Makers of Modern Asia. Edited by Ramachandra Guha. Belknap Press; 385 pages; $29.95 and £22.95. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

THE cliché of the “Asian century” is usually presented as an economic argument: that the startling growth of a number of Asian countries is shifting the centre of gravity of the global economy to the continent where the bulk of its people live. But, argues an Indian historian, Ramachandra Guha, in the introduction to this entertaining and illuminating collection of essays, “the politics matters just as much as the economics.” Modern Asia is of course also the result of the anti-colonial movements, wars and revolutions of the previous century. The justifiable conceit behind the book Mr Guha has edited is that a good way to understand this is to look at the national leaders thrown up by the tumult.

The strength of the idea lies in the 11 leaders it covers and the expertise of the writers assembled to tell their extraordinary stories. They range from Mr Guha himself on Gandhi (pictured right with Jawaharlal Nehru), an ascetic apostle of non-violence, to Rana Mitter on Mao Zedong, responsible for more deaths than perhaps any other modern leader. Yet, as Mr Mitter notes, these two share the distinction of being among the very few non-European leaders to achieve global brand-name status in the 20th century. Three other Chinese leaders are included. Two of them, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, made their names by not being Mao. Zhou kept his reputation as a moderate who had tempered Mao’s excesses; Deng doffed his cap to Mao but dismantled virtually everything he stood for. The final Chinese “maker”, Chiang Kai-shek, ended up in exile, founding one of Asia’s great success stories in Taiwan.

Mr Guha also includes two more Indians, Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi. She remains an important figure if only because the dynastic obsession that has ruined Congress, her father’s party, started with her. Vietnam’s independence leader, Ho Chi Minh, was an obvious choice. So, given the intellectual influence he has wielded far beyond Singapore, was Lee Kuan Yew, the sole subject still alive. For Indonesia, the founding president, Sukarno, too, is a pivotal figure, though his successor, Suharto, ruled far longer and arguably casts a longer shadow over the country today. Mr Guha justifies the choice of the 11th leader, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan, over the nation’s founder, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, by denying that Jinnah’s legacy matters today. Well, except in the country’s very existence.

Telling Asia’s story through its leaders has its limitations. Japan, for example, failed to produce a leader who is remembered today, and it appears in the book only within the context of other Asian countries. Yet, as Mr Guha notes, Japan was central to the Asian story as its first industrial nation, and the first to win a war against a European power. Korea is also absent. Mr Guha dismisses Park Chung-hee, who began South Korea’s economic miracle, as a modernising dictator in the style of Mr Lee. He appears not to have considered Kim Il Sung, the dictator thanks to whom North Korea has yet to escape the worst of 20th-century politics.

On the other hand, the chapters on Sukarno, by James Rush, and on Bhutto, by Farzana Shaikh, are exceptional. They highlight some common themes. All the leaders were shaped by what Mr Rush calls “the same large forces” of global imperialism. Yet they derived many of their ideas from Western thinkers: Marx, of course; Lenin, especially, in China and Vietnam; but also Tolstoy (Gandhi) and even Napoleon (Bhutto). And though many are seen in retrospect as towering leaders, most, like politicians everywhere, spent their careers preoccupied with threats to their own power, fending off the attacks of forgotten political rivals. Many of them also had problems institutionalising the revolutions they had led, so their passing or political downfall led to instability.

None of this, however, is unique to “Asian” leaders. The sheer size and diversity of the continent gives the book a slightly random feel. The disparities between Mr Guha’s 11 portraits, however well written and however important their subjects, makes it hard for the reader to trace a coherent “Asian” thread linking the chapters. This is, of course, a problem that faces many anthologies. It is also a problem that confronts Asia, as it searches for regional integration and common values and identities that will make the idea of the “Asian century” more than simply a cartographic observation.