Can you name four of China’s imperial dynasties? Can you put them in chronological order? Which two languages in India have the most native speakers? What is the significance of 1868 in Japanese history? What is the second most popular religion in Indonesia?Alright, now let’s push you a bit. Which is the only south-east Asian country that wasn’t colonised by Europeans? The Imjin War was perhaps the largest anywhere on Earth in the 16th century. Which countries fought it? How many words could you write about the life of the Buddha before exhausting your knowledge? Or of Confucius? Could you blag a paragraph? What was the former’s name? 

This test isn’t — or shouldn’t be — daunting. On the Everest of Asian history, these subjects amount to a dusting of snow. But what share of graduates in the west would get a pass mark? Even among the engagé, the podcast-streaming news addicts, would it be as much as 5 per cent? And how, given the unfolding tale of this century, is such ignorance at all tenable?

Don’t take this column for a cosmopolitan’s lament. It is not a plea for inter-cultural understanding. Nations should privilege the teaching of their own past (and, within reason, gloss it). I just wonder about the strategic wisdom of knowing so little of a continent whose gravitational pull on the west isn’t going to lessen.