Nationalism in Asia and Africa

Kedourie argues against the prevailing view that Asian and African nationalism was a natural consequence of European exploitation or imperial rule. He instead advances a 'germ theory' explanation: nationalism was a West European doctrine invented in the early nineteenth century and exported to Asia and Africa, where it was adopted by frustrated elites and fused with local religious and cultural resentments . This exported doctrine, he contends, has inflicted on these regions a perversion of their proper destiny, generating resentment, a cult of violence, and a false opposition between European guilt and Asian-African innocence.

The 'germ theory' metaphor, as identified by Kirkus Reviews, describes Kedourie's view that nationalism was a West European 'germ' that infected Asia and Africa through contact with European ideas and institutions . It was not an indigenous response to local conditions or a natural reaction to exploitation, but an imported pathogen. The frustrated elites of colonised societies—educated in European schools and excluded from power—were the carriers who spread the doctrine. Kedourie's introduction also argues that the concept of 'imperialism' as economic exploitation was itself a recent European invention, propagated by European publicists who inculcated guilt in Western audiences .

The twenty-five selections range widely: Adamantios Koraes on Greek civilisation, Ziya Gökalp on Turkish nationalism, Surendranath Banerjea on Indian history, Choudhary Rahmat Ali's 'The Idea of Pakistan,' Edward Blyden on the Negro in ancient history, Cheikh Anta Diop on Ethiopia-Nubia-Egypt, Marcus Garvey, Sun Yat-sen, Frantz Fanon's 'Concerning Violence,' a Mau Mau oath, a messianic creed from the Congo, and Bolshevik position papers by Stalin and Sultan Galiev . Kedourie chose documents that illustrate his themes: nationalism's co-optation of religion, its 'search for a past' to amplify nationalist sentiment, and its glorification of violence .

Reception was sharply divided. A reviewer in The Journal of Modern African Studies found Kedourie's thesis provocative but noted his 'aggrieved hostility' toward Asian and African nationalism, viewing it as a Western import that perverted local destinies . The reviewer also observed that the volume's selections are uneven—Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, and Sukarno are absent or given only brief mention in the introduction . Kirkus Reviews called it 'an odd book, not comprehensive in any sense, but potentially worthwhile for industrious students of history and ideology' . The Times Literary Supplement correspondence between Kedourie and editor Arthur Crook regarding the review survives in the Kedourie papers .

Nationalism in Asia and Africa applies and extends the argument of Kedourie's 1960 monograph to the non-European world. Where the earlier book traced nationalism's philosophical origins to Kantian self-determination and its nineteenth-century European development, the 1970 anthology demonstrates how the same doctrine was exported to Asia and Africa and adopted by local elites. The long introduction develops the 'germ theory' metaphor and engages directly with Marxist and anti-imperialist accounts of Third World nationalism, which Kedourie rejects. The anthology thus serves as both a sourcebook of nationalist writings and a polemical extension of Kedourie's critique.

The most persistent criticism is that Kedourie reduces Asian and African nationalism to a Western import while neglecting the genuine grievances, aspirations, and agency of colonised peoples. The reviewer in The Journal of Modern African Studies argued that Kedourie pays 'too little attention to the simpler thesis that there came a time, under special circumstances well worth exploring, when peoples who had been overrun and subordinated by aliens demanded the right to run their own affairs, whether well or badly' . This critique anticipates later postcolonial scholarship that emphasises the indigenous roots and varied forms of anti-colonial nationalism.