Negotiating China's Destiny in World War II, edited by Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary, and Stephen R. MacKinnon

Abstract

Negotiating China's Destiny in World War II, edited by Hans van de Ven, Diana Lary, and Stephen R. MacKinnon. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2015. xii, 336 pp. $60.00 US (cloth). This collection of papers on the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945 includes contributions by Western, Chinese, and Japanese scholars and exemplifies a revisionist tide in the historiography of China's foreign relations. The book focuses on the role of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) during the 1930s and 1940s. Though the image of Jiang's wife, Song Meiling, is pictured twice on the book's cover, her important role is much deemphasized as are the roles of other figures. The editors have followed three themes in arranging these fine chapters: the death knell of the old empires and the rise of China, the negotiation of alliances, and sovereignty. Marianne Bastid-Bruguiere's, Deluded Quest for Allies: Safeguarding Territorial Sovereignty and the Balance of Power in East Asia, 1931-1945, is the first chapter of the collection and is slightly mistitled. She draws on a wide range of French primary sources as well as English, French, and Chinese secondary sources examine France's effort retain power in Vietnam from 1931 until 1941. Neglected in her contribution is France's beleaguered religious protectorate in China, which covered foreign and Chinese Catholics. Rana Mitter's contribution traces Britain's reconciliation with the decline of its imperial influence in China. Chang Jui-Te recounts Tibet's efforts preserve its de facto independence and complete autonomy and Jiang's effort extend Nationalist China the limits of the Qing Empire through non-violent means. Yang Kuisong's chapter closely follows the complicated, turbulent relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and The Communist International (the Comintern) from 1937 1943 when Stalin disbanded the latter organization. Yang argues that although, Mao's pragmatic policy was focused on winning the revolution in China, a policy not acceptable the Comintern (p. 87), Mao did not break with Moscow or the Comintern (p. 88). In chapter five, Diana Lary chooses four Canadians to encapsulate the nature and scope of Canada's relations with China in wartime (p. 97). She examines General Victor Odium, who represented Canada with its vague, long-term China policy in Chongqing; Robert McClure, a missionary doctor and refugee relief worker; Norman Bethune, a surgeon close the Chinese Communist Party; and Quan Louie, a military aviator from a leading Chinese family in Vancouver, killed while flying over Germany (p. 97). A quibble: While Lary draws attention the work of French Canadian Jesuits, she overlooks the Anglophone Canadian Catholic priests of the Scarboro Mission Society who worked in Quzhou, Zhejiang Province with the Grey Sisters of the Immaculate Conception from Pembroke, Ontario. …