Product Description

John Keay's epic, expert study of the twenthieth-century demise of colonial rule in the Far East The names echo like the last long notes of a bugle call: Hiroshima, Dien Bien Phu, Tiananmen Square; MacArthur and Mountbatten; The Quiet American and Bridge over the River Kwai. In a twentieth-century welter of war, Depression and Communism four empires crumbled and the West was bundled out of the East. John Keay's acclaimed study of this imperial finale draws on contemporary sources ranging from Ho Chi Minh to Dirk Bogarde. The narrative swoops from the showpiece cities of Shanghai, Saigon and Manila to the tough backwaters of Borneo and the tinkling rice fields of Bali. Grandeur of treatment is matched by trenchant analysis; unexpected continuities are revealed; and to the interaction of West and East is traced the dynamism of the Far East today.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #789515 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
" 'Just occasionally one comes across a really wonderful book. John Keay's Last Post is just such a treasure. Readable, erudite, witty, immensely enjoyable' - Richard Gott, Literary Review 'A superb account... he controls the overall shape of the complex narrative with deceptive grace, while sewing small delightful jewels of detail throughout the fabric' - John Simpson, Sunday Telegraph 'An immensely well-researched and entertaining book' - Simon Heffer, Observer 'It is an astonishing, panoramic view of an immense process' - Jan Morris 'A vivid and impressive account of an extraordinary period of imperial history' - Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Readers can both revel in this fine work and yet still become misty eyed at the sound of the Last Post' - William Shawcross, Sunday Times 'A stylish book of clarity and argumentative vigour... Last Post is a model of narrative history, coolly presented and perfectly paced' - Lawrence Norfolk, The Times 'A colourful account of the ebb and flow of empires with splendid digressions on such exotic matters as Shanghai's red light districts; colonial stamps and Dirk Bogarde' - Lawrence James, Daily Mail"

Independent
‘This treasure trove of a book is packed with great stories on the imperial finale.’

About the Author
John Keay's recent books include Sowing the Wind: The Mismanagement of the Middle East 1900-1960 and Last Post: The End of Empire in the Far East. He lives in Scotland and is married to the author Julia Keay. Together they edited the Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland and are now revising the London Encyclopaedia. They have four children. John's earlier books include standard histories of India and the English East India Company. His latest is Mad About the Mekong: Exploration and Empire in South East Asia.

Customer Reviews

Great Story Obscured by Author's "Asian Values" Theories
This book was written before the 1997 collapse of the Asian "Tiger" economies, which considerably dates it. Purpotedly an overview of the end of European colonialism, there are several interesting anecdotes here of Singapore, Hong Kong, the Netherlands East Indies, etc. But the book is just too full of "the superiority of Asian Values" nonsense to be taken seriously in 2003. An updated paperback, stripping out the author's support for such racist falderol and just leaving the history of the end of colonialism would be a good future publisher's decision. The author's apologies for the police state antics of Singapore's Harry Lee Kuan Yew and Japanese atrocities in WWII is particularly unpleasant.

Good books to read along side this are Christopher Lingle's two titles on the rise and decline of the Asian tiger economies. The author of the Last Post sees nothing but good in Asia today; the reader may want to compare his assessment with Stan Sesser's great book, The Lands of Charm and Cruelty, where he can read, for example, about Singapore, and "the fear that even the best educated Singaporeans feel towards their government." John Pilger and Norman Lewis have fascinating accounts of Indonesia's horrible modern-day repression, and Paul Theroux's novel Kowloon Tong perfectly captures the unpleasant underbelly of Hong Kong at the time of the Handover. Bo Yang's The Ugly Chinaman and the Crisis in Chinese Culture give a Chinese perspective of the problems of Asian history, focusing of course on China (something of a "bible" for expats living in Hong Kong, by the way).

Lastly, Last Post's author asks in conclusion what the British colonial administrators now in old-age retirement have to say to themselves to feel good about their careers. Very obviously, it is the satisfaction of having run their areas far better under discredited colonialism than most of the Far Eastern dictators and police state-honchos who have succeeded them.

As another reviwer says, the Last Post contains valuable footnotes.

Promising Anecdotal History Ruined By Sour Temper
This book is full of the anecdotal information that made Keay's Explorers of the Himalayas so enjoyable. A good, if mean-spirited critique of the end of the colonial era in South East Asia, then a bad assessment of the post colonial regimes in which nervous excuses and some highly Aesopian language (to put it mildly) stand in for a more clear-eyed assessment. This book lost all meaning for me when the author began to hem and haw over the modern atrocities of the region - Indonesia's massacres in East Timor and West New Guinea, for example. Keay practically exonerates Japanese atrocities in World War II (in which 20 million Asians died, along with of course thousands of European civillians and Allied soldiers) in the name of anti-colonialism!

In general the author gets too bogged down in pushing his theory of the "rise of the Asian tiger economies" (he wrote this book before the collapse of those Asian economies) and to praise these countries he must ignore the violence, intolerance and corruption of their regimes.

Keay obviously liked living and working in South East Asia, but his ludicrously over-optimistic assessment of this politically brutal and economically impoverished region makes little sense in 2001.

Good photos, valuable bibliography.

(For a taste of the real Singapore (where this reviewer lived) I suggest Christopher Lingle's Singapore's Authoritarian Capitalism (buy it here -its banned in S'pore), or the novel Saint Jack by Paul Theroux. Both have much more to say about that particular modern Asian success story than Last Post. For Hong Kong (where he also lived), try a novel in which viewpoints like Keay's come under scrutiny: Paul Theroux's Kowloon Tong (or Theroux's Singapore short story, A Deed Without A Name).

Superb history writing; a really helpful and absorbing book
...John Keay's history writing is masterful and his clear analyses of the various colonial empires in the Far East and the reasons for their demise is clearly conveyed in a balanced and authoritative manner, without compromising on the anecdotal and the elements of mystique, nostlagia and searing criticism of colonial ideals and the way they were undermined by throughtlessness, naivite' and brash capitalism. Keay conveys the complexity without befuddling the reader and this work is nigh monumental in its scope, yet he manages to give the reader a sense of having understood something of great magnitude. The consequences of the Japanese invasion of SE Asia and what that meant for decolonisation and the imperial powers is also very eloquently conveyed. Well researched and elegantly recounted, I cannot recommend this book more highly. It's a valuable addition to the library of any student of imperial and post-imperial history.