Ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia, like Jews in Central Europe until the Holocaust, have been remarkably successful as an entrepreneurial and professional minority. Whole regimes have sometimes relied on the financial underpinnings of Chinese business to maintain themselves in power, and recently Chinese businesses have led the drive to economic modernization in Southeast Asia. But at the same time, they remain, as the Jews were, the quintessential "outsiders". In some Southeast Asian countries they are targets of majority nationalist prejudices and suffer from discrimination, even where they are formally integrated into the nation.

The essays in this book explore the reasons why the Jews in Central Europe and the Chinese in Southeast Asia have been both successful and stigmatized. Their careful scholarship and measured tone contribute to a balanced view of the subject and introduce a historical depth and comparative perspective that have generally been lacking in past discussions. Those who want to understand contemporary Southeast Asia and the legacy of the Jewish experience in Central Europe will gain new insights from the book.

Edited by Daniel Chirot and Anthony Reid

Acknowledgments
Part One. Similarities and Disparities: an Introduction to the Comparison of Entrereneurial Minorities
1. Conflicting Identities and the Dangers of Communalism / Daniel Chirot
2. Entrepreneurial Minorities, Nationalism, and the State / Anthony Reid
Part Two. Identity, Choice, and the Reaction to Prejudice among Chinese and Jews
3. Imagined Uncommunity: the Lookjin Middle Class and Thai Official Nationalism / Kasian Tejapira
4. "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility"? How Reasonable was Anti-Semitism in Vienna, 1880-1939? / Steven Beller
5. Jewish Entrepreneurship and Identity under Capitalism and Socialism in Central Europe: The Unresolved Dilemmas of Hungarian Jewry / Victor Karady
6. Anti-Sinicism and Chinese Identity Options in the Philippines / Edgar Wickberg
Part Three. The Modernization of Ethnic Perceptions and Conflicts
7. Anti-Sinicism in Java's New Order / Takashi Shiraishi
8. Middleman Minorities and Blood: Is There a Natural Economy of the Ritual Murder Accusation in Europe? / Hillel J. Kieval
Part Four. Chinese Businesses in Contemporary Southeast Asia: Are There Parallels?
9. A Specific Idiom of Chinese Capitalism in Southeast Asia: Sino-Malaysian Capital Accumulation in the Face of State Hostility / K. S. Jomo
10. Ethnicity and Capitalist Development: The Changing Role of the Chinese in Thailand / Gary G. Hamilton and Tony Waters
11. Strengths and Weaknesses of Minority Status for Southeast Asian Chinese at a TIme of Economic Growth and liberalization / Linda Y. C. Lim and L. A. Peter Gosling
List of Contributors
Index