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ome groups, as we will see in chapter 4, want to be outsiders. Others,
driven by complex motives, want to be insiders, or at least to get inside—
as we’ll see in chapter 3. The distinction between insiderhood and outsi-
derhood is one way to characterize the cultures and polities of Asia as they
relate to one another.
This distinction implies several things: first, that there are some cultural
centers of such power, wealth, and glamour that others either envy (chapter 3)
or fear (chapter 4)—perhaps both at once or at different times. Second, we do
not assume cultures grow on their own in isolation, particularly not in Asia; we
are doubtful that even the most remote and isolated “tribe” is ever truly “undis-
covered.” In fact, all such cases, however celebrated in the press, turn out to be
folk who have fled and are in hiding. Third, we assume that all cultures are
interconnected, perhaps by two or more degrees of separation (remember, the
number of connections between you and anyone else on the planet is said to be
a mere seven). The Uighurs of western China trade with Tibetans who trade
with Hmong—that’s two degrees of separation. Add in a few more, and you
reach the highlands of Irian Jaya in eastern Indonesia or Cairo to the west.
Not all nodes are equal; some are ancient, rich, powerful, and huge. Fore-
most among them, for this book, are India and China. Roots of both go back to
the third millennium B.C.E. Both invented writing systems that have been
loaned to almost all other literate Asian cultures. Both learned to centralize
power in polities with quite different hierarchical and bureaucratic strategies
(see chapters 5 and 7) and to invest power with theatrical splendor sufficient to
convince their populaces of their connections to the gods and to heaven. These
two cultures have been so sufficiently enduring that they withstood centuries of
disintegration and recentralization, of conquest, of epidemic and famine, of
good government and bad. Each now in its contemporary incarnation numbers
over a billion people.
Separated by seas and the highest mountains on the planet, they have dom-
inated their regions, expanded their borders, and absorbed thousands of
smaller groups into their orbit. India’s caste system is almost infinitely elastic;
China’s dominant ethnic group, the Han—now a billion and growing—“not
only absorbed outsiders, it dissolved them” (Gladney 1994). India and China
grew from smallish states in the Indus Valley and along the Yellow River into
the enormous states you see on modern maps, a stop-and-go process that has
taken four millennia but is unlikely to carry on into the future, as smaller states
on their periphery, deeply influenced by them, strengthen their independence.
This “center and periphery” model, however, is far from the complete story, as
the next two chapters attempt to demonstrate.S