Asian Caucasian Books

I am a Georgian living in the US and I am quite offended by the ignorance of Georgian history portrayed by the reader from Germany. Georgian peoples have existed in the South Caucasus for millenia. Archeological findings have shown that Kartvelian, Svan, and Mingrelian tribes, who are Georgian peoples (Kartvelian =

After the invention of a national script, c.400 AD, Armenians rapidly developed their own literary forms, drawing on foreign texts as well as their own traditions. Historical writing is the most original genre in classical and medieval Armenian literature. Greek works (including the Chronicle of Eusebius, now lost in Greek but preserved in Armenian) constituted the major part of translated histories. But in the thirteenth century the extensice Chronicle of the Syrian Patriarch Michael and the first part of the Georgian chronicles were adapted for an Armenian readership. The collection known as the 'Georgian Chronicles' was finally codified in the eighteenth century and represents only a small part of Georgian historical writing. The thirteenth century Armenian version is in fact the earliest attestation of this growing corpus of texts, predating all extant Georgian manuscripts of it. This book presents the two texts, Georgian and Armenian, in English translation for the first time. The Introduction and Commentary draw attention to the ways in which the unknown Armenian translator changed his original material in a pro-Armenian fashion. His rendering became the standard source for early Georgian history used by later Armenian historians. The book includes a useful overview of the background to the chronicles, the history and culture of Christian Georgia and Armenia, and their respective languages and literature.

(i could not give a ZERO star since the system did not allow it)
WOW, incredible,

yes it IS a rewrite of history... I am German and in our schools we read many history books, and none of them have claimed the Georgians to have existed before the armenians, it was the opposite, considering the fact that the #1 comes before #2, logic implies that Ur/Armenos/Hayasa, as this is what they were called in the BC timespan existed and the Georgians didnt, the Armenians had a language, but the Georgians didnt even exist yet. as it is writen by not only Greek and Roman historians but of Original Arabic decent historians from that time period, whose books were not burned and distroyed, they were preserved in their countries.

The Armenian language has been studied by anthropoligists, historians, lingists, and other academic scholars from Germany, England, America, and so on... however the Georgian language is one that they adapted FROM the Armenians...

This book would be in the same category to a book about how Hitler was actually attacked by the Jews and not the opposite... does that make sence? no it does not... therefore this book is untrue, it is a falsity, and it is a discrace that someone took the time to attempt to discredit the entire world...

Please read books by French historians, American anthropoligists, and German Linguists, from all of the different views you will only come up with one conclusion, they all state that the Armenians and their language are one of the oldest and purest languages and culture (unmixed and unadapted from others)

Please dont be swayed by some minority of people's who attempt on a daily basis to distort the history of the entire European and American countries.

I say to the person who wrote this book, how about try your attempts on the Greeks. say that the Greeks adapted your language? wait you cannot since they lived much before you did, but that is the same case with the Armenians, they lived much before you did. The Armenians and the Greeks lived as rulers in the same time period.

Danka

The range of recepies offered in the book is great, but a lot of the recepies are misclassified by country/culture. Also, in the introduction part, and the part describing the history of the region, some facts are misrepresented.

I'm happy I bough the book. Not just for the food but it also gives the best decription of the region and a great run down through the history.

Knowing the region described in the book quite well, as I am from that region, AND reading this book, I was surprised with the way author (who is a historician !!!) puts the outdated information about the certain countries of the region and their cuisines. Seing the map with the wrong names/borders in the book was just shocking!!! The author have not done enough research on INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED facts on the region, it's history and geopolitics, and therefore is misrepresenting the region and may actually be offencive for the people like me, who grew up in that region.

The names of some culinary dishes are misperperented and misclassified, too.

Instead of spending money on this book, I'd recommend searching the information available online, where you can find more truthfull and up-to-date informaiton, and a variety of recipes for free!

What a great looking book. My mouth watered as I looked at the cover.

Kay Shaw Nelson is a student of Russian studies - thereby someone who really did research in the countries that this book covers and not just a compiler of other people's information. She even gives some reviews of places to eat in-country! She did a nice job of including literary references and short stories about some of the dishes. I'm no chef and I was able to make most of the items with ease. The tasks are easy to follow and replacements for some ingredients not easily found outside of the Caucasus are included.

Caucasus food has great flavor and uses herbs and spices masterfully. It is healthy and tasty. There are many vegetarian options as well.

Some of my favorites: page 165 rice-filled tomatoes, page 203 lavash (this actually tasted like lavash!), page 256 tan, page 42 cucumber-yogart dip, page 79 green beans and eggs.

Gerald Horne makes point-by-point case to demonstrate how Japan psychologically represented non-whites in the Second World War against the whites and hence the war was nothing but a Race War - the name of the book. Horne has done a splendid job in interpreting events of history and rightly pointed out that U.S. propaganda essentially saw Second World War as a fight to resist a defeat in the hands of Asiatic people (for learning more on this issue, I will recommend John Dower's War without mercy: race & power in the Pacific war). Horne's thesis is not over-simplification of the history of the Second World War rather he fixed it. He has in fact straightened up all the tortuous arguments and cases made by the Western historians and exposed their hypocrisy of highlighting moral and heroic roles played by the U.S. to deter Japanese aggression.

There are several new things to learn from the book. First, why the Africans then living in U.S. mentally aligned themselves with Japanese and how FBI and U.S. propaganda machinery was trying to deal with this issue. It was good to know that Jessie Owens was shown a great deal of respect by the Nazis, contrary to the popularly held notion by the Americans that he was disrespected and ignored. Also, his demonstration of the fact that most of the Chinese residing in Singapore and Hong Kong colluded and sides with the advancing Japanese army simply because they just hated British oppression and inhuman subjugation is again something many Chinese need to know. Japanese strategy was to attack European and American imperialism by invading colonial bases in Asia-Pacific and drive them out which the colonized people viewed as liberation. I think, Horne has successfully got his message through that Japanese had not just wanted to liberate the Asian people from white oppression but also give the Asians a psychological and moral booster that whites are not invincible. In this process Japan had also liberated the whites from a superstitious mindset of white supremacy, which the westerners should thankfully accept.

This is an interesting topic, since very few people before Horne wrote directly and exhaustively about it. Nevertheless, Horne's conclusion is largely unfounded basing on what really happened in history. Horne essentially argued that it was one successful Japanese campaigne after another that finally mentally liberated the colonized peoples of Asia from being psychologically and spiritually subjugated by the White man. This actually is quite untrue. Japan had *already* established itself as militarily equal to, if not superior to, any Western power *in the region* by 1905. Not only did the Western nations at that time acknowledged it, they based their policies on the assumption that the Japanese Empire was their equal. This is evidenced by the way they acquiesced to almost all Japanese demands in the Versailles Conference after the Great War. This, together with the fact that Japan had already established itself as a colonial empire (over Korea and Taiwan), placed Japan squarely within the camp of the family of imperialist nations (though I grant you that the West recognized Japan as equal only reluctantly.)

Aside from overstating the impact of the 1941 invasion, the author also ignored the fact that most Asian peoples (the educated elites, say, in Hong Kong anyways) were aware of horrendous Japanese atrocities committed in Korea and China prior to the invasion. This is especially true in Hong Kong, where most of the upper class families had relations in the Japanese-invaded mainland. So they did not really have much of an anti-colonialism excuse. They had been compradors for the British in the past, and not they're merely switching masters. Racial tension and hatred against the White man played a relatively minor role.

Another thing the author failed to mention was how almost right after the Japanese invaded most SE Asian colonies, the ordinary people, who initially did buy in to the Japanese anti-Western propaganda, became aware of the tyrannical character of the Japanes occupation. How could they had not! Japanese sentinels was authorized to bayonet any "local" who failed to bow to the Imperial Japanese Army standard. Regardless of how people feel about race or racial relation pre-war, this probably was too much even for the most vehement anti-colonial activist to swallow, and most of them, Gen. Aung San for instance, organized anti-Japanese guerilla cells immediately.

I think the problem with the author is that he has been projecting our own experience in the United States into a wholy different historical arena. East Asia in 1930 is different from Postbellum America. Psychologically, most Asian peoples paid (and still pay) much more attention to kinship, ethnicity and nationality than to race. Race itself is a European-American construct, developed in late 19th century by pseudo-scientists of European (mostly German) and American origins. There is not a single country on the surface of Earth that was, is and tragically perhaps will be as race-conscious as the U.S., and it is plainly wrong to project the American mental frame onto what happened in 1940 Asia. As the reviewer below noted: ask any Chinese or South East Asian how they feel about the Japanese invaders and the American/British colonialists respectively, and you'll hear an entirely different story. The grudge against the Japanese Imperial forces is just so much more venomous. This makes sense, since after all the British and American had never bayonet and rape at will. And in light of the raping, looting and killing the Japanese had been doing, being blond-haired and blue-eyed just didn't mean much to the Asian peoples.

This books fulfils the author's self-serving anti-western political agenda as it completely refuses to acknowledge the purpose and outcome of Japan's purported 'liberation' (ask anyone in South Vietnam what it means to be 'liberated') of Asia. The Japanese needed the Europeans out solely so they could continue their own barbaric imperialism plans. While the Japanese may have had some local sympathizers, these individuals contributed nothing to the Japanese overthrow of their 'oppressors' and quickly found that the Japanese had no more respect for them than their European 'masters' did and butchered Chinese wherever they could find them. The Germans were the great liberators in the Baltic States and we all know how that turned out. With regard to Thailand, it is a well known fact that they have never put up any resistance to any invader.
I traveled Asia extensively inthe 80's and so many times when I met older people who asked me where I was from, the first thing they would say after I told them America was " You saved us from the Japanese". After all those years and so many times...

The basic treatise here is that because the White colonialists were racist against Asians the Japanese were able to make allies out of those same suppressed people against the United States and England. Unfortunately this is patently untrue. The Japanese themselves were the ones obsessed with Race as they invaded half of Asia to create a `co-prosperity sphere'. Of course the only people meant to prosper were the Japanese. Far from `turning racism on its head' the Japanese were far more imperious to the people they conquered then the U.S and English had ever been. In fact millions of Koreans, Indians, Thais, and Philippines were enslaved, raped and murdered during the war, not by the Americans(who they viewed as liberators) but by the Japanese occupation forces. In China, especially at Nanking, the Japanese entered into a war of extermination against the Chinese. Why? Well the patently racial doctrines convinced the soldiers that the enemy was `inferior' and this key point is missed in the text.

This books argument must be taken to task for it ignores the facts. The reading here doesn't fully explain the true affects that `racism' had on the Japanese mind set prior to the war. The Japanese didn't set out to `payback' the Europeans, rather they took the racial doctrines to heart and simply adopted them. In the end it was the Japanese offensive that used race as a motivator rather then the U.S and England. How else can one explain why all the nations of Asia viewed the Americans as liberators?

Seth J. Frantzman