Preface

Summary

Looking back over the incredible transformation of Asia during the past few centuries, it is easy to see only the big themes of political, military, and technological change and assume that religion was either a historical footnote, or else a relic that the modern world left behind. This book will show the many ways that religious organizations and conflicts, not to mention individual beliefs and convictions, shaped many of the big and small transformations of history, and how they continue to influence policy and society today.

I first taught the content of this book as an undergraduate course at the National University of Singapore, and I should begin by thanking my students for helping me to make connections between places and events that I would not have seen on my own. More than that, they helped me always to keep sight of how interesting this history is, not to mention how relevant it is to problems and events that continue to surface in the news.

I have many people to thank for bringing this book into the world. Marigold Acland at Cambridge University Press read the first proposal (and many subsequent ones) and encouraged me to discover the potential in my as-yet half-cooked ideas. A number of libraries, museums, and temples provided me with the pictures used in this book, often for free.