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Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34.1 (2003) 134-135



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The Idea of Freedom in Asia and Africa. Edited by Robert H. Taylor (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2002) 329pp. $60.00

"Freedom" is a vital concept in modern political discourse, but it is a difficult subject for systematic analysis because of its many practical, and often inconsistent, meanings. In this collection of essays, eight scholars attempt, from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, to construct understandings of the idea (or ideas) of freedom in contemporary Africa and Asia. All of them adopt some form of historical approach that locates the current status of freedom in an array of continuities with the past, although they differ considerably with regard to the types of continuity that they emphasize. All of them employ comparisons, not only because their essays cover different parts of the world but also because they all acknowledge that the central concepts of freedom were initially formulated in the West. The latter circumstance makes it inevitable that Western ideas of freedom would be treated as a kind of norm, which, in several cases, involves an equally inevitable oversimplification of the history of freedom in the West.

There is a minor level of tension between one set of contributors (Taylor and Andrew J. Nathan), who suggest that there is an immanent idea of freedom that underlies its particular appearances in different times and societies, and another group (James L. Gelvin and Sudipta Kaviraj) who treat freedom as a construct almost entirely shaped by the circumstances in which it appears. The difference is not, however, crucial to any of the analyses in the volume. All agree that in the modern world, "freedom" must in large part be understood in the context of democracy.

Crawford Young argues that the colonial powers in Africa, mostly liberal states themselves, necessarily established autocratic systems in their colonies. For Africans, "freedom" came to mean primarily independence from external control. After independence, the leaders of the new states maintained many of the authoritarian elements of the colonial state, justifying limitations on personal freedom by citing the need for order and independence. Groups without strong representation in the state responded in a precolonial fashion by seeking freedom through evading state authority, thus helping to bring about the contemporary crisis of the state in Africa.

William J. Foltz, also writing about Africa, makes similar arguments, emphasizing the extent to which Africans have sought to free themselves from corrupt, but weak, states committed to policies of economic control derived from the colonial era. Stronger states, supporting regimes of freedom defined in democratic terms, are needed, but they will only be able to function if supported by a system of African states cooperating for that purpose.

Gelvin focuses on a legacy of "developmentalism" in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq arising from Ottoman times, strengthened during the period of European rule, and continued by modern authoritarian governments [End Page 134] that restrict personal and economic freedom in pursuit of economic advancement. In a complex and interesting exercise in intellectual history, Kaviraj shows how the discourse of freedom was adapted in India notonly to the varying political needs of Indians under British rule, but also in accord with the cultural frameworks of different Indian communities.

Taylor, comparing Burma and Thailand, and Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet, writing about Vietnam and the Philippines, both attempt to show that authoritarian regimes (the military rulers of Thailand and United States colonial authorities in the Philippines) can sometimes promote relatively free societies if they choose to do so. Sheldon Garon describes how Japan, over time, developed a notion of freedom that closely resembles Western models, whereas Nathan argues that in China, dictatorship itself has created a desire for freedom, although one formulated in terms of a Chinese, not a Western, discourse of community.

 



Woodruff D. Smith
University of Massachusetts, Boston

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