Pankaj Mishra

The birth of Israel had an anti-imperialist pedigree. And Palestine is the unfinished business of that process of self-determination.

Two weeks ago, many Western commentators scrambling to interpret the protests in Lhasa found that they did not need to work especially hard. Surely the Tibetans are the latest of many brave peoples to rebel against communist totalitarianism? The rhetorical templates of the Cold War are still close at hand, shaping Western discussions of Islam or Asia.

In the mid-19th century Karl Marx claimed that European colonisers, though corrupt and violent, were the "unconscious tool of history" that would propel India and China into modernity. He described the backward "Asiatic mode of production", defined by the absence of private ownership and the presence of a rigid, centralised form of government that prevents change and modernisation.