The Intellectual Origins of the New Asia

Essayist, journalist and novelist Pankaj Mishra was at Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) September 19, 2012, to discuss his new book From the Ruins of Empire: The Revolt Against the West and the Remaking of Asia. [Please scroll through playlist for this videoclip] Mishra argued that the Victorian period, viewed in the West as a time of self-confident progress, was experienced by Asians as a catastrophe. As the British gunned down the last heirs to the Mughal Empire, burned down the Summer Palace in Beijing, or humiliated the bankrupt rulers of the Ottoman Empire, it was clear that for Asia to recover a vast intellectual effort would be required. Mishra tells the story of a remarkable group of men who crisscrossed Europe and Asia. Incessantly travelling and questioning, they both hated the West while at the same time they recognized that an Asian renaissance needed to be fuelled in part by engagement with the enemy.