While I was looking for books to borrow for my trip, I saw this and thought it would be a good fit. I might be going to the Near East and the Far East and yes, I am coming from Southeast Asia but all these countries have, in recent times, been heavily influenced by if not defined by the Western Gaze.

Starting from the Roman Empire, Christopher Harding charts the history of the West’s interaction with the East. As we can see, Asia in the general sense has always been “known” to the West (this was also clear from A Traveller’s Guide to the Middle Ages, which I thought was a really good book to read together with The Light of Asia). I thought the belief in the Middle Ages that all spices came from India, and were somehow near the Garden of Eden, as well as the belief in ‘Prester John’, were good examples of how Asia has always been conceived as a relatively exotic place where much good could be derived. In a way, though the West has learned more about Asia through the centuries, I had the sense that the general perception of Asia as somewhere exotic and with hidden knowledge has never really changed, just evolved into different forms.

The book is divided into roughly three sections:

1. Discovering Asia, which is from the Roman times onwards
2. Fathoming Asia, which would be from the 17th century onwards
3. Inward, detailing how both Asians and Westerns “exported” Asian beliefs to a Western audience in the 20th century

Personally, I found the first two sections to be the most interesting. The first section because I had never really known that so much of Asia was known to the Romans and others in the West (although Japan seems to have remained as a somewhat mythical place of cannibals, perhaps because of its island status), and all the information was new and fascinating. The second section because of the extended discussions on how Christian missionaries to Asia dealt with the need to understand the local context and the debate over how much localisation is acceptable before what is taught becomes heresy.

The third section is where my interest dipped a little, because once we go into the twentieth century, Harding chooses to focus on a few prominent figures – Alan Watts, Alan Griffiths, and Erna Hoch are three figures that dominate the chapters. The section almost feels like a collection of mini-biographies and I wasn’t sure if what these people thought and taught could be generalised to how the West viewed the East at that time, although I can see how all these people influenced perceptions of Asian culture.

As the subtitle of the book says, this book is very much “a History of Western Fascination with the East” and as such, the book has to look at things from one side. While the Westerners were pre-occupied with how the East would fit into their understanding of the world and the possibility of salvation from a King in the East who shared their beliefs, what we also saw from trade was “just how marginal Europe was, in these centuries, to a global spice trade whose supply centred on India, Indonesia and Indochina, and whose customer base ranged from small European countries in the west through the vast expanse of Asia.” In other words, this book is necessarily just one part of the whole story. While I did recommend another book that goes well with this, I do hope to one day find a book that tells the same story, but from Asia’s point of view – how we have engaged with the West through the ages and how perceptions have changed. I think it would be interesting to learn that and also see if there’s anything similar or anything wildly different about the way we have viewed one another.

Overall, the Light of Asia was a fascinating look at how the West has engaged with the East/Asia through history and while I look for more books to complement my reading, I am definitely interested in reading more of Harding’s books and his substack.