Was that an apology for persecution and torture?

The Faithful and the Faithless

Too much credit to the Japanese Shogunate?

Would Anderson defend General Aussaresses, an important figure in the French use of torture, though not so much punitive as investigative, to deal with the Algerian FLN?

(The General was punished by the French Republic, staunch defender of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, not for using torture but for defending its use in a book.)

Or does he mean to defend the supposed aim of the Japanese, though not their methods?

Were the missionaries then, and are missionaries now, somehow in the wrong?

Come to that, does Anderson himself see Christian missionaries as colonialists or imperialists?

They were neither, though of course they were protected by both.

No free speech for them, and no free exercise?

How does Anderson see Western efforts to impose contemporary Western values - women's, gay, and LGBT rights, for example - on non-Western societies?