"Originally published in 2012 by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, Great Britain as From the ruins of empire : the revolt against the West and the remaking of Asia"--Title page verso.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 311-340) and index.

Asia subordinated -- Egypt : 'the beginning of a series of great misfortunes' ; The slow battering of India and China ; The new global hierarchy -- The strange odyssey of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani -- An insignificant man in rough garments ; The 'sick man' of Europe and his dangerous self-therapy ; Egypt : the polemicist emerges ; Beyond self-strengthening : the origins of pan-Islamism and nationalism ; The European interlude ; Apotheosis in Persia ; In a golden cage : al-Afghani's last days in Istanbul ; The long aftermath -- Liang Qichao's China and the fate of Asia -- The enviable but inimitable rise of Japan ; The first impulses of reform ; Japan and the perils of exile ; The Boxer Rising : more lessons from defeat ; Pan-Asianism : the pleasures of cosmopolitanism ; Liang and democracy in America ; The temptations of autocracy and revolution -- 1919, 'changing the history of the world' -- The United States and its promises of self-determination ; Liberal internationalism or liberal imperialism? ; Making the world unsafe for democracy ; The decline of the West? -- Rabindranath Tagore in East Asia, the man from the lost country -- Asia remade -- The sting in the tail : pan-Asianism and military decolonization ; Intellectual decolonization : the rise of neo-traditionalists ; The triumphs of the nation-state : Turkey, the sick man, revives ; 'The Chinese people have stood up' ; The rise of the 'rest' -- An ambiguous revenge.

Provides an overview of the great thinkers and philosophical leaders from across Asia who helped change and shape the modern continent, including Tagore and Gandhi in India, Liang Qichao in China and Abdurreshi al Ibrahim in the Ottoman Empire.