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Many foreigners have written about India in the distant past. What had they expected and what did they actually fi nd? Indians have never ceased to wonder at the obsession of the western mind with India since antiquity. If you look east it is East Indies; if you look west it is West Indies. On the North American landmass there are Red Indians and there are numerous Indian tribes in South America too. Across a vast unwelcoming land mass, and across choppy seas, people from other lands set out for India. What brought them here and what picture did they have of India before coming and after they had actually come here? This book is based on writings of foreigners, both Western and non-Western, since ancient times. It should be of interest to all those who are interested in learning about this land and its people. It should be of interest to native Indians too who would be enlightened and, sometimes amused, at how people from alien lands looked at them.
What do you think of those Russian brides? What do they think of YOU? International marriages bring a substantial number of newcomers to the US and contribute to the transformation of the basic institution of society the family. When men are from Mars and women are aliens, the marital dynamic can be quite dramatic. A Russian-born journalist, Ms. Popova shines a blinding light on some of the amusing and amazing oddities that are revealed when an outsider takes a blunt look at how we live.
This study probes the complex relationship between nationalism, violence and Buddhism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Burma. Gravers' study brings us to present-day Burma and the struggle by Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for a new Burmese identity. The present volume is a substantially revised and expanded version of the study originally published by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies.
Any reader who has ever visited Asia knows that the great bulk of Western-language fiction about Asian cultures turns on stereotypes. This book, a collection of essays, explores the problem of entering Asian societies through Western fiction, since this is the major port of entry for most school children, university students and most adults. In the thirteenth century, serious attempts were made to understand Asian literature for its own sake. Hau Kioou Choaan, a typical Chinese novel, was quite different from the wild and magical pseudo-Oriental tales. European perceptions of the Muslim world are centuries old, originating in medieval Christendom's encounter with Islam in the age of the Crusades. There is explicit and sustained criticism of medieval mores and values in Scott's novels set in the Middle Ages, and this is to be true of much English-language historical fiction of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even mediocre novels take on momentary importance because of the pervasive power of India. The awesome, remote and inaccessible Himalayas inevitably became for Western writers an idealised setting for novels of magic, romance and high adventure, and for travellers' tales that read like fiction. Chinese fictions flourish in many guises. Most contemporary Hong Kong fiction reinforced corrupt mandarins, barbaric punishments and heathens. Of the novels about Japan published after 1945, two may serve to frame a discussion of Japanese behaviour as it could be observed (or imagined) by prisoners of war: Black Fountains and Three Bamboos.
British Burma in the New Century draws upon neglected but talented colonial authors to portray Burma between 1895 and 1918, which was the apogee of British governance. These writers, most of them 'Burmaphiles' wrote against widespread misperceptions about Burma.
Before the Second World War, two golden 'promised lands' beckoned the thousands of Baghdadi Jews who lived in Southeast Asia: the British Empire, on which 'the sun never set, ' and the promised land of their religious tradition, Jerusalem. Almost Englishmen studies the less well-known of these destinations. The book combines history and cultural studies to look into a significant yet relatively unknown period, analyzing to full effect the way Anglo culture transformed the immigrant Bagdhadi Jews. England's influence was pervasive and persuasive: like other minorities in the complex society that was British India, the Baghdadis gradually refashioned their ideology and aspirations on the British model. The Jewish experience in the lush land of Burma, with its lifestyles, its educational system, and its internal tensions, is emblematic of the experience of the extended Baghdadi community, whether in Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, Singapore, or other ports and towns throughout Southeast Asia. It also suggests the experience of the Anglo-Indian and similar 'European' populations that shared their streets as well as the classrooms of the missionary societies' schools. This contented life amidst golden pagodas ended abruptly with the Japanese invasion of Burma and a horrific trek to safety in India and could not be restored after the war. Employing first-person testimonies and recovered documents, this study illuminates this little known period in imperial and Jewish histories.
Jay Case examines the efforts of American evangelical missionaries, arguing that if they were agents of imperialism they were poor ones. Western missionaries had a dismal record of converting non-Westerners to Christianity.
The story of Christianity in the West has often been told, but the history of Christianity in the East is not as well known. The seed was the same: the good news of Jesus Christ for the whole world, which Christians call "the gospel." But it was sown by different sowers; it was planted in different soil; it grew with a different flavor; and it was gathered by different reapers. It is too often forgotten that the faith moved east across Asia as early as it moved west into Europe. Western church history tends to follow Paul to Philippi and to Rome and on across Europe to the conversion of Constantine and the barbarians. With some outstanding exceptions, only intermittently has the West looked beyond Constantinople as its center. It was a Christianity that has for centuries remained unashamedly Asian. A History of Christianity in Asia makes available immense amounts of research on religious pluralism of Asia and how Christianity spread long before the modern missionary movement went forth in the shelter of Western military might. Invaluable for historians of Asia and scholars of mission, it is stimulating for all readers interested in Christian history. --