Author:Sterling Seagrave
Be so subtle that you are invisible. Be so mysterious that you are intangible. Then you will control your rivals's fate'
Sun Tzu, from The Art of War
A community of fifty five million expatriates. Up to two trillion dollars in assets. A highly integrated interconnected network of influence and favour. A firm base on the Pacific Rim. Ambitions to influence the West. Imagine the potential power of such an organisation. You don't have to. This is the Overseas Chinese.
Sterling Seagrave's brilliant new book, Lords of the Rim, uncovers a complex web of operations which already dominates the Far East and which is already making inroads into the West. It is a superbly researched and spectacularly told account of an extraordinary phenomenon, telling just who the Overseas Chinese are and how they became so powerful. Spanning thousands of years it encompasses stories of murder and betrayal, bravery and corruption; of triads, syndicates, kingmakers, merchants, emperors, generals, spies and pirates.
In telling this masterful and entertaining history, Seagrave provides the reader with a cautionary tale: that Chinese strategies so effective for centuries are just as succesful today.
A gripping, argument-led history ... dazzling ... here, at last, is a work that places the current crisis in a longer history of seismic shifts in the balance of social power
—— Frank Trentman , BBC History MagazineStimulating ... In illustrating these larger processes of caste conflict and caste collaboration, the author offers crisp portraits of entrepreneurs, economists and warriors ... Sparkling prose and ... arresting comparisons
—— Ramachandra Guha , Financial TimesConcise but extremely ambitious ... well worth pondering and reflecting on ... among the many contributions to the dissection of our current predicament, this is surely one of the most thought-provoking
—— Sir Richard J Evans , GuardianLively and opinionated
—— EconomistAn intriguing way of analysing society ... This is a refreshing description of society, and a thought-provoking one ... it a real attempt to break out of established ways of thinking, and should be applauded
—— Mail on SundayDiverting and provocative
—— Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday TimesVery readable ... [Priestland's] studies of Communism have given him an enviable grasp of 19th- and 20th-century developments across the globe, and he writes with such verve ... Priestland casts an intriguing glimmer of light on what may be ahead
—— Independent Radar Book of the WeekGrippingly narrated… Has the feel of a definitive work
—— Julian Borger , GuardianRichly colourful and wittily observed
—— Dominic Sandbrook , Sunday TimesAbsorbing
—— Daily MailA glorious read!
—— MojomumsHighly readable and illuminating ... Mishra's analysis of Muslim reactions is particularly topical
—— David Goodall , TabletEnormously ambitious but thoroughly readable, this book is essential reading for everyone who is interested in the processes of change that have led to the emergence of today's Asia
—— Amitav Ghosh , Wall Street JournalSophisticated ... not so much polemic as cri de coeur, motivated by Mishra's keen sense of the world, East and West, hurtling towards its own destruction
—— Tehelka, New DelhiOutstanding ... Mishra wears his scholarship lightly and weaves together the many strands of history into a gripping narrative ... The insights afforded by this book are too many to be enumerated ... Mishra performs a signal service to the future - by making us read the past in a fresh light
—— The Hindu, New Delhi[Full of] complexity and nuance
—— Mail TodaySubtle, erudite and entertaining
—— Financial ExpressMishra allows the reader to see the events of two centuries anew, through the eyes of the journalists, poets, radicals and charismatics who criss-crossed Europe and Asia
—— Free Press JournalA vital, nuanced argument ... prodigious
—— Mint
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