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355THE POLITICS OFHYPERTEXTeurocentrism of most colonial and postcolonial scholarship omits centralfacts in the history of the colonized:Though the field of postcolonial studies is focused on Euro-christian imperialism andcolonialism, the spread of lslam into Africa (and Europe) by Arabs of the Arabianpeninsufa constitutes a colonization enterprise whose beginnings predate that ofEurope and whosefforts have proved equally enduring. lt is a failure of postcolonialtheory, and further proof of its Eurocentrism, that it ignores this major dimensionofhistory. (26)European, much less the British, projects of colonial expansion did not, inother words, take the form of alinear, isolate d nanaltve. Take this history ofSouth and Southeast Asia as an example of imperial complexities. In theeighteenth century the Burmese, whom Western iournalists often quaintlyand condescendingly characterize as a gentle people, had maior imperialambitions that resulted in war with Thailand and the consequent destructionof the great Thai capital of Sukothai (which prompted the later foundingof Bangkok as a new capital). The Burmese, who wished to expand towardIndia, collided with the British who were trying to protect their trade routes.The British had no particular interest in colonizing Burma, but its imperialambitions led to three Anglo-Burmese wars, in each of which the Burmeselost more territory. My point is that one has to krrow something about the layered,often confusing local history of a nation to write with any authorityabout its colonial and postcolonial identities.This essential need for both comparative and historical knowledge appearswhen studying Soviet Russia and its former colonies, which representyet another crucial part of the story missing from most postcolonial studies.According to Dickens, Finland and the Baltic states-Estonia, Lithuania, andLatvia-"finally shook offcolonial rule in 1917. By the end of World War II,only Finland remained a free country and has flourished ever since. Theother three were once again swallowed up until 1991 by the Soviet Union'Surely here again there are fruitful comparisons to be drawn and lessons tobe learnt for newly independent states in Africa and Asia." The creation ofnew national identities for themselves remains a fundamental problem forsuch decolonized nations.These post-soviet attempts to create the sense and identity of a nationobviously bear some interesting parallels to the situationin Africa and Asia,but many of these Eastern bloc postcolonialists emphasize significant differencesbetween the British and Soviet empires. For example,in Impeiol Knowledge:Russian Literature ond Coloniolism, Ewa Thompson claims that Soviet-