Essential Outsiders: Chinese and Jews in the Modern Transformation of Southeast Asia and Central Europe(Essential Outsiders)

Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, like Jews in Central Europe until the Holocaust, have been remarkably successful as an entrepreneurial and professional minority. Whole regimes have sometimes relied on the financial underpinnings of Chinese business to maintain themselves in power, and recently Chinese businesses have led the drive to economic modernization in Southeast Asia. But at the same time, they remain, as the Jews were, the quintessential "outsiders." In some Southeast Asian countries they are targets of majority nationalist prejudices and suffer from discrimination, even when they are formally integrated into the nation. The essays in this book explore the reasons why the Jews in Central Europe and the Chinese in Southeast Asia have been both successful and stigmatized. Their careful scholarship and measured tone contribute to a balanced view of the subject and introduce a historical depth and comparative perspective that have generally been lacking in past discussions. Those who want to understand contemporary Southeast Asian and the legacy of the Jewish experience in Central Europe will gain new insights from the book.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Part One. Similarities and Disparities: an Introduction to the Comparison of Entrereneurial Minorities 1. Conflicting Identities and the Dangers of Communalism / Daniel Chirot 2. Entrepreneurial Minorities, Nationalism, and the State / Anthony Reid Part Two. Identity, Choice, and the Reaction to Prejudice among Chinese and Jews 3. Imagined Uncommunity: the Lookjin Middle Class and Thai Official Nationalism / Kasian Tejapira 4. "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility"? How Reasonable was Anti-Semitism in Vienna, 1880-1939? / Steven Beller 5. Jewish Entrepreneurship and Identity under Capitalism and Socialism in Central Europe: The Unresolved Dilemmas of Hungarian Jewry / Victor Karady 6. Anti-Sinicism and Chinese Identity Options in the Philippines / Edgar Wickberg Part Three. The Modernization of Ethnic Perceptions and Conflicts 7. Anti-Sinicism in Java's New Order / Takashi Shiraishi 8. Middleman Minorities and Blood: Is There a Natural Economy of the Ritual Murder Accusation in Europe? / Hillel J. Kieval Part Four. Chinese Businesses in Contemporary Southeast Asia: Are There Parallels? 9. A Specific Idiom of Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia: Sino-Malaysian Capital Accumulation in the Face of State Hostility / K. S. Jomo 10. Ethnicity and Capitalist Development: The Changing Role of the Chinese in Thailand / Gary G. Hamilton and Tony Waters 11. Strengths and Weaknesses of Minority Status for Southeast Asian Chinese at a TIme of Economic Growth and liberalization / Linda Y. C. Lim and L. A. Peter Gosling List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Anthony Reid is professor emeritus of Southeast Asian history at Australian National University. Among his many publications are A History of Southeast Asia (John Wiley & Sons, 2015), To Nation by Revolution: Indonesia in the 20th Century (NUS Press, 2011), and Imperial Alchemy: Nationalism and Political Identity in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2010).