An Anthropology of the Northwest Asian Peoples

Original Work
The original work was written by the authors in 2016 and became accidentally popular due to a bet made between a Chinese general and the CEO of AliBaba in the year 2024. Roughly a million copies were printed even before a single piece of advertising went out. The copies languished in a warehouse, un-pulped due to various logistical errors until they found a home in the Chinese Military Academies.

Singapore edition
In a textbook version meant for high school students interested in international relations in Singapore the author argues that dividing European society along national lines further strengthens it, a point repeated in several follow-up editions but not fully emphasized in the one this text has been drawn from. In the most bizarre edition of the book (the 6th edition, only available in limited release) the author argues for a radical method of containment. Unfortunately, I only have anecdotal evidence of the 6th edition, its release apparently only meant for the officer academies of the Chinese military. One can guess at the contents based on the secrecy and the apparent interest from the Chinese government, but what little we know of the containment philosophy emphasizes investment in long-term schemes to reduce the fertility rate of Europine nations dramatically, and to encourage immigration that would supplant several levels of the labor force, including most surprisingly the use of PMCs as a method of weakening the armed forces of these nations.

Translation notes
Although the term used in the title of the book is ‘Northwest Asian Peoples’ it should be noted that much of the book deals with European colonies, spored (again, the use of fungal terminology) mostly from Western Europe - Australia, New Zealand, North and South America. Although the title and original translation of the book use the term ‘Northwest Asian’, we’ve opted for ‘European’ where we can. The author’s main argument for using ‘Northwest Asian’ is the lack of clear boundaries of Europe and a lack of a united polity that ruled it. No empire, foreign or native ruled all of what we today consider Europe.

The original author several times uses a word that would not be ‘European’ but rather something closer to ‘Europine’ or ‘Europesque’. This word is used to refer to all the European ‘spores’ cast forth from the continent originally to re-settle in other areas of the world in the past few centuries. In this book, we will use the word “Europine” to refer to these peoples as it makes for easier reading, though the word Europesque might be closer to the original intent due to the resemblance to the word ‘grotesque’.

The author frequently uses spore and mushroom analogies. The theory is never fully expounded in the original version, but hints are dropped in the various editions that offer some insights. In the Arabic version for Yemen the author makes an argument that European civilization works much like a fungus does - as one part fruits and explodes (through war between factions), it releases spores (refugees and settlers) who go on to other areas and rather than assimilating with the native peoples or creating a syncretistic culture (as would be expected between compatible species), they completely seek to dominate and re-establish contact with the main colony, attracting more spores. This example is visible in the French migration to Algeria. While the original migrants were anti-establishment individuals, their descendants held fiercely to their European identity and sought to serve the very establishment their ancestors fled and fought.

Another theory the author espouses is the idea that Europeans did not venture and explore of their own will, but rather due to the madness induced by syphilis first discovered in the new world. The author offers little evidence beyond the anecdotal for the ubiquity of syphilis in European society (several famous figures, for example), but asserts that the low-grade dementia of syphilis was commonplace in the upper classes of Europe. The author argues this led to the contradictory and nonsensical moral structure that European society is based on, both nationalistic and individualistic, both deeply religious and deeply materialist. Only with the advent of antibiotics were the Europeans cured of their illness, finally adopting humane and civilized norms towards the end of the 20th century. The relict xenophobia and condescension of European society is a testament to the strength of human cultural adherence, and will be much harder to dissolve than the cell walls of a bacterium.

 Translator's reaction

My original reaction to reading this book was aghast horror at the misrepresentation of European history, the glossing over of the Enlightenment period as ‘a superficial period of rhetoric on morality, with little underlying change in motivations - to dominate and control’ but over time I have grown to understand the importance of this perspective. While European ideals contain many laudable notions, modern European society fails to live up to them, a point the author makes as well about his and her native Indian society. We are rarely able to understand our own history as being motivated by our moral ideals, but as the author says we can understand our moral ideals as a ‘gut reaction to the horrors of European history and foreign relations’.

Intended Audience
This work was originally written for a non-Western-educated South Asian audience as a primer on European culture, history and heritage. It was translated pre-release into Chinese, Japanese and Hindi from Telugu. Following its accidental rise to prominence, it has since been translated into over 55 languages, most of them from the subcontinent. The book also received a strong following in Swahili-speaking East Africa, Persian-speaking populations in Iran and Afghanistan (mostly through samizdat) and a limited success in the civilian population of East Asia. Notable among these editions is that English was one of the later languages that the book was translated into - the first edition of this translation being the very first such effort.

Original Intent
Since the original authors are unreachable for comment, it is difficult to tell whether this is meant as a parody of similar publications about Indian culture in European languages - both fiction and non-fiction often accused of portraying one of the most diverse areas of the world in the most exploitative forms, with a particular emphasis on the moral failings, poverty, cruelty and ‘animalistic nature’ of the people with the exclusion of the positive contributions, diversity of attitudes and rich heritage. There are certainly elements of satire within the work, which I will leave to the reader to highlight, since I believe that even the detection of those elements reveals something about one’s personal beliefs. I will upload a list of what I believe were satirical passages up onto my website and I encourage others to do the same. The actual truthfulness of many of the claims within this book is doubtful, but this has done little to dissuade readers or to dampen the book’s popularity. The truth has never hindered the way for a good story, after all.

Original Context
The book is littered with many references to the South Asian, and specifically Indian cultural context. It is difficult to understand this book, and some would say, to understand European or Islamic culture without understanding Indian culture. You must after all, know what air is in order to describe water. I have included to the best of my ability translator’s notes which should serve as adequate cultural context, but in the event that isn’t enough, I highly recommend checking out Appendix A, which contains several short readings on the core elements of Indian culture.

 

In addition, this text helps one understand the full scope of ideology - the very base facts that we’ve taken for granted and we believe are immutable, but are in fact quite flexible and variant throughout human societies. Early Western notions of gender, masculinity and femininity are perfect examples of this principle, which the author does touch on quite a bit. Despite the often-difficult-to-read treatments of European history, where the author makes Europeans sound like animals unable to control their violent, rapist impulses (due to syphilis) and using their flexible morality to evade judgment and punishment, this book is well worth reading for an outsider’s understanding of our society and what we must change in order to live up to the ideals we project and purport to protect.

The author also systematically deconstructs notions of European superiority, but not in a hateful way, calling for vengeance as we’ve seen in the rallying cries of organizations like ISIS (which are themselves deeply influenced by European ideas of chattel slavery and nation state formation), but rather highlighting the importance of telling the story of European civilization from multiple perspectives. Although past (European) scholars of European civilization have often described the spread of European values in terms of agriculture - seed being sown, growing bounty for many, the author describes the spread of European values as viral or fungal - infecting areas - or often as base - describing the European desire for heavy meats, cheeses, and even spices as evidence for the lack of self-reflection Europeans have. Their heavy emphasis on sensory pleasures (and standard-of-living) as a facet of their less-mental, more-physical existence. Certainly, the fact that it took until now for a volume like this to be adopted by a major publisher speaks to the lack of genuine European self-reflection.

 

A note about Anthropology
While the author does seem very well versed in the study of European societies. However, it’s important to remember that as an individual when one experiences another society, one brings not just one’s own biases against the society under investigation but also our own discontent with our own society, the elements of which might exist in our subject society as well. The educated class is the one that writes most about anthropology and so critiques of other societies are based often on the fact that elites of one society write about the peasantry of another.