Escaping Kakania: Eastern European Travels in Colonial Southeast Asia

Escaping Kakania explores the fascinating stories of soldiers, doctors, scientists, writers, and painters who traveled from their eastern European homelands to colonial Southeast Asia, offering diverse perspectives and narratives that complicate colonial and postcolonial notions of "Europe," "East," and East-West distinctions.

Format: Hardback
Length: 374 pages
Publication date: 30 April 2024
Publisher: Central European University Press

Escaping Kakania is a captivating exploration of fascinating characters—soldiers, doctors, scientists, writers, and painters—who embarked on journeys from their eastern European homelands to colonial Southeast Asia. Through the lens of experts from various countries in these regions, the book presents a diverse range of perspectives and narratives that shed light on the multifaceted experiences of these travelers. The 14 chapters delve into the diverse encounters of eastern Europeans with the many faces of colonial southeast Asia, offering a critical re-evaluation of their "semi-peripheral" involvement in colonialism. The travelers, like the chapter authors, traversed two regions that were off-center, in-between, shiftingly "Eastern," and disorientingly heterogeneous, challenging colonial and postcolonial notions of "Europe," "East," and East-West distinctions. They navigated among a multitude of peoples, races, and empires, Occidents and Orients, fantasies of the Self and the Other, and adopted/adapted/mimicked/rejected colonialist identities and ideologies. Their unique perspectives and experiences offer a fresh and insightful look at the complexities of colonialism and its impact on both eastern Europe and southeast Asia. The book invites readers to see these regions through a new lens, just as the travelers themselves did, and to gain a deeper understanding of the diverse and multifaceted histories of these regions.

Weight: 684g
Dimension: 159 x 236 x 27 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9789633866658