The Origins of the War in the Pacific

Abstract

With the start of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, the outbreak of war in the Far East pre-dated the European conflict by two years. However, due to the limited formal involvement of other powers in that conflict, the standard perception is to see the European conflict as a dominant factor in the outbreak of the general war in the Pacific. This chapter will demonstrate that while connected in some ways to the European war and its impact on the international system at the time, the Far Eastern theatre deserves to be seen as a catalyst for global war in its own right, due to the implications the region had on Anglo-American strategic decision-making in particular, as well as with regard to Soviet Russia. The chapter will be based predominantly on primary sources and necessary secondary literature.