Browse all Reviews

With contemporary Japanese-Korean relations so inextricably entrenched within contentious politics of national identity and divergent expressions of historical consciousness, Jun Uchida’s Brokers of Empire could not be a more welcome addition to the field of modern East Asian history.

Some years ago, in the midst of a conversation about tourism and travelling, a friend from one of Britain’s former colonies remarked how shocked she had been to see ‘white people begging’ during her first trip abroad to Australia.

Historical and anthropological encounters between culture and capital are conventionally staged in India, as elsewhere in Asia and parts of Europe such as Italy, as encounters between relationships and practices defined as cultural, and some set of definitional meanings, logics, institutions, and practices associated with capitalism and the market.

In this book, Tonio Andrade tells the story of a wild and uncultivated island originally inhabited by aboriginal hunters and traders.