Last Post - The End of Empire in the Far East
by John Keay
John Murray $150
First published a year before the bugler sounded the last post in Hong Kong in 1997, historian John Keay's tour of Britannia's Far East empire takes in the rise and demise of a once-great naval power and the commerce of France, the Netherlands and an emergent US. It would all end quickly following the second world war, with a rush of independent states or, in Hong Kong's case, the return of sovereignty. The timing of this paperback reissue has probably to do with next month's publication of Keay's latest book, Spice Route: A History, a departure from his usual theme of empire and aftermath, as last examined in Sowing the Wind: The Seeds of Conflict in the Middle East (2003). In this edition of Last Post, still eminently readable although becoming somewhat dusty after nearly a decade, Keay offers an all too brief afterword about the commoditisation of colonial past, skips over the call for accountable government in Hong Kong until it actually has something to account for, and dangles China as the next people to consider themselves 'the greatest nation on earth'.
