Stefan Huebner's Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia is indispensable for any scholar with even a passing interest in the history of sport in Asia. It is also of value beyond that still growing field: Huebner clearly frames his work in an analysis of the implicit civilizing missions of the modern West in Asia and the projects of Asian elites that succeeded them, engaging with larger questions of intersections between Asian and Western formulations of modern society. He chooses, as scholars writing in sports history must often do, to contextualize his approach in a more established field of ideas. We end up with a mixture of James Scott's authoritarian high modernism; Anthony D. Smith's ethno-symbolism; and the concept of “nation-branding,” through which sporting events came to produce teleological narratives of future greatness. This framing is perfectly acceptable—Huebner notes critiques of Scott and skillfully adapts Smith—but perhaps adds more ingredients to an already somewhat overcrowded analytical pot. This is partly explained by the book's scope, which reaches well into the 1970s, thus leaving behind some of the more direct material influences of Christian modernism, such as that embodied in the YMCA though not, crucially, the ideal or aesthetic of morally underpinned pan-Asian modernity.

The agents of this transition are found in various Asian civic elites who began to take the reins of regional sports events in the 1920s while maintaining a pan-Asian focus, if more explicitly and increasingly anti-colonial in form. As Huebner points out, these groups brought in specific interests clearly originating in national identities that offered branching paths away from the externalized regional visions of a united Asia held by Western sporting pioneers. The result was a clash between a continued focus on an egalitarian conceptual framework of a unified Asian identity and competing contents of Asia and Asian nationalism. This clash was exacerbated further in the postwar period, as non-communist Asian states such as the Philippines doubled down on the placement of international conceptions of equality within a Western context, defined by the early 1950s as a historical modern evolution of free society and democracy that excluded communist countries. As the century wore on, these events similarly became subject to specific projects of modernization and development by individual states as a civilizing ideal celebrating amateurism and transcendence of difference gave way to more directed goals of channeling these mega-events into benefiting national projects, from the building of infrastructure to promoting indigenous tourist industries.

The geographical and chronological reach of this work is crucial to its scholarly value, but Huebner does not always succeed in bringing some of the book's most compelling arguments to the forefront; such is his challenge in continuing to match the immediate analyses of his subjects to larger historiographical frameworks of competing ideas between Western and Asian adaptations of modernity. Ultimately he struggles to contain his varied examples into a clear narrative. The chapter on Indian conceptions of an “Asian Renaissance” is excellent, for example, but its connections to the discussions of Filipino discourses of freedom in the postwar (and Cold War) world that follow in the next chapter cause the architecture of this book to creak rather loudly under the weight of the project's larger ambitions. Despite that, the breadth in approach brings more benefits than drawbacks. Though Huebner seems most comfortable discussing East Asia, Southeast Asia features prominently here and chapters on India and Iran are far from afterthoughts.

This scope inevitably leaves invites potential criticism from an array of scholarly constituencies. Huebner rightly demands a place here in larger discussions of the nature of Asian modernity and its connections to Western ideology, but can struggle somewhat in knitting things together. His framework becomes a little unwieldy, and I found myself looking for his introductory and concluding comments to more directly take on issues clearly present in his work, such as the impact of the Cold War on the bifurcation of an appropriated modernist ideal. Other readers may take issue with discussions of colonialism that overlap between Asian societies. Huebner himself is clearly aware of the challenges and ultimate impossibility of searching for and defining a monolithic Asia, as the idea largely informs his conclusion to the book; still, informed readers should be ready to let a chapter or two play out before passing judgment.

Overall, Huebner's ideas have great value, and his individual chapters are impressive. The overarching framework of Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia may prove challenging to parse for those not already confident in handling complex historiographies or familiar with some of the larger historiographical questions in the field centered on origins and practices of modernization across Asia. As a result, the book would perhaps have limited value as an assigned text to larger groups of undergraduates, though it would prove useful to advanced undergraduates working on individual projects. Any reading list at the postgraduate level on the history of sport simply must include this book, and it is well worth your attention when composing or revising lists on questions of modernization in Asia and historiographical discussions of interactions between Western and Asian conceptions of modernity in the twentieth century.