Asia and Western Dominance.by K. M. Panikkar

Asia and Western Dominance. by K. M. PanikkarReview by: F. S. C. NorthropThe Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Feb., 1955), pp. 261-266Published by: Association for Asian StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2941737 .

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BOOK REVIEWS

Asia and Western Dominance. By K. M. PANIKKAR. New York: The John Day Company, undated, 530. Index.

A major event of our time is the rise of Asia. Henceforth -Westem nations must relate themselves to the peoples of the Far East in a new way. To this end, the contemporary Asian attitude toward the several Western nations which this book reveals is valuable. It aims to describe the last 450 years of world history when Asia was dominated by the West.

The value of the book derives in part from the historical events which are described but even more from the interpretation put upon them by its author who was Prime Minister Nehru's first ambassador to Communist China. Here one will find a description of Asia's relation first to Portugal and then to Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Russia and the United States as seen through contemporary official Indian eyes and even, as the sequel will show, through Communist Chinese eyes. The book is as important, therefore, for an understanding of India's present foreign policy with respect to Communist China, Soviet Russia and the free nations of the West as it is for the account of the lengthy historical period which is its main concern.

Its story begins with the year 1498 when Vasco da Gama set sail from the sandy beach at Belem in Lisbon harbor, navigated around South Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and landed at Calicut on the southwest coast of India, thereby launching the Western nations' domination of Asia. This dominance ended, according to the book, with the withdrawal of British forces from India in 1947 and the departure of Western navies from the ports and rivers of China in 1949. The intervening 450 years Ambassador Panikkar calls "the da Gama epoch" (p. 12). Mr. Panikkar was born on the Malabar coast of southwest India in which Vasco da Gama's Calicut is located. In 1949 he was in Nanking when the European warships evacuated their Chinese bases and he travelled with the Western diplomats when they left China after the People's Republic was established in Peking. Thus by geographical place df birth and contemporary firsthand experience he spans the historical epoch about which he writes.

His study began twenty-five years ago with an investigation of Indian and Western documents concerning "Malabar and the Portuguese," "Malabar and the Dutch" and "India and the Indian Ocean." These studies of the Portuguese records took him to Lisbon in 1925. From 1930 on he participated in the discussions between India and Britain. The present volume extends these earlier studies and observations to include the impact of all the major nations upon the specific peoples of the Far East and the individual reactions of these people to this impact. Cultural and religious as well as commercial, political and military influences are considered. Apart from a relatively short

261



262 FAR EASTERN QUARTERLY

section on Oriental influences in Europe, the book concludes with a major

section of some eighty pages on Christian missions and the causes of their failure.

Throughout, documents written by Westerners are quoted to picture the Westerner's deeds as described by Westerners themselves. The range of

the author's reading is prodigious. The mood of the volume is objective, calm, realistic and, for the most part, dispassionate. It is remarkable that an Indian can describe the British rule in India with no show of emotion. Only with respect to "religious aggression" (p. 243) do hints of bitterness appear. The reader may need to ask himself also whether there is not a slight

tendency to use descriptive terms with neutral or favorable emotive meanings to describe the deeds of Communist China and Russia and to employ words with derogatory emotive shades to describe Japan and Western nations other

than Russia. Within these reservations the book is realistic and objective with respect to the historical events of the 450 years of history that are

selected for description. It divides the Vasco da Gama epoch into four periods: The Age of Expan-

sion (1498-1750), The Age of Conquest (1750-1858), The Age of Empire (1858-1914), and Europe in Retreat (1918-1939). In the chapters on these

four periods, the main Asian peoples considered are those of India, China, Japan, Indo-China, Indonesia, Burma and Siam. The major Western nations

described as producing the domination are Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain and, in the case of China, also the United States.

Russia in its relation to the Far East is considered outside these four

periods of the Vasco da Gama epoch, in a separate chapter by itself, as if

Russia had little or no part in the West's domination of the Orient. Only in

the case of the other Western nations' relations to China does Russia ever

come into the story as a participating member. For the most part, the im-

pression is left that Russia tended to side with the Chinese in their attempts to throw off Western domination. In the one case in which it is admitted that

Russia joined the other Western nations in the establishment of extra-terri- torial rights in China, this is put down to "the baleful influence of Wilhelm

II." (p. 242) Russia's conquest of northern Asia up to the Bering Strait, Vladivostok and the islands off the coast of Japan does not seem to be an instance of European domination. This attitude of mind shows itself also in

the author's conclusion that the Vasco da Gama epoch came to an end in

1947 and 1949 with the departure of the British from India and the British, French and Americans from China, notwithstanding the fact that Moscow's

absolute control of northern Asia and her indirect direction of China still

persist. It is as if in Mr. Panikkar's mind Moscow's Russia is an Asian

people rather than a Western nation. The same is true of his account of the resentment of the Chinese against

Western domination before World War II. Only the resentment against France,

Germany, Great Britain, the United States and Japan is mentioned. Nothing



BOOK REVIEWS 263

is said about the resentment to Borodin and his Moscow-con/trolled associates

which showed itself in the popular support of Chiang Kai-shek's break with and liquidation of, the Communists in the 1920's. Nor is there any reference to Stalin's treaty with Chiang Kai-shek, rather than Mao's Communists, near the end of World War II. Clearly this is a historical account of the relation of Western nations to China seen, not merely through Ambassador Panikkar's Asian eyes, but also through Chairman Mao's Communist Chinese eyes.

Mr. Panikkar's description of the Chinese Renaissance of the 1920's which centered at Peking National University is also interesting. Three men domi- nate the picture. They are Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, the Chancellor; Ch'en Tu-hsiu,

the Dean of the College of Letters; and Dr. Hu Shih. Chen Tu-hsiu is described as the accepted leader of the Renaissance and the only one who "had a real understanding of the situation." (p. 356.) Dr. Hu Shih is cast in an important but secondary role. All three are portrayed as completely break- ing with the classical Confucian past. Hu Shih, Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei and Chao Yuan-jen and the liberal democratic reform of classical Chinese society for which they stood are described as doomed in July 1920 when Chen founded the Communist Party of China.

It is questionable whether the foregoing account of Russia's role in Asia and of the significance and vitality of the liberal democratic forces in the Chinese Renaissance will stand as history. Nevertheless, this portion of Mr. Panikkar's book gives us very important information. It describes the manner in which the Communist Chinese political leaders, whom Mr. Panikkar met during his ambassadorship at Peking, attempt to reconcile (1) Moscow's continued domination of Asians and (2) the Chinese Communists' single- party doctrinaire dictatorship with the liberal democratic forces of the Chinese Renaissance and the common sense humanism of China's classical Confucian

past. The titles of the two chapters in the section on Russia's relations with

the Far East confirm this judgment. These chapter headings are: "Before the Revolution" and "Asia and the Russian Revolution." Of its significance for

Asians, Ambassador Panikkar writes as follows:

Imperialism meant something totally different after Lenin's definition of it as the last phase of capitalism and his insistence that the liberation of subject peoples from colonial domination was a part of the struggle against capitalism. (p. 264)

It means of course, if this definition is taken seriously by Mr. Panikkar, as it seems to be, that imperialistic behavior is by definition something in which only non-Communist nations can indulge and that Communist Chinese or Communist European Russian behavior toward Asians, which is observa- tionally identical with the Western dominance of the past, is an instance- again by definition-not of imperialism but of "the liberation of subject peoples from colonial domination...." It is doubtful, however, if a definition is quite capable of transforming imperialistic deeds into domestic achieve- ments of liberty in this facile manner. Otherwise, Asian rhetoricians who




were masters of the art of definition could have brought about freedom from Western dominance centuries ago.

This impotence of definition to transform facts makes one wonder also whether the Vasco da Gama era came to its end, as Ambassador Panikkar maintains it did, when merely the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese and Americans departed from Asia. May it not be necessary, before the historian can write Finis on what Vasco da Gama started, for European Russia to depart also, and for contemporary China to be guided by the norms of the peacemakers of the classical Asian spiritual tradition rather than by those of Europe's Marxist Moscow?

Mr. Panikkar's estimate of the significance of the Russian Revolution means that Russia, unlike the other Western nations treated in this book, is judged from the standpoint of its vague propaganda expressions of its aims rather than either its deeds in Asia or the precise meanings of the Communist aims, theory and practice as specified in the Communist classics of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. This again is European Russia seen through Chen

and Mao's Communist-tinged Pekinese eyes and is valuable precisely for

this reason. It shows the extent to which Mao's China is Moscow-minded and

how it has found a very plausible way, which Mr. Panikkar as ambassadorial

observer took for history, of making Chinese-Russian friendship seem natural

and Chinese antipathy to only European nations other than Russia and the

United States appear as historically justified. At the same time by presenting the liberal democratic leaders of the Chinese Renaissance., such as Chancel- lor Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei, Dr. Hu Shih and Dr. Chao Yuan-jen as secondary leaders, as doomed to defeat by their internal "contradictions" (p. 363) and as guilty of "an undoubted failure of leadership when the crisis arose.," (p. 362) Ambassador Panikkar has made the present Communist regime appear to be the natural and inevitable fruition of the Chinese Renaissance of the 1920's. This is hardly a balanced history of those days, but it does show how the present leaders of China are attempting to make their anti-liberal form of

government and their acceptance of European Moscow's domination of Asians appear to the Chinese people, and to some of their Asian neighbors, as the inevitable consequence of a supposed European Russian tradition of friend- liness and of China's recent past.

Because Ambassador Panikkar takes this account of China's history in this century so much for granted and because Prime Minister Nehru framed India's foreign policy at the time of the Ambassador's reports from Peking to New Delhi, the sections of this book bearing on Russia's relation to the Asian people throw considerable light on the present attitudes, pronounce- ments and foreign policy of the Indian government. If this book represents what the present Indian government regards as the objective truth concerning the historical facts and the respective merits of Russia and the other Euro-

pean nations in the Vasco da Gama epoch, then much of what Prime Minister Nehru and his emissaries say in international affairs becomes plausible.



BOOK REVIEWS 265

Mr. Panikkar's book is significant in another respect. It points up the radical difference between judging a nation or people (1) in terms of their general aims and ideals and (2) in terms of their deeds. Any people tends to judge itself in terms of its ideals and to judge others in terms of their deeds. Thus to most Portuguese, British, French, Dutch and Americans their sending of businessmen, the warships to make business possible, and Chris- tian missionaries to Asia seemed good, since to any people their own economic ways are good and their own religion-especially in the case of Chris- tian-is perfect. To believe anything else is not to be a Christian. For this very reason every Portuguese, Britisher, Netherlander, Frenchman and Amerti- can should read the sections on the Vasco da Gama epoch. It enables us to see ourselves in terms of the way our deeds affected Asians and appeared to Asians. It was one of the wisest of Americans who said: "What you do speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say." Mr. Panikkar's book helps us to know ourselves in this way and to see the foreign policy of our country as many, if not most, Asians tend to see it. Disquieting though such an approach to ourselves be, it is nevertheless the prerequisite for any real understanding between Western and Oriental peoples and any further effective Western political or religious influence in Asia.

Mr. Panikkar is at his best in his brief account of the indigenous cultural reasons for the differences between the Chinese, Indian and Japanese reactions to Western dominance. Japan and India reacted by returning to their respective cultural pasts while introducing modem Western ways. China, if Mr. Panikkar's account of the Chinese Renaissance is correct, reacted in the case of the liberal democrats as well as the Chinese Communists by un- equivocally repudiating China's Confucian cultural past and its values. In the case of the Communists this is undoubtedly the aim. It may be questioned whether it was as much the aim of the liberal democrats as Mr. Panikkar sug- gests. In any event, however, an effective return to the traditional Confucian culture did not occur in the case of either the liberal democrats or Mao's Communists. More detailed consideration of the Christian ted neo-Confu- cianism of the regime of President Chiang Kai-shek, which Mr. Panikkar barely mentions, is needed to balance the historical account at this point.

With respect to the Indian and Japanese return to their respective cultural traditions, Mr. Panikkar notes one very important difference. The feudal hierarchy of traditional Japanese society and Shintoism, with its emperor at the pinnacle of the hierarchy, enabled Japan to become a major nation of the modern, nationalistic and military type merely by putting Western scien- tific instruments into the hands of the leaders of the old society without re- forming that society. Thus Japan, while modern and Western, was at the same time essentially Japanese and classical. India, on the other hand, thanks largely to the length of the British rule of India, mastered the English language and the Western, modern political and ethical classics, particularly those of Locke and his continental successors, the French Encyclopedists.




With these ideas in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Indian intellectual leaders, such as Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayananda, Swami Vivekananda, Dr. Bhagwan Das and Sri Aurobindo, carried through a Hindu cultural reform which was a veritable synthesis of modern Western liberal democratic secu- larism and the Indian Hindu religious tradition. Not only has India remained Hindu and religious while also incorporating Western liberal democratic legal, political and economic ways into its life and its thinking, but, Mr. Panikkar adds, the grammar of the English language has transformed the poetry and prose of the diverse vernacular tongues of the Indian people to bring a Western mentality into their very spirits, minds and souls.

This is a very optimistic account of the future prospects of liberal democ- racy in India. All those who believe, like Mr. Panikkar, in liberal democ- racy and in a new and more harmonious epoch in the relation between the Western nations and the Asian people will hope that his appraisal of contemporary India is correct.

F. S. C. NORTHROP Yale University

Japan's New Order in East Asia, Its Rise and Fall, 1937-45. By F. C.

JONES. Issued under the joint auspices of the Royal Institute of Inter- national Affairs and the Institute of Pacific Relations. London; Oxford University Press, 1954. xii, 498. Appendix, Bibliography and Index.

In this study of Japan's imperialistic adventures between 1937 and 1945, the author expresses scant respect for the dogmatism of the "revisionists," but he also gives little comfort to the apologists for the official line. Japan's

actions, according to him, did not follow any conspiratorial master plan but

fluctuated with the opportunism of rival groups that worked at cross-purposes. Hence Japan wavered erratically between the lure of Axis loot and the se-

curity of some understanding with the Democracies. In view of this instability of Japan's course, if a showdown had been

averted until the war in Europe had begun to turn in favor of the Democ-

racies, the internal balance of power in Japan might well have been tipped

in favor of a peaceful reorientation of Japanese policy. But the American

and British Governments, misled by Japan's outward intransigence into as-

suming that she was already irrevocably committed to an aggressive policy,

took an inflexible stand against her when such a stand could serve merely to drive her to a desperate gamble.

In the ensuing clash, Japan's parochial concept of a Japanese-American war- of limited objectives and her neutrality toward Russia prevented her

from cooperating fully with Germany, thereby causing her to forfeit whatever

opportunity she might have had to counterbalance the natural superiority of

American power. The Democracies, with equal unrealism, insisted on uncon-



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Asia and Western Dominance.by K. M. Panikkar