The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

There aren’t many books that can claim, at this late date, to fundamentally transform common American (mis)conceptions of the 20th Century. Professor Paine’s “The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949” is one of them. Like many Americans of my generation, I learned in college that the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe during the Second World War were the truly seminal military events of the 20th Century. These, so I was told, were the titanic, world-altering battles that created the world in which I lived, and would live, for the foreseeable future. The Pacific War, according to this view, began with Pearl Harbor, and ended with a triumphant democratic makeover of archaic Japanese militarism. The Chinese figured in these accounts primarily as helpless, pitiful victims, or incompetent, corrupt sidekicks. The Russians merited a mere footnote for declaring war against Japan at the 11th hour when, presumably, the Americans had already essentially won the war. "The Wars for Asia" offers a powerful counternarrative, making a very strong case for the global importance of the last century of Asian, particularly Chinese, History, and the serious, even dire, consequences of failing to understand its nature, course and development. By thoughtfully examining the course of three wars - a (very) long Chinese Civil War, a prolonged regional conflict among Japan, China, and the USSR, and an international struggle for domination involving European powers and America – Professor Paine convincingly demonstrates the inherent interest, enormous scale, and historical significance of military events in Asia. Such a riveting account was made possible only by her truly astonishing breadth of scholarship. Events in Asia have been seriously underreported in English, one suspects, because prior writers lacked her ability to consult original documents in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian. “Wars for Asia” is not, however, a polemical work. It offers a lively recounting of historical events, and a military historian’s deeply informed and wily assessment of the origin, and usually flawed nature, of strategies consciously or unconsciously, rationally or irrationally pursued by all sides. There is nothing of the dullness or tendentiousness of academic history here. The reader will perhaps develop a grudging respect for that much-maligned warlord of warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek, who probably would have destroyed Mao’s Communist remnants if it hadn’t been for Russian intervention and an ongoing war with several million occupying Japanese (a war in which Mao cannily let his opponent do the heavy lifting). Respect, that is, deeply tinged with horror: Chiang could order the destruction of the dikes holding back the Yellow River in order to stop a Japanese advance, despite the ensuing, predictable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants. The tragedy of Japan – a warrior society forced out of isolation in the 1850’s into a world of imperial rivalry to which it adapted all too well, and the victim of its own success in its wars with China in the 1890’s and with Russia in 1905 – is covered in revealing detail, as is Stalin’s too-clever attempt to initially support both sides of the Chinese Civil War in order to keep his huge southern neighbor divided and weak. The significance of Russian intervention in Manchuria at the end of the war, and its reverse colonialism there - extracting heavy industrial and transportation infrastructure created by the Japanese, rather than building anything of value - receives long-overdue attention. British and American diplomatic and military missteps, stemming from self-interest and ignorance about Asian history and culture, also receive due attention. . Korea plays a relatively minor role here: however, Professor Paine’s earlier work, “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895”, contains a wealth of information about the Hermit Kingdom’s own troubled emergence from isolation in the 1860's at the insistence of a “Big Brotherly” Japan, and the ensuing struggle between China and Japan over control of that strategically (and tragically) placed peninsula. One key insight Professor Paine employs throughout the book is the critical distinction between the economic motivations of maritime powers, like Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, that benefit from a relatively open global economic system, and continental powers like Russia and China, for whom a geographically defined political and economic system are practically synonymous. This renders continental powers particularly sensitive about borders and territorial control; Russian and Chinese interventionism and expansionism today certainly bears this out. "The Wars for Asia" is a must read for anyone with an interest in, not just the Asian past, but a complex and troubled global present.

There are thousands of books written about the second world war. Maybe even a million. All aspects of the fighting, the operations and strategy has been described in so many ways that buying a new one almost always just add information to a subject that you have read about so many times before. It used to be that the Eastern Front was a weak area in the literature but after the fall of the Soviet Union that has been changing rapidly. But there is one part of the whole war that has been and continue to be difficult to find good information on and that is the war in China. This huge part of the war is almost impossible to find any good information on. Until now. "The Wars for Asia, 1911 - 1949" by professor S.C.M. Paine is a fantastic book and reading it will open your eyes to a large part of the war that has until now been considered almost like a side-show. Professor Paine writes about operations in China and the area surrounding it. It is a book on the strategic and operational level but it deals with the three important parts of the wars there: The Civil War, The War against Japan and Chinas role in the Global second World war. The Time span 1911 - 1949 is needed to understand it all. I have seldom read a book that so clearly discuss and clarify what must be considered one of the most complicated part of the entire world war. It is not an easy read to follow everything in China and you must concentrate but the rewards are great. I started to take notes after 50 pages since I found so many interesting facts that I simply had to keep them in my files. Not only does the situation in China gets a long overdue treatment but Professor Paine's work on Russia and Japan is extremely well done as well. There are parts of the Russian involvement in this area that came as a complete surprise to me and I am not easily surprised when it comes to that part of the World. How many have heard of the war between China and Russia in 1929 that ran for five months and where the Russians deployed 100 000 men with tanks and bombers? Not only are the presentation of events outstanding but also the analysis that follows. The professor is very clear and few of the participants, on any side, gets a clean record. The Diplomacy of Josef Stalin towards China was at times far better than what he did on the western front. The Unbelievable way the Japanese decision process worked and it's result is an real eye opener. For many Americans it might be a surprise that the Japanese considered the attack on Pearl Harbor as a mere side-show to the real war in China. If you make a list of the 100 most important books to read about the Second World War this one must be on it. If you make a list of just ten this is a very important candidate for that list too. It is that good.

Broadly speaking, this is a military history of Northeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century, with China as the necessary center of gravity. In a narrower sense, however, this is really a book about China's 14-year struggle with Japan before and during World War II, with a lengthy prologue about events in the period until 1931, and a shorter epilogue about the civil war that devoured China from 1945 to 1949. Whether one decides to read this book one way or the other, it's a revelation. Virtually every page has a striking insight. To take one example, it has the clearest explanation of the 1936 Xian Incident, its political context and strategic consequences that I have read anywhere. To fully appreciate The Wars for Asia it probably helps to already know something about East Asian history, but I believe even "new readers" will benefit tremendously from this masterful work. What one gets from this book is, in essence, an intelligent synthesis of recent research into the period, seen through the prism of Dr Paine's sharp analytical mind. The array of sources cited in the text is staggering. The author has digested all the relevant literature in English, in addition to a huge literature of more marginal relevance. On top of this comes familiarity with a vast amount of research published in Chinese, Japanese and even Russian. The result is a story that is comprehensive in the best sense of the word. The author is a professor at the US Naval War College, and in a few places the book reads a bit like expanded lecture notes - but in a good way. It has the wry humor that experienced university teachers adopt to keep their students' attention, and in works well in written form as well, to make this not just an educational but also an entertaining read. I don't know Dr Paine's other book on East Asian history, an account of the First Sino-Japanese War in the late 19th century, but it's next on my reading list!

A little short on analysis and a bit cluttered with piling on of similar facts from different situations at times. Sort of reminded me of The Wealth of Nations at times when it got tedious. The basic idea was laid out once and then supported by example after example. Sometimes too mamy examples! Nevertheless, a solid, very readable account of all sides and players in this fascinating era of history. I learned a lot. The sheer scale of the suffering that many non-Chinese probably know nothing about is mind-boggling. Paine does a great job putting that misery in context. I love the way authors, including Paine at some points, state that "Russia" wanted such and such, or the "United States" preferred this or that outcome. "Russia" and the "United States" are nations made up millions of people. We use the term, "nation", to refer to millions of individuals collectively. Especially for non-democratic nations, such as wartime Japan, Russia, and communist China, we should think not so much of what "Russia" wants but of what Stalin wants; not of what "Japan" wants, but what Tojo, and the other warlords want. Nations are collections of people who led by a few people who actually make the decisions that we then project as the collective desire of entire population. Especially in places like China during its civil war, this was far from the case. Chiang Kai-Shek made decisions for very personal reasons, such revenge on or fear of a rival. These decisions led China, as a nation, in very arbitrary directions because these were personal decisions of one person. Paine does a great job of showing how decisions made by sometimes not very talented people can have long-term comsequences for entire populations. Sometimes, for better or for worse, the die is cast and you can't go back again. She does a great job showing these various decisions, and why the people who made the decisions did what they did. Fascinating personalities and social contexts are explored fully.

Sarah Paine emphasizes that the core trend was the Chinese civil war, which was overlooked by both the US and Japan.

This book is an outstanding complete work about the wars that have involved China and its neighbours for about forty years on the first half of the XX century. This period is very important because it gave birth to the comunist China, the new superpower. The book follows the China's history since the abdication of her last emperor on 1911, with the subsequent 38 years of civil war that China had to stand until the final victory of the Comunist Party on 1949. During these years it happened even the Second Chinese-Japanese war (1931-1945) that , anyway , never stopped truly the civil war. The book contains a very deep analysis about the foreign policies of the three main powers in the Pacific Ocean : Soviet Union, Japan, USA. The author follows their development since the end of WWI, until the end of the Chinese Civil War on 1949. Since the end of WWI, Soviet Union wanted to create the conditions to avoid a simultaneous war on both fronts (European and East Asian) and for this reason gave funds and weapons to the Nationalist China , even if it was the main enemy of the Comunist Chinese Party, until the end of WWII, because Soviet Union thought that just the Nationalists were able to stop or at least to slow down the Japanese Army. Instead Japan began the adventure in China , after two successful wars (First Chinese-Japanese War 1894-1895, and Russian-Japanese War 1904-1905) on 1931 with the occupation of Manchuria, always thinking to be able to smash the Chinese armies, but without having the resources to occupy such a huge country and even without understanding the common desire of the chinese people of peace after the twenty years of civil war that ravaged their country after the abdication of the last emperor (1911), losing , in this way, a big chance to appear to them as a liberator. USA didn't understand that the policy held against Japan , with the final act of the oil embargo , it would have brought , as result , the war that want just to avoid. At the same time when they decided to get involved in the war between China and Japan, they send a general , like Joseph Stilwell, who was a bad general and that didn't understand what was at stake. The book is very detailed and it has requested a huge historical research, to give the chance to the reader to districate himself between so intricated and confused policies, with Japan governements that were changing every few months, and three-four Chinese governement that were ruling at the same time over different slices of the country. The book is full of first hand accounts that give you the right perception of the real situation year by year, moment by moment. A must for all the people interested to know even this important moment of the world history

The Wars For Asia 1911 — 1949 by SCM Paine is a close look at the era spanning the start of the 20th Century up until 1949, the start of the Cold War, and the complex interplay between China, Japan, Russia, the USA, and others across the Asian world. These were the interactions that set the current world up, in Asia that is. In these years of interaction Japan played a key role in that it was Japan’s decision to push a military solution to its resource problems that triggered the first combat in WWII in 1931 in China. It was international diplomacy by the USSR, Stalin, that brilliantly kept Japan at war with China while protecting Mao’s efforts to turn China to communism. Meanwhile, the US failed to understand what was going on. The Americans pushed Japan to stop the war with China, but Japan wasn’t going to bow to that pressure even though it was the best course of action. China, in areas ran by the Nationalist, was fighting Japan and the communist, setting themselves up to lose it all in the long civil war that had been raging since the fall of the Quin regime. The author sets forth the thesis that there were actually 3 wars going on. The Chinese civil war, the regional war with Japan, and then a global war all taking place together and impacting one another, but this was unseen by western observers. Thus, the US responded harshly to Japanese moves, such as treaties with the Nazis, designed by Japan for regional security but taken by the Western powers as aggressive. Japan was desperately seeking a way out of China that granted her honor and a reward equal to its sacrifice. The USSR wanted to keep China fighting Japan. The communist under Mao wanted Japan to fight the Nationalists to exhaustion, then leave, taking the Russians with them so Mao could avoid being ordered around by Moscow. America wanted a democratic China with elections and all that, but their rather stumbling foreign policy made sure that wouldn’t happen. SCM Paine attempts to explain it all, but the explanations can come up to a confusing level fairly fast. The author’s difficulty is the complexity of the era. Ms Paine jumps around rather quickly within the years making the story hard to follow unless you have a photographic memory for names. Trying to outline the events using the book gets tiresome quickly because the people and events are thrown at the reader quickly and one decade is covered then the previous then… well it’s hard to follow, that’s all. There are some contradictions. Were Chiang’s warlords the foundation of his control of China, or were they the reason he stayed forever weak and struggling for power? Your call. Enjoyable read. AD2

Masterful history writing with an abundance of detail and insightful analysis. Prof. Paine, as in her lectures, thoughtfully explains the emergence of the present from the roots of the past.

The content is riveting but the binding sucks...

Interesante

j'ai acheté ce livre en englais pour le thème particulièrement motivant pour moi, mais je m'attendais à une bonne dose d'anticommunisme vu l'origine de l'auteure. malheureusement, c'est au-delà. il s'agit d'un brûlot anti-russe est la russie des tzars y est traitée presque aussi bas que celle des soviétiques : pour sarah paine, la seule ambition qu'a eu la russie à travers les âges, a été de diviser ses voisins pour les contrôler et agrandir son empire ... étonnant que vu ses origines, elle n'applique pas cette maxime à propre son pays mais également à la maison mère, feu l'empire britannique, qui a eut des colonies sur les 4 continents pendant trois siècles. quand au communisme, il est considéré comme n'étant que l'émanation de la jalousie envers les riches, de la violence et de la propagande ! propagande dont son pays ne s'est absolument pas rendu coupable envers le même monde communiste depuis le début de la guerre froide ( et même avant ). bien entendu, le communisme n'a joué aucun rôle pour émanciper les peuples arriérés des pays féodaux tel que la russie et la chine durant le 20ième siècle, pour éduquer les masses et industrialiser ces mêmes pays rapidement ... la rupture du premier front unis en 1927 est expliqué comme une manipulation de staline pour diviser une chine potentiellement dangereuse pour son pays et régler ses comptes avec trotski. la plupart des spécialistes français considèrent qu'il s'agit surtout d'une erreur du komintern. erreur produite par le dogmatisme léninien comme quoi dans les pays colonisés, le prolétariat devait s'unir à la bourgeoisie contre les puissances impériales ... passons. pour sarah paine, la longue marche n'a absolument rien eu d'héroïque. une armée qui part à 80.000 et qui finit à 8000 un an après, n'a rien pu faire d'héroïque bien évidemment. on aurait voulu la voire, sarah paine, avec un fusil sur l'épaule et des sandales de paille de riz aux pieds, en train d'escalader des glaciers à 4000 d'altitude ! mais bien entendu, edgar snow a été manipulé par les communistes. sarah paine, elle, n'a pas été manipulée par qui que ce soit ? mcarthy, jon holiday, brzezinski ? quand à l'incident de xi an en 1936, il est du d'après elle, une nouvelle foi, à la manipulation de staline, qui préférait que les masses chinoises se fassent tuer par les japonais en lieu et place de ses soldats. ces pauvres chinois étaient tellement bêtes qu'ils ne comprenaient pas tout le bien que leur voulaient les japonais ... c'est ce que les habitants de nankin ont vu en décembre 1937. en dehors de ça, le récit de la guerre civile chinoise est confus car l'auteure revient constamment en arrière. certainement qu'elle est une adepte de l' histoire non chronologique, tel qu'on l'enseigne dorénavant dans les écoles occidentales ? tellement qu'au beau milieu du livre, elle revient subrepticement sur la révolution de 1911, qui aurait pourtant du se trouver au début de son ouvrage. j'ai refermé le livre quand j'ai acquis la certitude qu'elle faisait en plus des erreurs de dates : elle prétend que l'armée de zhang xueliang attaque l'armée rouge durant l'été 1935. alors qu' à cette date cette dernière était perdue dans les contreforts inaccessibles du tibet. pour moi, elle ne maîtrise pas la guerre civile chinoise, sujet qui ne doit pas l'intéresser : pas d'analyse sociologique de cette dernière à attendre. ces chercheurs américains de la côte est d'aujourd'hui devraient se poser la question pourquoi leur pays a refusé que l'on organise des élections en chine en 1946 ? au sud vietnam en 1955 ? parce que les gens allaient massivement voter pour les communistes. tout expliquer par les complots c'est voire l'histoire par le petit bout de la lorgnette. j'ai mis une deuxième étoile pour la supposée bonne connaissance de l'économie et de la politique japonaise d'avant guerre.

Muito Bom!

This is a fabulous book. It not only sheds light on a poorly covered aspect of WW2, but succeeds in putting almost half a century of world changing regional history into context. The author has researched his topic in great detail and is able to offer both intriguing breadth and depth. Breadth: I now understood, really for the first time, the massive panorama of history which was playing out in this under-reported corner of the globe in the first half of the 20th century; Depth: This was a hugely complex stage, three nested wars, with each player driving towards their own, mutually exclusive, end. As though to fully make the case for the global importance of this theatre of war in the first half of the last century, the author often plunges into the What ifs.... He does this in such an intelligent logically deductive manner, that for the first time I was really able to grasp, what had with unavoidable hindsight, has always eluded me, that is just how very uncertain and frightening the outcome of WW2 really was and how the seemingly inconsequential events of the far off and so very long Chinese civil war, might just have shaped our world so differently. This is a must read.