Short Bibliography

Dr Alison Broinowski, formerly an Australian diplomat, has written and edited nine books about the interface between Australia and Asia. She is a Visiting Fellow at ANU and UNSW, a Council member of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (NSW) and a member of the Orientalists Society of Australia. She lectures in Macquarie University’s Masters program in International Relations. Her most recent book, with James Wilkinson, is The Third Try: Can the UN Work? (Scribe, 2005). Her forthcoming book, Allied and Addicted (Scribe, 2007) considers the Australian-American alliance.

Is there an Asian Renaissance?

Among the ideas that all peoples seem to share, beyond societal boundaries, one is of particular interest to Oriental scholars: the rebirth of individuals and civilizations. The idea of Asian renaissance or revival became a rallying cry and a source of national pride in countries resisting European imperialism in the late 1800s; it was used by Japan to claim leadership of Asia in the 1930s; India and Indonesia invoked it in the 1950s in the cause of Afro-Asian non-alignment; Southeast Asian countries picked it up in the 1980s. Whether there is an Asian renaissance, and whether it resembles its European namesake, or not, influential Asian thinkers have not given up on the renaissance theme. The paper considers the claims of several of them that the 21st century is the century of Asia, and considers ways in which that may or may not turn out to be true.