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t midnight, June 30, 1997, at a carefully selected gathering at the
brand-new Hong Kong Exhibition Centre, Prince Charles gave a brief
speech and the Union Jack was drawn down. The red flag of the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China was hoisted, Jiang Zemin gave an equally brief speech,
and the ceremony was over. Prince Charles, ex-governor Chris Patten, and his
wife and daughters boarded the royal yacht and sailed out of Victoria Harbor.
The British Empire and the period of European colonialism were truly over.
Looking back from the vantage point of the present, it is hard to imagine that
colonialism could ever have happened at all.
One of the great mysteries of the colonial era is how a small group of trad-
ers, adventurers, soldiers, and missionaries from a handful of small European
nations 10,000 miles away could have come to dominate nearly every Asian
nation. There is a perception about the beginning of the colonial period that
when the first galleons and schooners full of energetic merchants from Europe’s
advanced societies appeared in harbors and deltas, they encountered Asian
nations economically adrift under sluggish skies, limited by subsistence econo-
mies and weak trade only in luxury goods. Having “discovered” the East—
places with names like the Spice Islands, Hindoostan, and Cathay—the Euro-
pean nations soon transformed them, first with trade, later with direct colonial
intervention that, whatever its evils, at least served to provide modern infrastruc-
tures for transportation, communication, education, and medicine. In this tell-
ing of the story, the initiatives, the dynamism, the innovations, and the
perspective are all European. If it could truly be said that colonialism set in place
infrastructures that would promote economic growth and competitive advantage
in the world system, then the economic dynamos of the present period should be
Jakarta, Calcutta, Saigon, and Rangoon. That it is, in fact, Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul,
Singapore, Hong Kong, Guangdong, and Shanghai that are the economic
strongholds makes even the silver lining of colonialism look implausible.
This final chapter attempts to summarize the nature of the colonial impact
on the regions we have been examining. What was the state of trade and inter-
national relations prior to the European intervention? Why did the Europeans
come at all? Could the British have acquired their empire in a “fit of absent-
mindedness,” as they sometimes like to put it, or if not, how and why? Which
nations came under external control? Which nations escaped? Why? And
finally, how were things left when the last colonial administrators packed their
bags and went home to retirements in England, France, and Holland? (The
Americans didn’t “go home” to quite the same degree.)
These are far too many questions for the space remaining, and in any case,
no definitive answers could be provided, even with space enough and time. For
now, in the historical period known as “postcolonialism,” all the old issues are
A