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But a detached and well-educated Mongolian surely has an advantage in analyzing modern Mongolian development. In earlier days, so much Chinese analysis was done by western children of missionaries in China, giving them a huge advantage at least linguistically. The fact that outside America and Europe few universities open their doors to permanent slots for non-nationals implies at least the view that they are the best purveyors of their culture, even if the primary motive is more self-serving.
Dr. Chansiri, in any event, is a second-generation Sino-Thai, on one side, and before starting this study already had extensive ties throughout the Sino-Thai world in the kingdom, as well as in the Chinese diaspora, and on the mainland as well. To his analytical skills he could add instinct and affinities. These he has well used in the book we now have before us. Let us not kid ourselves that these are unimportant in penetrating a world that most of us see only darkly.
This is, after all, a topic that has weaved itself in and out of academic fashion over the years. What has been politically correct has evolved too. Time was, for example, when it was (can one believe this was within the lifetime of this writer?) supposed that the “colored problem” in the United States would be solved by assimilation, in the years before “black power” and black pride asserted itself. The issue of assimilation affects all societies and haunts most of them. Japan wants to remain “pure” Japanese but is losing population at a rate that will cause that great power to cease to exist in a few generations, without rapid immigration or new child-bearing incentives. Yet DNA is showing even Japan is hardly pure.
For years, it was a commonplace idea that the genocides in Rwanda and Burundi derived from the sheer differences between the two largest and very different ethnicities. It turns out that much of this simply came about from colonial policy that both groups had been assimilating for centuries—and getting along. So the governing policies used toward different groups matters intensely.
Europeans, of course, for years taunted Americans, who bragged about their “melting pot,” on their failure to accomplish real assimilation. Winston Churchill famously noted that Americans taunting Europeans about colonialism was rather well discounted by the so-called American “negro problem.”