1368: China and the Making of the Modern World by Ali Humayun Akhtar

Abstract

the fields of immigration and Asian American history due in no small part to Jin’s polished writing skills. His combination of clear historical description, context, and analysis with just the right amount of sociological and interpretive language helps to make book both readable and informative. The endnotes and bibliography demonstrate his significant bilingual and transnational research of primary, secondary, and popular source material. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless is not simply a study of a marginalized immigrant group “caught between two worlds.” It portrays a diverse people who had to exercise considerable initiative to navigate multiple social, legal, national, and geopolitical contexts. Although complex factors, such as racism in the American West and the deteriorating geopolitical relations between Japan and the United States, affected the Nisei immigrants as a group, Jin demonstrates that they were more than capable of making decisions on an individual basis whenever the opportunity arose. On a broader scale, the Nisei Japanese experience is directly related to the issues of racism, immigration, imperialism, and war that are fundamental in any discussion of twentieth-century history.