In the Dragon's Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century

Sebastian Strangio's In the Dragon's Shadow is, essentially, a look at the role China has played historically and currently in the affairs of Southeast Asia. Much like the smaller nations in the Americas have had to learn to live with the presence and policies of the United States, so it is for the nations of Southeast Asia in the shadow of China. The caveat, of course, is that the countries, people, and cultures have had centuries, if not millennia, to adapt. 

More than that, it's a comparison between the approach the Chinese has adopted in Southeast Asia and that of the Americans, though Strangio frequently contrasts both with the Japanese, who have arguably struck the best note the most consistently. It's also a clear-eyed look at the colonial hangover that is still felt throughout the region, as well as the arguably imperialistic designs the Chinese may have....to say nothing of providing excellent historical context for each country in the region (minus Brunei and East Timor) and the various animosities and alliances that have so impacted the region's history. 

More than once Strangio's descriptions evoked the Monroe Doctrine for me, not least in the closing pages where he quoted a historian who noted "the Americans 'have to justify being here.' The Chinese, on the other hand, 'are just here...It's their backyard." And, as with any work that deals with globalization these days, there's the ever-looming shadow of the American consumer culture, the overarching, homogenizing force that brings everything it touches into its fold by varying degrees. 

Strangio speaks to this directly, as a shared concern of the Vietnamese and Chinese, who otherwise find little common ground, but he also speaks to it obliquely, as when he notes the depth of the anxiety felt by many Burmans that their culture "could be engulfed by a flood of outsiders from the north." That such a notion is completely and utterly unfathomable to Americans - what flood of outsiders could possibly dislodge American culture - shows the extent to which said culture has taken hold around the world. (On the other hand, one could argue that those who found such solace in the previous administration did fear this very thing, treasuring, perhaps elements of "American culture" that others of us no longer see as paramount. But I digress.)

Four stars.

Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle

Although written in 2011, Dan Senor and Saul Singer's Start-Up Nation provides a well-researched history of how Israel has become a hotbed (the hotbed?) for high-tech start-ups in the world today.

Essentially, Senor and Singer argue that Israel is home to the perfect confluence of factors: military conscription, which provides all Israelis with an early dose of high-stakes problem solving replete with life-or-death consequences (and a built-in network of connections forged in this pressure-cooker environment); a large immigrant community, with all the benefits of risk-taking, multi-lingualism, and, potentially, overseas networks, that implies; a national history where constant external threat required agility and adaptability; and cultural norms of low power distance (with its attendant ability to question authority) and achievement orientation. Israel is also an export-driven economy, with a very small domestic market, and no possibilities of trade in the immediate neighborhood, due to tensions with surrounding countries

While the central arguments can be compressed to a handful of paragraphs, it's the examples of Israeli entrepreneurship that pepper the chapters that prove most interesting. From the technologies that drive online payment and security systems, to R&D teams for companies like HP and green technologies like electric cars, Israeli companies - and Israelis - are central actors. As Senor and Singer note, Israel has more companies on the NASDAQ than Korea, Japan, Singapore, India, and all of Europe combined (or at least that was true in 2011; I didn't verify the stats in 2020).

Obviously those with an interest in international business and trade will be most interested in Start-Up Nation, but this is a great book for anyone interested in how geography, culture, history, and the like influence the major market players today.

Five stars.

Salt: A World History

Salt: A World History is just that - a meandering tome exploring the history of the world as it has been impacted by salt. Who would write such a book? (Mark Kurlansky - who's also written on such comestibles as cod and milk, as well as Paper - Salt > Paper, for what it's worth.) Who would reach such a book? (Me. Also, at least 751 people who bothered to rate it on Amazon.) And yet, these are fair questions, after all how one could read or write 500 pages on such a basic substance?

The answer is lies in Kurlansky's approach. Displaying the same snappy style and inquisitive nature that he used in Food of a Younger Land, Kurlansky explores trade, war, engineering, voyages of discovery, cuisine, and the evolution of mankind through the lens of our biological need for salt. (As a commodity, it was once so valuable that people were paid in salt - the origin of the word salary. Who knew?)

It's the rare book that can cohesively stitch together the preparation of mummies in ancient Egypt and the creation of Tabasco sauce, but that is what Kurlansky has done in Salt. The entire book is peppered with obscure facts, zingy wit, and first rate writing. Although long, Kurlansky doesn't make the mistake of getting too deep in the weeds, and the entire book is accessible even to those with no prior knowledge of Salt, all of which is to say that this book is far better than its title might imply. Clearly, I need to add Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World to my reading list.

Five stars.

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Dream

Brazil is the first developing country I visited, in the 90s when I was in high school. I remember being blown away by the levels of dysfunction I witnessed - including that when our friends sold their home it was purchased by a customs agent...with suitcases of cash. Returning a few years ago for a conference, I had a box of stress balls and pens impounded by customs, who then implored my office for six months to return to the country and retrieve them. And so on.

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God is written by a Brazilian, Juliana Barbassa, thus lending credence to the notion that the dysfunction is not simply an American perception. Barbassa, who has lived and worked around the world, jumped at the opportunity to return to the city of her birth as the AP's correspondent there, only to discover the layers of dysfunction that were previously hidden to her. Chapter-by-chapter she dissects many of these, from the corruption within the police department to environmental degradation (read: raw sewage flowing through every river and onto the beaches), to the contradictory attitudes toward prostitution and, frequently, gay rights. Political shenanigans naturally figure prominently as well.

The backdrop for Barbassa's work is the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, the deadlines for which are firm and inflexible, not subject to individual whims. While there is potential for such deadlines to positively drive change, Barbassa generally finds that instead decisions are taken too quickly, with an eye only for what the world will think and who can make the most money (hint: it's usually a property developer), as opposed to being grounded in urban planning or public policy imperatives.

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God concludes with the 2014 World Cup; the Olympics which figure so prominently in the discussions around waste water treatment and the removal of the favelas are still two years away when the book ends. So, too, the trials of Lula, the former president who is simultaneously an inmate serving a 12-year sentence for corruption and his party's nominee for president in this year's election. If Barbassa isn't already working on another book about Brazil, it's not for a lack of material.

This is a great read for anyone looking for perspective on the developing world in general, and Brazil in particular. The contradictions continue to flummox and frustrate Barbassa (who is at her finest in describing the process necessary to rent an apartment), so rest assured the reader will be no closer to solving the enigma, either, but this book provides excellent insight into the Brazilian culture today. It has the further advantage of reading, at times, like a travelogue, invoking the gorgeous scenery, as well as some of the highs and lows of Brazil's international diplomatic and business relationships.

Four stars.

Tai-Pan

I have a new favorite author. After some twenty years, James Clavell has displaced Margaret Mitchell atop my personal pantheon of authors. Last fall I fell in love with Shogun; my concerns as to whether Tai-Pan could live up to such lofty expectations were unfounded.

The Tai Pan is Dirk Straun, a Scottish trader who has risen to become the most powerful trader in Hong Kong, which in the midst of the Opium Wars is on the verge of the becoming a prosperous and beloved jewel among British colonies. To reach the apex of trade society, Tai Pan has had to fight not only other European and American traders to build The Noble House - sometimes in the literal sense of the word - but he's engaged in his fair share of politicking and intrigue with both the Chinese and the British. On the eve of unparalleled success, his future plans are sullied when he learns that his wife and most of his children have succumbed to one of the many epidemics that swept England in the early nineteenth century. Now he must recalibrate and bring his young son, Culum, into the fold earlier than he anticipated while ensuring the future of all of Hong Kong.

Like Shogun, James Clavell does an absolutely remarkable job of creating authentic characters in original settings. His description of the trade routes and wars, the history of the opening of China, and the early days of the settlement of Hong Kong are lovely to read. I also loved the juxtaposition of Straun's English and Chinese families and the dialects that practically call out from the pages. Clavell's characters are complex, multifaceted beings, and the experience of reading Tai Pan is enriched by the conflicting emotions each of the characters is able to generate in the reader. If it's true that the Russian sub-plot was slightly far-fetched, it's also true that it's the only questionable or ham-handed aspect of the book.

Five stars.

Tulipomania : The Story of the World's Most Coveted Flower & the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused

According to the cover, Mike Dash's Tulipomania is "A marvelous parable of greed, skullduggery, opulence, extravagance, and retribution." I'm not sure I'd go quite that far.

So why was I even reading a book about the seventeenth century Dutch tulip bubble? I read about the bubble in Waves of Prosperity and was sufficiently intrigued. Dash has certainly been thorough in his research, both of the history of the tulip as well as Netherlands history and particularly of the economic conditions in seventeenth century Europe. I actually found the most intriguing part of the book to be the discussion of the mores of the Ottoman Empire; Dash's commentary is a great complement to that of Edmond Taylor in The Fall of the Dynasties.

The deficiencies, then, aren't inherent to Dash's research or writing. The bigger challenge is that I often felt there just wasn't quite enough for this to really be an entire book. Dash himself acknowledges regularly the extent to which events are unknown - and unknowable.

Perhaps if I had a greater interest in botany, if I didn't have to mentally rack my brain for an image of the various parts of a flower, and if I didn't harbor a secret horror of trying to keep a flower alive, let alone paying years' wages for a single bulb, well I might have enjoyed Tulipomania just a tad more. As it stands, I'm inclined to feel what I read of the bubble in Waves of Prosperity was sufficient, and imagine most readers would agree with me.


Two stars.

Waves of Prosperity: India, China, and the West: How Global Trade Transformed the World

Greg Clydesdale's Waves of Prosperity: India, China, and the West: How Global Trade Transformed the World is only the latest in a rather long line of popular press titles exploring the history and trends of international trade and globalization. (Borderless Economies, The Ascent of Money, and A Splendid Exchange are just some of the others that come to mind, for those who want to explore the genre further.)

Clydesdale uses the shipping industry as a proxy for globalization and explores its evolution over the last thousand years. In particular, he explores the ways in which a country exploits its natural advantages - whether geographic, demographic, resources, or so on - to take a definitive economic lead, only to then rest on its laurels while other countries catch up through a process of imitation and innovation until the trailing country(ies) takes the lead. In this way, he travels from Gujarat and China to Malacca and on to the Spanish and Portuguese, the Dutch, the British, the Americans and Japanese and back again to China.

Clydesdale also explores the ways in which culture shapes government actions and, ultimately, trade itself. These forces are educational, but also as inherently ingrained as the populace's attitudes toward individualism and free markets. As shown time and again, social structures impact economies, sometimes subtly and sometimes starkly. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly than when Clydesdale sets out to compare the Japanese and American approaches to trade in the late twentieth century: amalgamation vs. anti-trust; cooperation vs. competition; MITI vs. free markets.

Unfortunately, I imagine Clydesdale is largely preaching to the choir here. The globalists, who surely comprise the overwhelming number of readers, won't find much new here, while the isolationists are unlikely to crack the cover. Which is too bad, because there's a lesson on innovation and economic decline here as much as absolute and comparative advantage.

Japan: The Precarious Future

I won't keep you in suspense: this is a dry, academic text, rendered somewhat stale, no less, by events of the past few years. Obviously, I was hoping for more when I came across an essay highlighting some of the demographic findings in The Atlantic earlier this summer. In fact, I had high hopes of being able to assign many of the essays, if not the entire book, to my Business and Culture in Japan students next spring. Given the readability of such trade-centric volumes as Borderless Economies, this didn't seem unreasonable.

Unfortunately, most of the essays in Japan: The Precarious Future - particularly those that do not deal directly with demographics - were too dry to hold my attention, let alone that of my students. What's more, given the evolution of the geopolitical situation in the past year, from the Philippines and the South China Sea, to North Korea, to our own contributions to world instability, many of the essays read as woefully out-of-date. Although the topics remain timely - Japan will face future natural disasters; a visionary PM is still needed to shift the economy; questions of a Japanese military have perhaps never been more relevant - too much that has happened is not included for me to feel that there is real, ongoing value in the essays Frank Baldwin and Annie Allison have edited here.

Unless you are a scholar of all things Japanese, with an insatiable appetite for anything to do with Nihon, it's probably best to skip this one.

No stars. (But who gives stars to academic essays, anyway?)

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World vast terrain from the early days of Mesopotamia to the fall of the Twin Towers. In between we find the rise of Islam, the Great Crusades, Mongols, Vikings, Huns and Genghis Khan, to say nothing of war and oil, religious conflict and conquest, and, of course, trade. This is a deep and dense tome, an academic work in the truest sense, perhaps not best suited for the casual reader. I was most interested in the trade aspect of Frankopan's work, but found the book more focused on the highest level of globalization than on the trade that underpins it.

Ultimately, I believe that Frankopan is attempting to convey a sense of the Silk Roads - and trade more broadly - as a means of exchanging not only goods and currencies, but everything from religions, cultures, and ideas, to disease. Ostensibly, the book's focus is trade, but by Frankopan treated trade as the vehicle for everything else, such that it's less a history of Central Asia and the Middle East as a trade hub and more about how it's role as a hub influenced geopolitics and culture, for example. The high water mark for trade comes relatively early, in my opinion, specifically when Frankopan writes that the Taj Mahal represents "globalized international trade that brought such wealth to [Shah Jahan] that he was able to contemplate this extraordinary gesture to his beloved spouse." (p. 231). Nearly 300 pages remained. 

In the end, I came away feeling that Frankopan had attempted to do too much. Any one of these topics is a book (or books!) unto itself. See Desert Queen, The Orientalist, A Splendid Exchange, Where the West Ends, or Hero, just for starters. Which is perhaps to say that I read too much and too widely (is there such a thing?), or at a minimum that most readers will not have already delved so deeply into this topic.

Perhaps more disconcertingly, though, I had the nagging sense that Frankopan was angry with history, Europe in particular. I could not help but feel that any crime perpetrated by Europeans was trumped up, while those committed by Easterners were somehow minimized. This sentiment crystallized for me toward the end of the book when Frankopan wrote, "...typified by the European Union being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012: how wonderful that Europe, which had been responsible for almost continuous warfare not just in its own continent but across the world for centuries, had managed to avoid conflict for several decades." (p. 383). Yet, as anyone who has read much on world history can attest, warfare has been one of the constants since time immemorial. I don't disagree that Europe was a mess. I'm just not convinced it was that much messier than the rest of the world. I should note, too, that I'm not the only one he noticed this. S. Frederick Starr wrote in his review for the Washington Post that "in chapter after chapter, Europeans emerge as the villains. ... [Frankopan] concludes that “Europe’s distinctive character as more aggressive, more unstable, and less peace-minded than other parts of the world now paid off.”" Indeed.

Complaints aside, Frankopan does an excellent job of filling in the gaps and connecting the dots. Even more than Hero or Desert Queen, Silk Roads provides comprehensive historical background on the West's interaction with and interference in the Middle East and Central Asia for the past several centuries. Scanning headlines today, it's not easy to understand intuitively how certain countries have become allies or enemies; by revisiting every slight and slander for the last millennium, Frankopan allows his reader to understand these historical ties and their on-going impacts.

Borderless Economies: Chinese Sea Turtles, Indian Fridges, and the New Fruits of Global Capitalism

In a nutshell, Borderless Economies is a 200-page argument in favor of immigration. The book's author, Robert Guest, explores how immigration leads to higher levels of innovation and economic growth, to say nothing of personal happiness. He mines the terrain from the Congo to China, Korea to Kinshasa, and perhaps not surprisingly devotes the most ink to the U.S.

Borderless Economies is written in the same snappy style as The Economist, which is not terribly surprising when one considers that Guest is the Business Editor of the periodical. I guffawed a bit too loudly, for example, when reading about the cars that suffered from, in a company spokesman's words, "thermal incidents," but which Guest noted the customers called "catching fire." This style makes for a quick read and entertaining read.

This is a book I could easily foresee assigning to a class of business undergrads, but which I can just as heartily recommend to friends whose professional and personal interests do not normally include international business.

Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea

Probably you haven't given much thought to mangroves. I haven't. Only occasionally have I given any thought to their role in the climate, such as when they're mentioned briefly as a shelter during a hurricane in Under a Dark Summer Sky. Kennedy Warne, on the other hand, has devoted a tremendous amount of time, energy, and brain power, to the plight of the mangroves.

And that plight, unfortunately, is tied inextricably to the global economy. See, people like shrimp. Shrimp do remarkably well in the tropical climates that are so prevalent in the developing world. Ergo, from Brazil to Indonesia, shrimp farms have cleared away mangroves to create shrimp ponds, altering the environment, the way of life for the local population, and the market for this once-delicacy.

Warne is clearly passionate about the subject, but takes a fair and balanced approach to the topic. Let Them Eat Shrimp includes chapters on regions and countries that have recognized the problem and are working to rectify it (such as Eritrea, of all places), as well as those where the mangroves are legally, even constitutionally, protected, but where the on-the-ground practice is to turn a blind eye to wealthy and powerful shrimp farms and developers. (Here's to you, Ecuador.)

Warne, who not surprisingly writes for National Geographic, criss-crossed the globe from the Americas to Asia and Africa to understand the various forces at play and how the dynamics might be changed, the mangroves restored and saved. In that way, Let Them Eat Shrimp is as much travelogue as science, as much about raising consciousness as about guilt. He further reinforces the notion of understanding where our food comes from and choosing what to purchase based on more than the price.

Those who love science and nature writing, travel writing, and serious books that study complex issues and arrive at no easy solutions will especially appreciate Warne's work.

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade

The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy was assigned reading, the first true homework I've had in years. And just as I'm always promising my students, there was good value in the assignment.

Pietra Rivoli is a professor at Georgetown. In the late 1990s, she began serving on one of those ubiquitous university committees, this one devoted to ensuring that sweatshop labor did not produce any Georgetown apparel. She became curious about the origins and journeys of these seemingly simple articles of clothing; The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy is the result of her curiosity.

The short version is that Pietra's shirt began life as cotton in West Texas before making its way to Asia to be spun into yarn, made into fabric, cut and sewn into shape, and shipped back to the U.S. for sale. Eventually it will likely end up as mitumba, most likely in Africa. Along the way, the shirt - or rather its various manufacturers - must navigate the various tariffs, quotas, and non-tariff barriers that dot the landscape of international trade.

I found the most interesting sections of this book to be those that focused on cotton farming, and particularly the evolution of the industry, especially in the U.S., and the section on mitumba, a practice with which I was only vaguely familiar before reading this book.

As I said at the beginning of this post, The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy was homework. I ultimately enjoyed reading it, and would say that the readers most likely to do likewise are those with more than a passing interest in globalization and trade.

The Ascent of Money

Niall Ferguson's The Ascent of Money has been on my reading list since it was part of a globalEDGE blog series two years ago. Ferguson traces the origins of money and the financial system itself carefully tracing how we reached a time and place where money is almost entirely electronic. Along the way, he explores everything from insurance to hedge funds, the bond market and the IMF. He offers a discussion of the Dutch West India Company - arguably the world's first global trading company - and his exposition on the Scottish Widows insurance company should make Arthur Herman proud. There's even a bit on the crisis state of Detroit. In sum, Ferguson's work is a nice, comprehensive read for those seeking to understand the evolution of the world's financial systems, crises, and interconnectedness.

A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

I have mixed thoughts on William J. Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, a narrative on the history of world trade from the Sumerians to present day. Parts of it, particularly the opening chapters discussing the creation and growth of Islam and the role of trade in the Peloponnesian War were deeply interesting. Other chapters, such as those comparing the Dutch Wast India Company and the British East India Company (arguably the world's first multinational firms), felt too technical.

I also felt Bernstein missed the opportunity to tie some of the ongoing themes together more cleanly. For example, early in the book he discussed the role of trade in the Peloponnesian War. Similarly, trade was a precipitating factor of the British Opium Wars with China. However, Bernstein did not take the opportunity to compare and contrast these wars, their impact on trade balance and world power, and how trade factored into the dispute. A Splendid Exchange is a linear telling of trade history, but pulling upon earlier examples could have strengthened the book and further engaged the reader.

Berstein does offer excellent discourse on the advantages of trade, and examples of absolute and comparative advantage that any economics student can appreciate. Ultimately, this book is most likely to appeal to those folks with a strong - dare I say professional? - interest in the material.

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World

This thin little book (only 212 pages) packs a depressing punch. Michael Lewis sets out to explore the causes and ramifications of the financial collapse in 2008 and reaches any number of disturbing conclusions. The new third world Lewis visits? Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and the United States, with an emphasis on California.

Germany, Lewis notes, isn't quite so broke as the rest, but their bankers were gobbling up risky (read: stupid) loans with as much voracity as anyone in the world and, given the state of so many other euro-based economies, Germany is hardly unaffected. As a side note, he does a nice job explaining that the EU was created largely to prevent Germany ever again attempting to dominate the rest of Europe, but as just about the only large, solvent economy in the Eurozone, Germans now have the ability to impose their will on others - the Greeks, for example - and require them to become more German (hello, harsh austerity measures) if they hope to retain any semblance of an economy. The problem, of course, is that it's not clear that they do. As Lewis has on good record, every single member of the Greek parliament is lying to evade taxes.

The entire premise of the book is, essentially, that the world is broke, our political and financial systems are broken, and good luck and Godspeed to anyone hoping to fix it. Lew maintains this message steadfastly right up to his concluding sentence, which is oddly, "as idiotic as optimism can sometimes seem, it has a weird habit of paying off." Such optimism seems misplaced to me, but maybe that's just my pessimism shining through.

Four stars.

The Sushi Economy

Tuna is big business in Japan. How big? In the first auction of 2013, one sold for $1.7 million. Yes, for a single fish.

A friend recommended The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy by Sasha Issenberg before I went to Japan last August. I ordered it...and promptly allowed it to begin collecting dust in my office. This past week I decided that I really, really needed to read it, and I have to admit I'm glad that I did. It's an incredibly readable look at the world's changing food cultures, supply chain, and interconnectedness. Issenberg is hot on the tail of sushi from the massive Tsukiji market in Tokyo to sushi restaurants from LA to the Bahamas, to the source of the tuna itself, in the waters off Prince Edward Island, Gibraltar, and Australia. Along the way, he meets and interviews everyone from fishermen to environmentalists to sushi chefs, giving a human face to every step of the process.

In many ways, The Sushi Economy reminded me of The Beekeeper's Lament, in that it takes its reader on a circuitous route to understand the ins and outs of a single product, as well as the perils of feeding a world that increasingly wants more of the "best things." In China alone, Issenberg predicts 50 million new sushi fiends by 2020, assuming only one-tenth of China's middle-class population develops a taste for the food.

(As a side note, I never include pictures in my blog, but I'm adding a couple that I took at Tsukiji last August, so you can get a sense of the place that sells a million dollar fish.)