ABSTRACT
In 1904, the British, French, Dutch, Portuguese, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and American empires were all represented in East Asia and the Pacific; it was far from clear that of the non-Asian nations, 100 years later, only the USA would remain, let alone be the most powerful of them all. The USA is in effect the last of the great ‘European’ Empires, manifest not necessarily in terms of territorial occupation, but certainly in ‘trading posts’, military bases to defend its interests and the trappings of empire such as extraterritoriality. This ‘empire’ is also one of cultural pre-eminence and an empire of ideas; in the eyes of many Asians, it seems also in some way to be an Anglo-Saxon one.
