A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955 PDF Download

Author: Ronald H. Spector
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393254666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022 "Marvelous.…Spector’s gripping book.…[helps] us to understand why the legacy of these conflicts is still with us today." —Sheila Miyoshi Jager, New York Times Book Review The end of World War II led to the United States’ emergence as a global superpower. For war-ravaged Western Europe it marked the beginning of decades of unprecedented cooperation and prosperity that one historian has labeled “the long peace.” Yet half a world away, in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and Malaya—the fighting never really stopped, as these regions sought to completely sever the yoke of imperialism and colonialism with all-too-violent consequences. East and Southeast Asia quickly became the most turbulent regions of the globe. Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, civil war, communal clashes, and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians. With A Continent Erupts, acclaimed military historian Ronald H. Spector draws on letters, diaries, and international archives to provide, for the first time, a comprehensive military history and analysis of these little-known but decisive events. Far from being simply offshoots of the Cold War, as they have often been portrayed, these shockingly violent conflicts forever changed the shape of Asia, and the world as we know it today.

Author: Ronald H. Spector
Publisher: Free Press
ISBN: 1982135239
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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“The best book by far on the Pacific War” (The New York Times Book Review), this classic one-volume history of World War II in the Pacific draws on declassified intelligence files; British, American, and Japanese archival material; and military memoirs to provide a stunning and complete history of the conflict. This “superbly readable, insightful, gripping” (Washington Post Book World) contribution to WWII history combines impeccable research with electrifying detail and offers provocative interpretations of this brutal forty-four-month struggle. Author and historian Ronald H. Spector reassesses US and Japanese strategy and shows that the dual advance across the Pacific by MacArthur and Nimitz was more a pragmatic solution to bureaucratic, doctrinal, and public relations problems facing the Army and Navy than a strategic calculation. He also argues that Japan made its fatal error not in the Midway campaign but in abandoning its offensive strategy after that defeat and allowing itself to be drawn into a war of attrition. Spector skillfully takes us from top-secret strategy meetings in Washington, London, and Tokyo to distant beaches and remote Asian jungles with battle-weary GIs. He reveals that the US had secret plans to wage unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan months before Pearl Harbor and shows that MacArthur and his commanders ignored important intercepts of Japanese messages that would have saved thousands of lives in Papua and Leyte. Throughout, Spector contends that American decisions in the Pacific War were shaped more often by the struggles between the British and the Americans, and between the Army and the Navy, than by strategic considerations. Spector vividly recreates the major battles, little-known campaigns, and unfamiliar events leading up to the deadliest air raid ever, adding a new dimension to our understanding of the American war in the Pacific and the people and forces that determined its outcome.

Author: Steven P. Remy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000891526
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This book is a concise and accessible introduction to the problem of war crimes in modern history, emphasizing the development of laws aimed at regulating the conduct of armed conflict developed from the 19th century to the present. Bringing together multiple strands of recent research in history, political science, and law, the book starts with an overview of the attempts across the pre-modern world to regulate the initiation, conduct, and outcomes of war. It then presents a survey of the legal revolution of the 19th century when, amidst a global welter of colonial wars, the first body of formal codes and laws relating to distinguishing legal from criminal conduct in war was developed. Further chapters investigate failed but influential attempts to develop the laws of war in the post-World War I period and summarize the major landmarks in international law related to war crimes, such as the Hague conventions and the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, as well as hundreds of lesser-known post-World War II trials in Europe and Asia. It also looks at the origins and debated significance of the Genocide Convention of 1948 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions, accounts for the acceleration worldwide of war crimes investigations and trials from the 1970s into the 2000s, and summarizes current thinking about international law and the rapidly changing nature of warfare worldwide as well as the memorialization of war crimes. Including images, documents, a bibliography highlighting the most recent scholarship, a chronology, who’s who, and a glossary, this is the perfect introduction for those wishing to understand the complex field or war crimes history and its politics.

Author: William R. Thompson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040099750
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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This volume re-examines the notion of the East Asian peace, arguing that it requires updating for the current and near-future context of US-Chinese rivalry. The “East Asian peace” refers to the remarkable change in conflict levels in eastern Eurasia over the past 80 years or even the past 130 years or so. Prior to the late 1970s, East Asia was regarded as the most conflictual region on the planet. Although insurgencies have continued in places such as Myanmar, Thailand, and the Philippines, after the 1980s East and Southeast Asia became one of the world’s least conflictual regions. Geopolitics and economic development worked hand in hand to reduce conflict in the region and, in this respect, the East Asian peace has been a confluential peace. The general problem with a confluential peace is that the factors that shape it evolve over time, and the specific circumstances in question seem to be evolving in a different direction, with East Asia shaping up to be the most central locale of the contest between US and Chinese hegemony, both regionally and perhaps globally. This book argues that the idea of the East Asian peace now requires adjustment to the current and near-future context. The more general arguments presented here focus on alternative interpretations of how regional peace and order should be interpreted, while the more specific arguments involve interpretations of Chinese and other countries’ behavior in the context of the heightened rivalry between China and the United States. This book will be of much interest to students of East Asian politics, peace studies, foreign policy, and international relations.

Author: Ronald H. Spector
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Military historian and ex-marine Ronald Spector marks the upcoming 25th anniversary of the Tet offensive which presaged the worst fighting that took place the year following. Detailing the deterioration of race relations, the growth of the drug culture, and even the experience of South Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, this comprehensive history may stand as one of the most important books about Vietnam.

Author: Joan Judge
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111383652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
The history of East Asia can be most productively studied through a transnational, translingual, and transcultural approach to the region. In The Sinosphere and Beyond, twenty-six leading and emerging scholars use such approaches in rich clusters of essays on Historiography, Sino-Japanese Encounters, Law and Justice, Politics, Art, Literature, and Translation. Each essay builds on the legacy of Joshua Fogel, whose scholarship defined the contours of the Sinosphere in the Western world and beyond. The collection will be of interest to scholars and students with specific research concerns within these broader rubrics: from the towering progenitors of Japanese Sinology to gendered, diplomatic, and cultural dimensions of Sino-Japanese encounters; from Sinitic poetry to legal culture and revolutionary life; from art commerce and levels of literary expression to the quandaries of translation. In addition to offering a broad range of case studies, the volume is testimony to the methodological importance of a dynamic intra- and transregional approach for an understanding of the layered history of East Asia.

Author: Gary J. Bass
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 110194711X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 913

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Book Description
ACCLAIMED AS ONE OF THE YEAR’S 10 BEST BOOKS BY THE WASHINGTON POST • 12 ESSENTIAL NONFICTION BOOKS BY THE NEW YORKER • 100 NOTABLE BOOKS BY THE NEW YORK TIMES • BEST BOOKS BY THE ECONOMIST, FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AND AIR MAIL • 10 ESSENTIAL BOOKS BY THE TELEGRAPH • THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • THE OBSERVER AND THE SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE WEEK • MARK LYNTON HISTORY PRIZE FINALIST • BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE LONGLIST • CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE SHORTLIST • A landmark, magisterial history of the trial of Japan’s leaders as war criminals—the largely overlooked Asian counterpart to Nuremberg “Nothing less than a masterpiece. With epic research and mesmerizing narrative power, Judgment at Tokyo has the makings of an instant classic.” —Evan Osnos, National Book Award–winning author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China In the weeks after Japan finally surrendered to the Allies to end World War II, the world turned to the question of how to move on from years of carnage and destruction. For Harry Truman, Douglas MacArthur, Chiang Kai-shek, and their fellow victors, the question of justice seemed clear: Japan’s militaristic leaders needed to be tried and punished for the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor; shocking atrocities against civilians in China, the Philippines, and elsewhere; and rampant abuses of prisoners of war in notorious incidents such as the Bataan death march. For the Allied powers, the trial was an opportunity to render judgment on their vanquished foes, but also to create a legal framework to prosecute war crimes and prohibit the use of aggressive war, building a more peaceful world under international law and American hegemony. For the Japanese leaders on trial, it was their chance to argue that their war had been waged to liberate Asia from Western imperialism and that the court was victors’ justice. For more than two years, lawyers for both sides presented their cases before a panel of clashing judges from China, India, the Philippines, and Australia, as well as the United States and European powers. The testimony ran from horrific accounts of brutality and the secret plans to attack Pearl Harbor to the Japanese military’s threats to subvert the government if it sued for peace. Yet rather than clarity and unanimity, the trial brought complexity, dissents, and divisions that provoke international discord between China, Japan, and Korea to this day. Those courtroom tensions and contradictions could also be seen playing out across Asia as the trial unfolded in the crucial early years of the Cold War, from China’s descent into civil war to Japan’s successful postwar democratic elections to India’s independence and partition. From the author of the acclaimed The Blood Telegram, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, this magnificent history is the product of a decade of research and writing. Judgment at Tokyo is a riveting story of wartime action, dramatic courtroom battles, and the epic formative years that set the stage for the Asian postwar era.

Author: Antony Best
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040105092
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 518

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Now in its fourth edition, this highly successful global history of the twentieth century is written by four prominent international historians for first-year undergraduate level and upward. Using their thematic and regional expertise, the authors have produced an authoritative yet accessible and seamless account of the history of international relations in the last century, covering events in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas. They focus on the history of relations between states and on the broad ideological, economic and cultural forces that have influenced the evolution of international politics over the last 120 years. The fourth edition is thoroughly updated to take account of the most recent research and global developments, including new material on the impact of the Trump administration on international politics, the rise of China under the leadership of Xi Jinping and the origins of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The book is supported by a fully revised companion website including links to further resources and self-testing material, which can be found at www.routledgelearning.com/internationalhistory20c.

Author: Ronald Spector
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN: 0812967321
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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The New York Times said of Ronald H. Spector’s classic account of the American struggle against the Japanese in World War II, “No future book on the Pacific War will be written without paying due tribute to Eagle Against the Sun.” Now Spector has returned with a book that is even more revealing. In the Ruins of Empire chronicles the startling aftermath of this crucial twentieth-century conflict. With access to recently available firsthand accounts by Chinese, Japanese, British, and American witnesses and previously top secret U.S. intelligence records, Spector tells for the first time the fascinating story of the deadly confrontations that broke out–or merely continued–in Asia after peace was proclaimed at the end of World War II. Under occupation by the victorious Allies, this part of the world was plunged into new power struggles or back into old feuds that in some ways were worse than the war itself. In the Ruins of Empire also shows how the U.S. and Soviet governments, as they secretly vied for influence in liberated lands, were soon at odds. At the time of the peace declaration, international suspicions were still strong. Joseph Stalin warned that “crazy cutthroats” might disrupt the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay. Die-hard Japanese officers plotted to seize the emperor’s palace to prevent an announcement of surrender, and clandestine relief forces were sent to rescue thousands of Allied POWs to prevent their being massacred. In the Ruins of Empire paints a vivid picture of the postwar intrigues and violence. In Manchuria, Russian “liberators” looted, raped, and killed innocent civilians, and a fratricidal rivalry continued between Chiang Kai-shek’s regime and Mao’s revolutionaries. Communist resistance forces in Malaya settled old scores and terrorized the indigenous population, while mujahideen holy warriors staged reprisals and terror killings against the Chinese–hundreds of innocent civilians were killed on both sides. In Indochina, a nativist political movement rose up to oppose the resumption of French colonial rule; one of the factions that struggled for supremacy was the Communist Viet Minh led by Ho Chi Minh. Korea became a powder keg with the Russians and Americans entangled in its north and south. And in Java, as the Indonesian novelist Idrus wrote, people brutalized by years of Japanese occupation “worshipped a new God in the form of bombs, submachine guns, and mortars.” Through impeccable research and provocative analysis, as well as compelling accounts of American, British, Indian, and Australian soldiers charged with overseeing the surrender and repatriation of millions of Japanese in the heart of dangerous territory, Spector casts new and startling light on this pivotal time–and sets the record straight about this contested and important period in history.

Author: Rosalind Galt
Publisher: Film and Culture Series
ISBN: 9780231201339
Category : Decolonization
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
The pontianak, a terrifying female vampire ghost, is a powerful figure in Malay cultures. Exploring how and why the pontianak found new life in postcolonial Southeast Asian film and society, Rosalind Galt reveals the importance of cinema to histories and theories of decolonization.