RECENT STUDIES OF WARTIME CHINA

Abstract

The history of World War II has long been a favorite topic of military, diplomatic, and social historians (even more so for viewers of the History Channel), but the focus has typically been on the European theater. With a more limited archival record, the conflict in Asia has received less attention. This is certainly not because Asia was less important. The war undermined the legitimacy of colonial regimes throughout Southeast Asia, led to the division of Korea into two hostile states, and contributed in fundamental ways to the collapse of the Nationalist regime in China and the triumph of the Communist revolution. The last few years have seen substantial new scholarship on the 1937–45 War of Resistance in China and what Japanese historians often call the Fifteen-Year War, starting with the occupation of Manchuria in 1931. The number of titles falls far short of what has been written on Europe, but the war in China is now being approached in new and interesting ways.