Bharat Rakshak

The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949

S C M Paine;
American Council Of Learned Societies

The Wars For Asia, 1911-1949 Shows That The Western Treatment Of World War Ii, The Second Sino-japanese War, And The Chinese Civil War As Separate Events Misrepresents Their Overlapping Connections And Causes.

The Long Chinese Civil War Precipitated A Long Regional War Between China And Japan That Went Global In 1941 When The Chinese Found Themselves Fighting A Civil War Within A Regional War Within An Overarching Global War. The Global War That Consumed Western Attentions Resulted From Japan's Peripheral Strategy To Cut Foreign Aid To China By Attacking Pearl Harbor And Western Interests Throughout The Pacific On December 7-8, 1941.

S. C. M. Paine Emphasizes The Fears And Ambitions Of Japan, China, And Russia, And The Pivotal Decisions That Set Them On A Collision Course In The 1920s And 1930s. The Resulting Wars - The Chinese Civil War (1911-1949), The Second Sino-japanese War (1931-1945), And World War Ii (1939-1945) - Together Yielded A Viscerally Anti-japanese And Unified Communist China, The Still-angry Rising Power Of The Early Twenty-first Century. While These Events Are History In The West, They Live On In Japan And Especially China-- Machine Generated Contents Note: Part I. Fear And Ambition: Japan, China, And Russia: 1. Introduction: The Asian Roots Of World War Ii; 2. Japan 1931-6: The Containment Of Russia And National Restoration; 3. China 1926-36: Chaos And The Quest For The Mandate Of Heaven; 4. Russia 1917-36: Impending Two-front War And World Revolution;...

ramana, thanks for posting the above summary of what looks like an interesting book. Not many have studied these wars.

This is a Books folder and I don't intend therefore to turn it into a discussion thread. So, only an indicative post here.

I think the following is your statement, "The Wars For Asia, 1911-1949 Shows That The Western Treatment Of World War Ii, The Second Sino-japanese War, And The Chinese Civil War As Separate Events Misrepresents Their Overlapping Connections And Causes"

I fully agree with it.

The events are certainly not disparate and they go much before that. Japan has civilizational insecurity and therefore enmity with its giant neighbour China. Though the Yuan dynasty's Kublai Khan sent a naval force to unsuccessfully attack Japan in the 13th CE, the real sea war that precipitated events which reverberate up until today in Asia, particularly East Asia, was the 1894-95 war in which the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyed the Beiyang Fleet of the Qing Emperor. The Wei Hai Wei naval battle which humiliated the Qing, eventually led to their demise and also a Treaty with the Japanese which the Chinese consider most humiliating than any imposed on them by the ‘barbarians’ through the Opium Wars and the western gunboats. The IJN then destroyed the Russian Baltic Fleet in 1905 and there was no going back for either the IJN or the Japanese Emperor afterwards. Of course, all these followed from the forced opening of Yokasuka port by Cmdr. Perry of USN in 1854, the occupation of the Philippines by the US which itself flowed from the Monroe Doctrine.