The Blight Of Asia

The Blight of Asia contains first-hand accounts of the Christian massacres which took place in Turkey and Greece during the early 20th century. George Horton worked in the Diplomatic Corps of the United States, and was posted to Greece and the Ottoman Empire for most of his career as a diplomatic attache. Working across several offices in what is now Turkey and Greece, he witnessed the chaotic fall of the Ottoman government - a period in which great numbers of people were killed by Islamists for their ethnicity and their faith. The grim accounts of continuous, sustained persecution of Christian peoples in various cities and districts spares no detail. Horton felt repulsed by the often Medieval-toned barbarism and inhumanity of the killings; the 'Blight of Asia' is Horton's shorthand term for the horrors unleashed by the Ottoman Empire during its final years. Partly biographical, this memoir charts Horton's life in the different diplomatic offices. After introducing the book with historical mentions of earlier killings, the detailed main body of work - inclusive of sometimes horrifying eyewitness accounts dating from 1909 onward - is presented to the reader. Horton was catapulted to fame for authoring this book. His systematic method, which details the various massacres of Christians in Asia Minor and Greece during the early 20th century, is eloquent, civilized and composed in the face of terrible inhumanity. Perhaps the worst single event was the Great Fire of Smyrna in September 1922, wherein many thousands of people were immolated in the maelstrom. Some modern scholars, such as Biray Kolluoglu Kırlı and Peter M. Buzanski, have criticized what they perceive as Horton's anti-Turkey bias, noting his ideological opinions and the fact his wife was Greek. However, The Blight of Asia remains one of the most influential and important sources regarding these bloody episodes in Turkish and Greek history.

The Bible's influence on the West has received much more attention than its complex career in the East. R. S. Sugirtharajah's expansive study of Asia's idiosyncratic relationship with the Bible tells of missionaries, imperialists, and reformers who molded Biblical texts in order to influence religion, politics, and daily life from India to China.

(Continued). "Each author examines an unnoticed moment--a single year or decade--that redefined Asia in some important way. Heide Walcher explores the founding of the Safavid dynasty in the crucial battle of 1501, while Peter C. Perdue investigates New World silver's role in Sino-Portuguese and Sino-Mongolian relations after 1557. Victor Lieberman synthesizes imperial changes in Russia, Burma, Japan, and North India in the seventeenth century, Charles Wheeler focuses on Zen Buddhism in Vietnam to 1683, and Kerry Ward looks at trade in Pondicherry, India, in 1745. Nancy Um traces coffee exports from Yemen in 1636 and 1726, and Robert Hellyer follows tea exports from Japan to global markets in 1874. Anand Yang analyzes the diary of an Indian soldier who fought in China in 1900, and Eric Tagliacozzo portrays the fragility of Dutch colonialism in 1910. Andrew Willford delineates the erosion of cosmopolitan Bangalore in the mid-twentieth century, and Naomi Hosoda relates the problems faced by Filipino workers in Dubai in the twenty-first.

Jesus in the sutras, stele, and suras -- The heavenly elder brother -- A Judean jnana-guru -- The non-existent Jesus -- A Jaffna man's Jesus -- Jesus as a Jain tirthankara -- An Upanishadic mystic -- A minjung messiah -- Jesus in a kimono -- Conclusion: Our Jesus, their Jesus