, men and women who theorized and organized anticolonial movements, strategized and directed military campaigns, and designed and implemented political systems. The eleven thinker-politicians whose portraits are presented here were a mix of communists, capitalists, liberals, authoritarians, and proto-theocrats-a group as diverse as the countries they represent. From China, the world's most populous country, come four: Mao Zedong, leader of the Communist Revolution; Zhou Enlai, his close confidant; Deng Xiaoping, purged by Mao but rehabilitated to play a critical role in Chinese politics in later years; and Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang party formed the basis of modern Taiwan. From India, the world's largest democracy, come three: Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indira Gandhi, all of whom played crucial roles in guiding India toward independence and prosperity. Other exemplary nationalists include Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, Indonesia's Sukarno, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, and Pakistan's Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. With contributions from leading scholars, Makers of Modern Asia illuminates the intellectual and ideological foundations of Asia's spectacular rise to global prominence.

In Fierce Enigmas, prize-winning historian Srinath Raghavan argues that we cannot understand the US's entanglement in South Asia without first understanding the long sweep of American interaction with the nations and peoples who comprise it. Starting with the first attempts by Americans in the late eighteenth century to gain a foothold in the India trade, Raghavan narrates the forgotten role of American merchants, missionaries, and travelers in the history of region. For these early adventurers and exploiters, South Asia came to be seen not just as an arena of trade and commerce, but also as a site for American efforts-religious and secular-to remake the world in its own image. By the 1930s, American economic interests and ideals had converged in support for decolonization; not only should the peoples of the region be free to determine their own governments and futures, but they should be fully integrated into a liberal capitalist global order. These dreams were partially realized after the Second World War, with Indian Independence and Partition in 1947-and with Britain no longer in the picture, US involvement in the region steadily increased, in the form of short-sighted and ultimately counterproductive policies. In the 1950s, the Truman administration centered its approach to South Asia on the containment of communism, thereby helping split the region in two: while Pakistan was eager for American weapons and military support, India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru refused to align with either the US or the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, the US chose to support Islamists in Afghanistan, seeing them as a bulwark against communist advance. Yet Pakistan would become a formidable adversary for the US, while the militants in Afghanistan would eventually be using their arms against American troops. Time and time again, India, Pakistan, and to a lesser extent Afghanistan have each managed to extract commitments and concessions from the US that have served mostly to fuel the fires of nationalism and sectarianism, even as signs of liberalization have continued to entice American policymakers. Drawing on a vast and diverse array of official documents and private correspondence, Raghavan has written a sweeping, definitive history of the US in South Asia that at the same time suggests the many challenges ahead.

A multifaceted portrait of the Hiroshima bombing and its many legacies On August 6, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The city's destruction stands as a powerful symbol of nuclear annihilation, but it has also shaped how we think about war and peace, the past and the present, and science and ethics. The Age of Hiroshima traces these complex legacies, exploring how the meanings of Hiroshima have reverberated across the decades and around the world. Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry bring together leading scholars from disciplines ranging from international relations and political theory to cultural history and science and technology studies, who together provide new perspectives on Hiroshima as both a historical event and a cultural phenomenon. As an event, Hiroshima emerges in the flow of decisions and hard choices surrounding the bombing and its aftermath. As a phenomenon, it marked a revolution in science, politics, and the human imagination-the end of one age and the dawn of another. The Age of Hiroshima reveals how the bombing of Hiroshima gave rise to new conceptions of our world and its precarious interconnectedness, and how we continue to live in its dangerous shadow today.

A multifaceted portrait of the Hiroshima bombing and its many legacies On August 6, 1945, in the waning days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The city's destruction stands as a powerful symbol of nuclear annihilation, but it has also shaped how we think about war and peace, the past and the present, and science and ethics. The Age of Hiroshima traces these complex legacies, exploring how the meanings of Hiroshima have reverberated across the decades and around the world. Michael D. Gordin and G. John Ikenberry bring together leading scholars from disciplines ranging from international relations and political theory to cultural history and science and technology studies, who together provide new perspectives on Hiroshima as both a historical event and a cultural phenomenon. As an event, Hiroshima emerges in the flow of decisions and hard choices surrounding the bombing and its aftermath. As a phenomenon, it marked a revolution in science, politics, and the human imagination-the end of one age and the dawn of another. The Age of Hiroshima reveals how the bombing of Hiroshima gave rise to new conceptions of our world and its precarious interconnectedness, and how we continue to live in its dangerous shadow today.

Following the end of the Cold War, the economic reforms in the early 1990s, and ensuing impressive growth rates, India has emerged as a leading voice in global affairs, particularly on international economic issues. Its domestic market is fast-growing and India is becoming increasingly important to global geo-strategic calculations, at a time when it has been outperforming many other growing economies, and is the only Asian country with the heft to counterbalance China. Indeed, so much is India defined internationally by its economic performance (and challenges) that other dimensions of its internal situation, notably relevant to security, and of its foreign policy have been relatively neglected in the existing literature. This handbook presents an innovative, high profile volume, providing an authoritative and accessible examination and critique of Indian foreign policy. The handbook brings together essays from a global team of leading experts in the field to provide a comprehensive study of the various dimensions of Indian foreign policy.

The war of 1971 was the most significant geopolitical event in the Indian subcontinent since its partition in 1947. At one swoop, it led to the creation of Bangladesh, and it tilted the balance of power between India and Pakistan steeply in favor of India. The Line of Control in Kashmir, the nuclearization of India and Pakistan, the conflicts in Siachen Glacier and Kargil, the insurgency in Kashmir, the political travails of Bangladesh--all can be traced back to the intense nine months in 1971. Against the grain of received wisdom, Srinath Raghavan contends that far from being a predestined event, the creation of Bangladesh was the product of conjuncture and contingency, choice and chance. The breakup of Pakistan and the emergence of Bangladesh can be understood only in a wider international context of the period: decolonization, the Cold War, and incipient globalization. In a narrative populated by the likes of Nixon, Kissinger, Zhou Enlai, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Tariq Ali, George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and Bob Dylan, Raghavan vividly portrays the stellar international cast that shaped the origins and outcome of the Bangladesh crisis. This strikingly original history uses the example of 1971 to open a window to the nature of international humanitarian crises, their management, and their unintended outcomes.

In a long and versatile career spanning thirty-five years, Ramachandra Guha has produced a vast body of work. Each time, he has broken new ground-his pioneering environmental histories of India and his still-relevant work on ecology and equity; his social histories of Indian cricket; his monumental history of the Indian republic; his biographies of Verrier Elwin and Gandhi; his anthologies of ecological, social and political thought in India; and his collections of biographical and political essays. Sparked by Guha's wide-ranging and important work, A Functioning Anarchy is a collection of essays by historians, social scientists, ecologists and journalists.