This chapter deals with Shanghai – once East Asia’s biggest Jewish community. It emphasizes the diversity of the Jewish community, which emerged with the arrival of Baghdadi Jews in the mid-nineteenth century, was invigorated by the arrival of Russian Jews in the early twentieth century and then more than tripled with the influx of refugees from Central and Eastern Europe on the eve of the Pacific War. The chapter tracks the origins of the Jewish settlement in the city, examines the reasons for its rise and decline and explores the emergence of a new community of Jewish professionals and ex-pats during the last three decades.

This chapter explores the life of Jews in Indonesia before and after its independence. Emerging in the nineteenth century, the local Jewish community thrived in small and remote settlements under the rule of Dutch colonialism and reached its apex in 1941 with the influx of European refugees. Many of the Jews were detained during the Japanese occupation and following the country’s independence, the vast majority of them migrated to other countries. Since the Reformation era (1998 onward), however, Indonesia has witnessed the emergence of new Jewish identification whose leaders and motives the chapter examines.

This chapter on Harbin deals with the first city Jews settled in substantial numbers in modern China. Mostly émigrés from Russia, these Jews prospered during the first decades of the twentieth century as Harbin became a main hub for the Trans-Siberian Railway. At its peak, the Jewish community produced as many as twenty newspapers, but with the Japanese occupation of the city in 1932 and even more during the Chinese Civil War, the prosperity ended and the majority of its members left.

This final chapter explores the patchwork state in comparative perspective. It places the uneven state-building trajectories of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in the context of broader South Asia. It then contrasts South Asian patchwork states with dynamics in East and Southeast Asian cases, which had internal differentiation in colonial governance, but also Japanese conquest and postwar revolutionary and counterrevolutionary mobilization. The chapter concludes with the application of fear, greed and frugality in the creation of the British and American Empires, and their consequences in state strength and weakness.

This chapter traces the emergence of ethnic cleavages in the Indonesian archipelago, across three time periods: (1) the early modern period, (2) Dutch rule and Japanese occupation (1596–1945), and (3) Soekarno’s regime (1945–1966). It shows that although Indonesians have been accustomed to diversity along various dimensions over the years, ethnicity became relevant as a basis for mobilization when the ruling authorities allocated resources and treated groups differently along ethnic lines. At times, ethnic groups engaged in violence to challenge their treatment by existing authorities. These precedents for using violence to contest existing political configurations and to renegotiate the boundaries of who is “in” or “out” set the stage for the more recent mobilizations of violence during Indonesia’s democratic transition.

Communist efforts to recruit students and often unsuccessful attempts to tap into the student movement were contingent on GMD education in overseas Chinese schools. The Guomindang promoted Asianist ideas aiming to increase Chinese influence in Southeast Asia, including the idea of a regional International of Nationalities. On one hand, the GMD’s education policies were responsible for the rise of Chinese identification among the locally born Chinese. The rise of Chinese identity among locally born Chinese contributed to increasing the MCP’s popularity among students on the eve of the war and after the start of the Japanese occupation in 1942. On the other hand, the younger generation of Malayan-born Chinese rebelled against GMD indoctrination, which, however, successfully instilled in them identification with China. Both the MCP and the Communist Youth League had similar shortcomings due to the lack of cadres, finances, and knowledge of language. Teachers in Chinese schools, who often had communist views, instilled in their students the “modern” cosmopolitan outlook, which included Western music, arts, and communism.

Structural, contextual, and contingent factors led to the improbable survival of the MCP in the interwar years. When the Japanese invaded Malaya, the MCP’s influence was strongest among the Chinese community. The experience of the Japanese occupation, first in China and then in Malaya, further shaped the territorial notion of Malaya for the MCP, and the Japanese atrocities against the Chinese population resulted in mass support for the party. The MCP’s Malayan nationalism connects with how another Chinese association, the Malayan Chinese Association, credited with the creation of coalition politics in Malaya, embraced the discourse of multiethnic Malayan nationalism after the war. The MCA also led the Malayan nation to liberation in 1957 through a political alliance of ethnic parties, which had first been envisioned by the MCP in 1930. The MCP and the MCA’s efforts ran along parallel tracks. These were the outcome of the Malayan multiethnic environment, British policies, and the localization of Chinese organizations. One cannot fully understand revolution and nationalism either in China or in Malaya except in conjunction with one another.