About the Book
In the early twentieth century, from India to China, Western imperial powers dominated Asia. Then, in the 1930s, Japan began to tear down this old order in pursuit of its own imperial ambitions – first by invading China, and then by launching its assault against British, Dutch, and American outposts across Asia and the Pacific in December 1941.
As Japanese forces seized vast swaths of territory and pressed toward India, the brutal fighting cost millions of lives across the continent. Simultaneously, the war’s chaos and suffering supercharged anti-colonial movements from British India to Dutch Indonesia. Ultimately, it was the charismatic leaders of these movements – Mao, Nehru, Sukarno – who built the new Asia of independent nation-states that emerged in the war’s bloody wake.
Drawing on deep archival research across continents, leading historian Hans van de Ven tells the dramatic story of how Asia’s people mobilized to defeat both Japanese aggression and European imperialism, forging modern Asia in the process.
Hans van de Ven urges readers to see the Asia as absolutely central to World War II, rather than a peripheral (to Europe) battle zone. He argues that the real dates of WWII were 1937 (outbreak of Japan-China war) and 1955 with the conference at Bandung.
He shows how a modern Asia of sovereign nation-states came into being during and after WWII, how the fight against colonialism was tightly bound to the war, ultimately breaking European hegemony; and how it established the US as a vital power in the Pacific.
About the Author
Hans van de Ven is a professor of modern Chinese history at Cambridge University and a visiting chair professor in history at Peking University. He is the author or editor of ten previous books on Chinese history and the history of warfare. A fellow of the British Academy, he lives in Meldreth, UK.
Brendan Simms is a professor in the history of international relations and fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. He is the author of nine books including Hitler’s American Gamble and Europe. His most recent publication, entitled The Return of the Great Powers, is a sweeping study of the past, present, and future of the Great Powers, revealing the new rules of global leadership. He lives in Cambridge, UK.
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