The links below refer to scholarly works relevant to the project. Each of these 500- to 1000-word long bibliographies contains both a summary of the work and an analysis of the books’ scope and argument. 

B

Banno, Junji. Empire and Constitution in Modern Japan: Why Could War with China Not Be Prevented?
Banno, Junji. (trans. Arthur Stockwin). Empire and Constitution in Modern Japan: Why Could War with China Not Be Prevented? London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
 
Despite the fact that it was written by a very senior and eminent Japanese historian, reflecting a lifetime of study, this extended essay volume sadly delivers less than its title suggests. This is not due to drifting from the point identified in that title. Banno keeps this problem consistently in front of us. But in a volume that showed real promise in at least two ways – to bring Japanese scholarship to an English readership and in doing so to penetrate to the heart of the problem of how Imperial Japan made fundamental decisions in national strategic foreign policy – what we receive, largely, is old wine in a bottle with at best a new label. 

The study is not without arguments of interest. Banno provocatively dismisses all arguments claiming that the Great Depression or any other external pressures triggered any shift, from 1930 onwards, towards militarist imperial expansion in Japanese policy, arguing that those who drove such a shift were pressing for it well before the economic collapse, and that economic difficulties in various regions in Japan played little role in decisions to expand in China. He also makes a determined effort to clarify the relationships between emerging political parties and their base domestic constituencies and core issues, noting how they coalesced more around shared interests, such as opposing land tax increases, than around any wider ideological visions. But what disappoints are the familiarity of the conclusions, and the rather laboured prose by which we reach them.

Banno identifies “empire” as the desire to pursue territorial, political, and economic expansion in China as the core policy of Japan, and “constitution” as the desire to ensure not universal suffrage democracy, or the dominance of political parties in the Diet, but rather the ability of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to set, control, and drive strategic foreign policies, according to written and customary constitutional edict and practice. We are told in the end that this understanding of “empire” prevailed in 1937, when open war broke out with China, because a combination of things prevented this understanding of “constitution” from maintaining control. Granted, some things are unpacked here. Long-standing warnings about the dangers of underestimating the difficulty of waging war in or against China are tracked across time, shedding some light on seminal “national defence policy” decisions in 1907 and 1923. The ambiguous relationships between the armed forces, the Cabinet, and the Crown, on the crucial matters of “independent access to the Throne,” and the ability to control the behaviour of subordinate commands in the field, are engaged in some detail. Indeed, Banno’s determination to navigate through the webs of entanglement between Japanese domestic politics and its structure, and strategic foreign policy decision making, drives the study. But it brings us no new understanding of any of this. The villain in the piece, if there is one, is the Japanese national population. Changes in its moods, perceptions, and desires are what made such turning points as the Siemens affair, the Stimson press conference controversy, and the 2/36 Incident so consequential. Bonno’s explanation for what he terms the dire mistake of 1937 was subtitled “The Japanese people became a different people.” 

I do not really take issue with any of this, but I must note that the author set out to explain why the old cliché “constitution at home, empire abroad,” was never really accurate. That rests, in the end, on a rather tunnel focused definition of both terms in this context, and on the apparent alchemy by which a population open to the argument that representative government should play a key role in fundamental national policies became a bellicose driver demanding that insubordinate agents in the field be unleashed. Bonno ends with observations on the present that, sadly, shed light on the weaknesses of this historical analysis. The idea that Japan can now choose between waging war against China, or sitting back and relying on existing arrangements, stems from the argument that the cardinal mistake of “empire” was treating China as a secondary agent and focusing on Great Power frictions. The idea that these were two different things, if it was ever valid, is certainly not today. This study is of value, for its critical re-examination of the drivers of politics in Imperial Japan and the impact they had on its strategic foreign policy choices. But its final and most significant conclusions are too familiar and long-standing for it to rate as a really seminal work.  

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

Bell, Christopher M. The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars
Bell, Christopher M. The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000.
 
Synopsis

Bell’s work examines British naval policy in the interwar period, providing a revisionist perspective on the role of naval officials. He examines how these men, and their ideas, interacted with civilian policymakers to shape British naval strategy and policy of the period. In so doing, he provides a detailed account of British seapower in the interwar years, and thus also explains the shape of the British navy upon the outbreak of World War II.

Scope

This work details the role of naval officers in shaping Britain’s interwar naval policy. Bell offers an analysis of how they understood seapower, and their views on its application in view of the geopolitical and economic considerations of the day. He details how the goals and strategies envisioned by these navy men were often constrained by civilian officials, from whom they often held contrasting views. Bell analyses this process of interaction between naval and civilian personnel, from which British naval policy emerged.

The work extensively examines the topic of ‘naval standards’ and their role in interwar disputes between the Admiralty and Treasury. It also addresses the formulation of British contingency plans for conflict against the US Navy, Germany, Japan, and Italy. A key issue in these processes was balancing the defence of Britain’s Far Eastern interests with metropolitan security. In particular, Bell discusses at length the ‘Singapore Strategy’. Additionally, he examines the role of economic blockades in naval officers’ strategic planning.

Bell also discusses how the rise of aviation impacted the British navy. A key point he examines is the increasing competition for resources between the RAF and navy over the interwar period. This was largely underpinned by growing public preoccupation with aerial defence, and Bell discusses at length the navy’s attempts to engage in propaganda and other forms of public outreach.

Besides propaganda, Bell also addresses other forms of naval activity in peacetime. In particular, he examines the British armaments industry during the period, civilian decision-makers’ failure to maintain it, as well as its link to naval diplomacy. He provides particular attention to British attempts to secure orders for naval arms from South American countries.

Bell thus explains the evolution of the British navy and naval policy in the interwar years. His work examines naval officials’ role in shaping these; in so doing he accounts for the condition of the British navy and British naval activity upon the outbreak of World War II.  

Argument

This work challenges conventional perspectives on the British navy and its officers during the period in question. Traditional narratives hold that naval officers had few significant ideas on strategy. What opinions they had were largely wrongheaded - unsophisticated, reactionary, and shortsighted. They were unduly influenced by the naval writer Alfred Thayer Mahan, who allegedly afflicted British naval thought with flaws such as an excessive preoccupation with sea battles. These navy men were incompetent. They were largely to blame for the decline of the British navy in the interwar years, as well as its failures early in World War II.

Bell disputes this view. He argues that far from having few important ideas, British naval officers had a sound appreciation of the naval strategy, Britain’s strategic needs, and seapower. British navy men in the interwar years were not incompetents, and their views were not simply the result of influence from any particular naval writer. Rather, they had independent and evolving opinions on seapower and strategy, many of which proved prescient. Alongside civilian policymakers, naval officials played a key role in shaping British naval policy in the interwar period. 

Bell argues that conventional narratives on the topic are underpinned by flawed assumptions. He unpacks these, focusing in particular on the issues of ‘naval standards’ and the ‘Singapore Strategy’.

The work challenges traditional accounts on ‘naval standards’ by asserting that these were not rigid definitions, but merely guidelines subject to interpretation. In their interwar wrangling over control of naval estimates the Admiralty and Treasury each utilised whatever definition would best allow them to counter the other. Failure to comprehend this has led authors to erroneously interpret the Admiralty’s 1920 acceptance of a one-power standard as evidence of imperial decline, or a failure to account sufficiently for Britain’s strategic needs. Faulty assumptions regarding the significance of ‘naval standards’, therefore, have led authors to misunderstand naval officers’ thought and behaviour during the interwar years. 

The work also provides new perspectives on the oft-maligned ‘Singapore Strategy’. Bell asserts that, contrary to conventional views, there was in fact no single ‘Singapore Strategy’ which the Admiralty rigidly espoused. Rather, throughout the interwar years naval officials formulated multiple plans which were revised and adapted in response to changing circumstances. Bell thus dispels the conventional picture of naval officials clinging to a flawed plan out of misguided conservatism, arguing instead for the flexibility and pragmatism of the Admiralty’s Far Eastern policy.

British naval officials of the interwar years did make mistakes; however these were nowhere near as serious or avoidable as has been claimed. Bell holds that traditional narratives unjustly malign the Admiralty of the interwar years - the British navy’s decline in that period, and its failures in the initial months of World War II, had more to do with factors like treaty restrictions, and the effects of the Great Depression, than naval officials’ bungling. Bell also lays blame on civilian decision-makers, who displayed shortsightedness in missteps such as failing to maintain the naval armaments industry between the wars. The navy’s failure to leverage public opinion meant that it was often unable to counter civilian officials.

Overall Bell argues for the competence of British naval officials in the interwar years. These men were not inflexible, myopic, or idiotic, as has often been alleged. On the contrary, in shaping Britain’s interwar naval policy, they well understood Britain’s strategic needs and how seapower could be utilised to meet them. That the navy displayed certain shortcomings in the period covered was due more to the monumental constraints and threats that existed, rather than navy men’s incompetence.

Annotated by Tang Sze Kay

Best, Antony. British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914-1941
Best, Antony. British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914-1941. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
 
Synopsis

Best’s work charts the role of British intelligence in shaping Anglo-Japanese relations from 1914-1941. He examines its evolution, and impact on Britain’s views of and hence, policy toward Japan. Best does not examine British intelligence in isolation. Rather, he details how it was used in conjunction with open-source information, and how it interacted with myriad considerations and attitudes which coloured British perceptions and informed its priorities. These include, in particular, the geopolitical backdrop, resource constraints, interdepartmental rivalries, and racial biases. Thus, Best provides a comprehensive overview of British intelligence regarding Japan over a long-term period. He argues that chronic failures in how it was gathered, as well as received, resulted in warped perceptions of Japan, and continually hampered the formulation of sound policy in the Far East. These long-term problems ultimately led to Britain’s unexpected defeat in 1942. 

Scope

Best, in chronological order, details how key British geopolitical concerns from 1914-1941 affected how they gathered intelligence on Japan, and factored it into policy. Events such as WWI heightened British sensitivities to Japanese activity in Asia, where Britain was especially vulnerable at the time. Thus intelligence regarding Japanese ambitions in China, pan-Asian activity, and responses to German attempts to back Indian seditionaries soured the Alliance. Subsequently, however, Best shows that the end of the war, and - more importantly - the Bolshevik threat ensured that concerns about the Japanese took a backseat. He also examines British analyses of concurrent Communist activity in China, and later demonstrates that faulty conclusions drawn, during that period, on China’s armies contributed to erroneous evaluations of military intelligence on Japan during the Sino-Japanese War. 

Throughout the book, Best highlights the many inadequacies of British intelligence with regard to Japan. He stresses the financial obstacles faced (made worse by developments such as the Great Depression). Making clear the decentralised nature of pre-Second World War intelligence gathering he also details various interdepartmental - notably between the diplomatic and intelligence communities - inter-agency, interpersonal, and international rivalries. Additionally, the British tendency to default to racial stereotypes hampered their evaluation of intelligence. Best, therefore, demonstrates how these faults, along with geopolitical developments, affected British intelligence and policy toward Japan in the long term and ultimately contributed significantly to their unexpected defeat in 1942.

Argument

Best argues that British intelligence was key in shaping an ambivalent view of Japan - that of an untrustworthy nation whose ambitions were likely to clash with British interests, but  which nevertheless lacked the ability, or temerity, to seriously threaten Britain. While the degree of disquiet ebbed and flowed depending on the geopolitical context, this view of Japan remained largely constant, and informed Britain’s policy towards it. He asserts that the defeat of 1942 was the product of this longstanding, but faulty approach toward Japan; informed in large part by British intelligence, the gathering and reception of which was hampered by three main issues: resources, rivalries, and race. 

Best asserts that resource deficiencies seriously hampered Britain’s intelligence efficacy in the Far East. Financial obstacles, for example, meant few staff with proficiency in Japanese could be trained, and low pay made it difficult to attract necessary personnel. Furthermore, resource constraints meant the attention of Britain’s intelligence was often and easily turned away from Japan by other concerns, most notably the Comintern threat of the interwar years. Britain’s limited intelligence infrastructure in the Far East could hardly focus on multiple threats at once. Resource constraints, therefore, obstructed British intelligence on Japan. This issue was exacerbated by the various rivalries between British individuals, and organisations, resulting in over-emphasis, at different times, on either diplomatic intelligence or military intelligence; it also stymied the creation of new agencies, and the replacement of ineffective personnel. Suspicions between Britain and other Powers also hampered intelligence sharing. 

Above all, however, Best stresses the predominance of race in how Britain viewed Japan. British security in their own cultural superiority, along with their fixation with stereotypical ‘national characteristics’ of the Japanese, coloured their perception of any intelligence received. The Japanese were a ‘martial race’, superior to other Asians; but at the same time over-rigid, lacking in initiative, and possessing physiological defects. They might experience successes against the Chinese, but the idea that they might be able to prevail against a power like Britain was usually dismissed. Intelligence on Japan’s military successes (e.g. against China) was therefore constantly downplayed, while information which seemed to confirm existing negative stereotypes of the Japanese was emphasised. To Best, therefore, race was the ‘overriding fatal flaw’ plaguing British intelligence in East Asia and its relationship to policy - a chronic issue which shaped British ambivalence toward Japan, and miscalculation of the threat it posed.

Best argues that it was, in large part, these longstanding problems with British intelligence that left Britain woefully unprepared for war against Japan in 1941. Some significant steps toward improvement were made from the mid-30s, but they were too little too late, and unable to overcome the prevailing issues and pervasive sense of complacency.

Overall, therefore, Best carefully details how chronic issues - over decades - hampered the gathering and interpretation of British intelligence on Japan. His long-term approach serves to illustrate the persistence of the problems which existed - in particular British ethnocentrism - and how they shaped British views and policy, which bore significant continuities over the years. The impact of recurrent or long-term geopolitical concerns - such as pan-Asianism, Indian anticolonial movements, and Bolshevism - is also well detailed. His work therefore provides a more comprehensive view than other studies on British intelligence in East Asia, which take an episodic approach. His focus on intelligence also provides an alternative to traditional diplomatic histories, shedding light on a crucial, but lesser-studied factor in shaping Anglo-Japanese relations.

Annotated by Tang Sze kay

Best, Anthony (ed.). Britain’s Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905-1980
Best, Anthony (ed.) Britain’s Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905-1980. London and New York: Routledge, 2017.
 
Synopsis

This volume, dedicated to the late Peter Lowe, builds on his work covering British involvement in East and Southeast Asia in the 20th century. Spanning the period 1905-1980, it contains a series of essays, each examining a lesser-studied, but significant, moment relating to Britain's imperial decline in the region. As a whole they provide a picture of Britain’s attempts to reckon with the gradually shrinking limits of its power; they depict its attempts to secure its interests, and continued influence in the new world order, during this process of transition.

Scope

This volume covers a wide range of topics relating to Britain’s withdrawal from the region, in the period 1905-1980. Rather than focusing solely on territorial retreat, the essays also examine Britain’s move away from the region in military, economic, and psychological terms. Trotter’s essay, for example, deals with Britain’s naval weakness in the Pacific during the 1930s, and the impact of this on relations with the Dominions. Clayton touches on the challenges of Britain’s economic pivot from the Empire to Western Europe.The pieces by Goto-Shibata and Buckley highlight Britain’s shift away from an imperial mind-set: the former shows its support for ‘new internationalist approaches’ to social problems in East Asia; the latter reveals the shrinking scope of British interest in Japan, in the postwar era, to almost solely issues of trade.

Other recurrent themes and issues throughout the volume include the troubled Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and how, in the early 20th century, it disguised for a time Britain’s naval weakness in Asia. Relations with the Dominions and colonies, and the process of decolonisation, also feature prominently; British diplomacy, and attempts to secure its interests in the region in the postwar period are also touched upon. Additionally, multiple essays depict Anglo-American relations in the face of the latter’s ascendance, examining sources of friction and co-operation between the two. British acceptance of its role as a subordinate partner, and the care with which it took to maintain the ‘special relationship’ are recurrent ideas. All in all, this volume touches on the many facets of British imperial decline in East Asia.

Argument

Through examining Britain’s withdrawal from East Asia from various angles, this volume shows that the process was neither uniform nor linear but often proceeded in a piecemeal and varied fashion, over the span of decades. Rather than offering a straightforward narrative of decline, these essays as a whole paint a picture of British pragmatism. In the face of their shrinking influence Britain was not simply a passive actor; rather, recognising it could no longer play the role it once did, it often actively made moves to shape the new world order in its favour and secure its continued influence in the region. This volume is significant in providing a holistic picture of how Britain’s role in East Asia transformed throughout the 20th century. In so doing, it builds on Peter Lowe’s work and examines various lesser-studied incidents which shed light on key issues in this process.

Annotated by Tang Sze Kay

C

Clark, Douglas. Justice by Gunboat: Warlords, Lawlords and the Making of Modern China and Japan 
Clark, Douglas. Justice by Gunboat: Warlords, Lawlords and the Making of Modern China and Japan. Hong Kong: Earnshaw Books. 2017.
 
Douglas Clark, a barrister with extensive experience practicing in both China and Hong Kong as well as academic training in Asian Studies, took on an interesting task: to explore in forensic detail the actual functioning and experience of foreign courts in China and Japan, from the mid-19th century to the Second World War, as a way to evaluate, historically, the experience and impact of legal extraterritoriality in and on those countries. This single volume consolidates an earlier three volume set, many of the specific cases that formed the bulk of the latter having been redacted in order to produce a single volume that nevertheless delivers the principal argument. Clark concludes with the precision and clarity of a strong barrister’s closing argument, while also displaying the sense of nuance and complexity that any determined scholarly engagement with a huge archive should produce. For Korea, being swallowed by Imperial Japan overcame the extraterritoriality experience. Japan negotiated an end to the concession decades before China, as a major part of its successful policy of “defensive modernization,” by developing a codified legal system derived from Western Powers practices, one they had no choice but to acknowledge as fit to purpose. As a result, the Japanese experience served to bolster the national approach that made Japan strong enough to march into military disaster during the Second World War, but also to recover and rebuild, as a resilient modern state, thereafter.  But for China, extraterritoriality was “an unmitigated disaster.” It helped fatally weaken the Qing dynasty, but also persuaded the Great Powers to keep that dynasty operating because its condition suited their agendas. That made a massive contribution to so poisoning the relationships between China and the “treaty powers” that the eventual victor in the Chinese Civil War, the Communists, both rejected the legal system its Nationalist enemies built to try to end extraterritoriality and used the experience as a cornerstone for its “century of humiliation” narrative – a national story that helps keep China suspicious of, and prickly in dealing with, outsiders.

These are fair arguments that emerge persuasively enough from the chronological study Clark presents, working through the development of court systems literally case by case. He takes care to contextualize this effectively within the wider environment of changing political, social, and constitutional realities within China. Most important, he treats the court systems developed, and the concession of extraterritorality on which they rested, as an integral product of the “treaty system,” which, from 1842 on, shaped formal relations between not only China and the “treaty powers,” but also between Chinese and those foreigners who came to live and work in the country – both in the treaty ports and beyond, both those who worked in or for the courts and those who merely were affected by them. This is certainly the correct framing to adopt. It allows Clark to take his narrative above the detailed unfolding of criminal or other cases and connect them to wider political and international events as they evolved. Clark mentions the full array of foreign court systems, including the Japanese, but concentrates his attention on the topic areas for which he had sources to work with: British and American court systems in China and Japan. Given the importance of the British in particular in this wider story, this is sufficient.

Clark is able to reinforce arguments made by Robert Bickers, among others, that the operations of such instruments as foreign courts applying extraterritoriality not only complicated questions of identity, but also shed much light on how individual those experiences could be. The evidence clearly indicates for example that both foreign and Chinese nationals who could make any claim to be one or the other, in either a criminal or a civil proceeding, often cynically tried to choose whichever system would be most likely to decide in their favour. The liminal zones that were the treaty ports in particular stand out starkly here as arenas in which individual, regional, and international agendas all bounced off each other constantly and uneasily. Clark’s approach gives us perhaps too much on individual judges and lawyers for the sake of recording their existence, but this also helps explain why it took so long to resolve such problems as how to deal with cases that involved more than one different national, or more than one different possible jurisdiction. While his sympathies lie with an attempt to present these institutions as, overall, a good faith effort to apply consistent and codified law in less than stable conditions, Clark does not lose perspective either – noting very bluntly how hard it was to get British juries to convict British nationals in cases that involved non-British victims of adversaries, as just one example. Others include cases of corruption, sharp practice, and interference in Chinese affairs, for example in the 1927 attack by the Guomindang on their erstwhile Communist allies, in Shanghai and other urban areas. And in the end Clark is very clear on the cardinal point: this was ultimately “gunboat justice” because, however earnestly any practitioners tried to make such a system work in professional good faith, it could only ever rest on imposition by force in the first place. Clark’s careful legal analysis of this wider regional international experience does in the end deliver a useful evidence-sustained confirmation: whatever the expedient justifications for such a system and institutions might have seemed to be at the time, they were in the end crude expressions of imperial imposition – and everyone involved knew this. 

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

D

Dallek, Robert. The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953 
Dallek, Robert. The Lost Peace: Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope, 1945-1953. New York: HarperCollins. 2010.
 
The title of this book suggests where it strays away from being persuasive: there was no “peace” to “lose.” Robert Dallek knows this very well. His long career revolved around careful study of American strategic foreign policy in particular, through a very well-calibrated approach: presidential biography. Well received studies of FDR and foreign policy from 1932-1945, and JFK and foreign policy, established Dallek as a learned critical historian of twentieth century geopolitics. Yet he chose to present this extended essay, structured largely in chronological narrative, under this title. Dallek explains why in his first paragraph: the book “is an attempt to underscore the misjudgements and unwise actions that caused so much strife and suffering, and suggest alternatives that might have made for greater international harmony.” It is the second of the two objectives that defines the book: we are presented with a learned reassessment of the direction of international relations, by the most significant leaders of the most important states, between the dying days of the Second World War and the ceasefire that halted the Korean War – in order to give Dallek the chance to try his hand, unashamedly, at counterfactual history. There is nothing wrong with this in principle, particularly given Dallek’s central assumption connecting his two objectives: contingency matters, nothing significant was either preordained or unavoidable. Nevertheless, it does not come off well in the end. 

Three things reduce the value of this study, which emerges in the end as a thoughtful narrative reassessment of great power politics between 1945 and 1953 but not much more. The first is the methodology Dallek uses to explore alternative directions or outcomes. Rather than establishing any kind of systematic or coordinated approach to define how such alternatives might be identified, he instead uses the “pause and take a brief closer look at this possible turning point” approach, as and when the narrative course of events reaches an appropriate point. The most notorious is the most frequently cited: whether or not relations between the USA and the USSR had to deteriorate as they did, in the downward spiral into global Cold War marked by militarized suspicion and hostility. Dallek mobilizes George F. Kennan to argue that different approaches could and should have been tried, which is fair enough. But invariably, reluctantly, he ends on the same note: there really were no guarantees that a leader such as Stalin, and a government such as his, would have responded dramatically differently to any such alternative, because Stalin was who he was, and his political system became what it did. Dallek can only join the chorus reminding us that while something like the Cold War was almost impossible to avoid, it did not necessarily have to unfold as it did. Dallek’s half-hearted caveat loaded summary of Marshall’s efforts to persuade the Soviets to give the European Recovery Program a fair hearing summarize the weaknesses of this entire “pause and opine” approach: “It is conceivable that Moscow and Washington could have found common ground by showing greater flexibility. But the distrust between them was already too pronounced for any compromise to work.” We learn nothing herein, that is applicable or replicable, about how historians can usefully explore alternatives. I can opine as confidently as Dallek?

The second shortcoming is the massive amount of space Dallek devotes to American formulation and execution of policy, at the notable expense of reducing coverage devoted to the Soviet experience more than is wise – and of almost removing the British from the discussion, after Churchill fades into the background following his famous 1946 speech in Missouri. The third is closely related to the second: everyone, everywhere, all the time, focused primarily on forging and executing foreign policy that addressed, or aligned with, or tried to appease, domestic political expectations, requirements, desires, or concerns. This line of analysis explains every significant decision American leaders made, and in this story that largely meant Truman, Marshall, and Acheson. There is nothing particularly unscholarly about placing such emphasis on domestic drivers of strategic foreign policy. And Dallek displays a reassuringly nuanced understanding of how to explain the role they played in such policy, including in far less open political societies such as Russia and China. But not only is there literally nothing fresh here – no new insight into any significant controversy in this area – Dallek compromises his own judgements here and there, now and again, by trying to squeeze out some possible alternative from a fairly tightly circumscribed situation. “If only they had listened to Kennan and understood what he was saying,” paraphrases Dallek’s central thesis. We do not really encounter any fresh take on Marshall’s efforts to resolve the civil war in China, but we do receive a clear account of the domestic political furore that overwhelmed the whole China policy issue. We are reminded how unaware US leaders were about the situation in Korea and how they blundered into war as a result – after being reminded, one senses grudgingly, that it was after all the communists who launched a deliberate war of aggression, because they saw an opportunity to use force to strengthen themselves at American expense. For Dallek, political leaders who enjoyed only at best a shaky understanding of applicable recent history, and whose judgements were too often too heavily swayed by domestic short term pressures, or by their own narrow personal agendas, “lost” a “peace” that might have been grounded on such foundations as shared control of nuclear energy, a calmer and more restrained response to the Sovietization of Eastern Europe, and a more mature reaction to communist victory in the civil war in China. John Wheeler-Bennett went perhaps too far when he reduced the Cold War to “the brave and necessary response by free men to unjustified aggression.” But Dallek fell between two stools. He neither developed any coherent sense of how to identify realistic “alternatives,” nor moved beyond a now tired trope: while everyone misunderstood and misread everyone else, in nearly every situation, the principal burden of criticism must land on American shoulders because the USA, the brand new global power, overreacted and lost its sense of perspective. 

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

H

Heaslip, Matthew. Gunboats, Empire and the China Station: The Royal Navy in 1920s East Asia
Heaslip, Matthew. Gunboats, Empire and the China Station: The Royal Navy in 1920s East Asia.  London. Bloomsbury Academic. 2021.
 
The largest concentration of Royal Navy fighting power in a “brink of war” crisis between the world wars did not involve a single capital ship. Nor was it carried out to confront either the US or Imperial Japanese navies. The threat to Shanghai and violent clashes along the Yangtze Valley, triggered by the Northern Expedition of the Guomindang, provoked the British government to triple the strength of the China Station in 1927. Matthew Heaslip argues that this crisis transformed British efforts to adjust to volatile changes in Asia after the Great War, and he makes it the pivot around which he unfolds this strong and important new study of a service, a time, a place, and an empire. Three of the main themes he addresses have large extant literatures that address this post-1919 decade: the Royal Navy, British defence policy and grand strategy, and British policy towards and relations with China. But one does remain understudied: the theatre command that the Admiralty saw as third in priority, behind Home and the Mediterranean: the China Station. Heaslip does much to rectify this by placing the China Station deeply within all three of the other themes, explaining what role it played in each and how they all influenced each other. The argument is clear and concrete: notwithstanding the attention paid to battle fleets, naval arms limitation agreements, grand strategy, and great power relations, the Royal Navy carried on throughout this eventful decade with the more prosaic day to day work of defending British interests below those thresholds, using work a day squadrons – but East Asia was a special case, because China, geographically, politically, strategically, and economically, was singular, and thus the China Station was unique. Tracing the China Station’s experience in the 1920s both exposes and explains the larger stories of why British policy towards imperial defence in Asia had to change, how it tried to do so, and to what effects.

Heaslip wisely sets aside straight chronology to develop a study organized around themes. This not only allows Heaslip to revisit such major events as the 1927 crisis from differing vantage points, it also enables him to explore more closely a range of factors that help us understand seapower, the navy, China, great power relations, men and machines, and how they all affected each other and British policy. True, Heaslip sets the scene in opening chapters that discuss the more familiar problems of grand strategy, great powers, and volatility in China. But his tone is set by the first subsection, “Looking beyond the battle fleet.” Heaslip analyses what the China Station was, how it evolved, where it fit into the Royal Navy overall, and how those things changed after 1919. He examines its responsibilities, capabilities ashore and afloat, complications, and lays out the triangle within which it worked: the great waters of the China coast and the ocean, the network of rivers along which the treaty ports were located, and the web of relationships between China and the great powers, known as the “treaty system.” This involves examining such issues as gunboat diplomacy, technological change, personnel from the commander-in-chief to the ordinary sailor, and questions of society, culture, and trade. Heaslip develops three main arguments. First, the China Station reflected a crucial part of the Empire and Navy experience too often overlooked, the daily grind of managing imperial defence “at the sharp end.” Second, the Station discovered in practice, before the Foreign Office decided in principle, that British methods of trying to manage change in China must be revised. Finally, the Admiralty used the Station to try to circumvent, quietly, commitments made in the Washington Agreements, especially the Four Party Treaty, that from 1922 set the rules by which the Navy was supposed to operate.

Of these arguments, the second is the most interesting and best developed. Assuming gunboat diplomacy relied on using minimal force, the China Station discovered during the explosion of anti-British feeling in China from spring 1925 that this approach was all but obsolete. This helped shape the response to the 1927 crisis, which Heaslip turns inside out with impressive clarity. Identifying important differences between the conduct of personnel familiar with the Station and the country and those sent in as reinforcements, Heaslip presents an engaging discussion of the interplay between making policy at home and implementing it on the spot, of the perennial questions of individual agency and influence. Through that analysis emerges a major argument: the mission of the China Station shifted, under the pressure of both changes in policy and changes in China, from its traditional broad and penetrating challenge to defend the treaty system and its hard framework as a whole, to a less ambitious focus on protecting core assets and crucial hubs, in particular Shanghai and the Lower Yangtze as well as Hong Kong, while British policy adjusted to an emerging new China. 

Heaslip makes useful points about the more familiar problems of Japan and grand strategy, particularly regarding personal relations between the China Station and their Japanese counterparts. And he rightly stresses how wider British suspicions of the security threat posed by the Soviet Union to the Empire, both overall and in China, shaped British reactions to developments there, the Station included. But it is his evaluation of the Station as an important active player in the new situation in China that really makes Heaslip’s mark. The final conclusion is persuasive and sobering: the most difficult obstacle to overcome was neither policy from home nor complications from Japan, but rather something the China Station, and the Royal Navy as a whole, shared too readily with too many resident “Old China Hands”: “Political disinterest in the periphery of the Empire, dismissive attitudes towards non-white nations and anti-communist paranoia undermined the Royal Navy’s efforts to develop an effective long-term strategy, in favour of a forlorn hope of maintaining the status quo.” As active as it was, both British foreign policy and its military instrument, the China Station, did not look beyond the next bend in the river. This is an intriguing argument from a good study, and both deserve attention.

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

I

Immerwahr, Daniel. How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the United States
Immerwahr, Daniel. How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the United States. London. Vintage. 2020.
 
If one of the objectives a historian must achieve in order to present a successful revisionist study is to persuade us to see something familiar in a different way, Daniel Immerwahr has presented us a very interesting and truly revisionist history of the American experience. What was the United States? For Immerwahr, the answer is clear: “The history of the United States is the history of empire.” His interpretation succeeds as revisionism because he avoids the tired old focus on American foreign policy, although he certainly does not ignore it, and looks for explanations in other places: territories and the peoples who lived in them, and how the United States defined both and behaved towards them. This leads him to make a dynamic argument that brings several warring themes together: despite ingrained suspicion of overseas territorial empire through colonization, the United States built such an empire, successfully, in ways that allowed it to transform that space, when profound forces that fostered colonization became supplanted by those that favoured globalization – and to hide the whole thing in plain sight. 

The familiar elements of the story are all here. Continental westward expansion, constitutional status, economic development, ideas and ideals, the “white man’s burden,” race and its impact on politics and policy, seapower, war, cables, communications, bases and places – they all combined to build an American empire that disguised itself, even to itself, as a contiguous continental republic that had an expanding array of overseas interests and installations. Three factors particularly stand out, throughout: race, economic development, and technological change. The affects all three had on constitutional politics, and on the emergence of a globally assertive USA as a Great Power, are the threads that Immerwahr uses to bind his narrative. Contingency certainly mattered: the need for guano that could only be found overseas, to grow American food; the drive to expand American trade that required national maritime capability; the opportunities presented by a war with a dying former Great Power, Spain; the obligations revealed by a First World War and demanded by a Second. But for Immerwahr, these significant contingencies did not create a process, or even necessarily drive one, but only punctuated it. The process was American expansion, the expansion of American power and wealth. The thesis that this drive pointed the USA towards expansion into the Pacific and then Asia, developed by historians such as Marshall Green, is not rebutted here, but it is expanded. Expansion southward, into the Caribbean and Latin American, was just as important and consequential. Immerwahr’s discussion of territory and how to understand it is particularly central to his argument. The concept was not static, although the author does make good use of the so-called “legacy map” of the Continental 48 states in order to critique it, and it helps to explain how expansion into such crypto-colonies as Alaska, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico, gave way to “points,” nodes of bases and small hubs from which a now globalizing USA redefined what empire meant after the Second World War.

The Philippines is certainly an important subject for Immerwahr, who uses it to discuss in detail unfolding differences between “American territory” and “Americans” and what both meant. Indeed, he identifies the country as the principal venue for that theme. But other than discussing how the American presence there led into the Second World War and then American engagement with Asia during the Cold War, we do not read much about American imperial activity elsewhere in Asia. Korea emerges too briefly postwar, with a focus on its civil war and the American role there; Japan attracts more attention with MacArthur’s pro-consulship and subsequent American engagement with Japanese reordering, in which Immerwahr echoes the standing consensus that this ironically did much to bring about the Japanese “economic miracle” that made Japan such a formidable economic rival to the USA by the 1980s. Conspicuously inadequate is discussion of American engagement with China before the Second World War, despite American standing as a signatory of plural “unequal treaties,” and the long experience of American military garrisons, business communities in treaty ports, concessions, and international settlements, plus the formidable American presence through the missionary and education communities. Immerwahr might have argued that it lacked the territorial foundation to be included in his definition; had he done so that would not have been unreasonable, given how definitively China was understood to be “foreign.” But the extensive and varied American presence and experience there, connected in so many ways to its Pacific “empire,” surely warranted that discussion.

Immerwahr’s conclusion rests on the reader agreeing that he has successfully redefined the United States as an empire and that it successfully obscured this reality from itself. The first point is perhaps a bit of stretch before the Second World War, but works well thereafter through “points” and the technologies of globalization. The second is more convincing, and brings to mind comparisons with the French experience in Algeria. The United States had many reasons to establish itself in many territories, then take them under administration. There were not nearly so many different reasons why it was nowhere near as willing to accept all the residents therein as “native born” Americans. That is a point worth noting.

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

M

May, Ernest R. (ed.). Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars
May, Ernest R., ed. Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
 
Synopsis

This work focuses on intelligence before the two World Wars, exploring this topic in relation to several key powers of those periods. The contributors examine the role of intelligence within the decision-making apparatus of each power, detailing the processes of collection and analysis, as well as use by policymakers. The work thus sheds light on how intelligence interacted with various factors to shape policymakers’ perceptions of their geopolitical environment and thence state behaviour. In so doing, it illuminates an important element at play in the years leading up to, and at the beginning of, the world wars, thereby adding significantly to existing conceptions of key events. 

Scope

Excluding the introduction and conclusion, which provide overviews and overall analyses of the issues explored, this volume is divided into three sections. The first deals with intelligence preceding and at the beginning of the First World War. It examines the cases of Austria-Hungary, Imperial Germany, Tsarist Russia, France, Britain, and Italy. The second section deals with Western Europe before and in the initial years of World War II, focusing on Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. The final section addresses the USSR, Japan, and the USA in the same period. 

In general, each chapter covers the topic of intelligence from the perspective of a particular power, within the time period its section addresses. It details how that power conducted ‘intelligence appraisal’ - how intelligence was obtained, analysed, and consumed by personnel including key decision-makers. 

The contributors examine the myriad issues to do with these processes. Types of intelligence include military intelligence - to do with tactics, operations, and technical capabilities - as well as intelligence of a more economic or political nature. The authors address states’ flaws in intelligence collection: these included focusing on one type of intelligence to the exclusion of others, and resource constraints. 

Other issues in the process of ‘intelligence appraisal’ include interdepartmental and interpersonal relations, tensions within which often hindered communication. Ideology was also significant, in particular with the USSR. Significantly, existing and entrenched orthodoxies proved very difficult to dislodge, and exerted a powerful influence over how intelligence was received by decision-makers. Overall the character and attitudes of these policymakers were key, shaped by factors such as the experience of previous wars, personal motives, prejudices, and other aspects of personality. Issues of organisation are also significant, with the manner in which governments were organised rendering each power more susceptible to certain tendencies in intelligence processing. 

Thus, the contributors examine how intelligence interacted with other existing factors to influence state perceptions. They examine the role of intelligence in shaping how policymakers viewed themselves, their enemies, their allies, and their overall geopolitical situation - and from there, how these perceptions affected state behaviour. The introduction and conclusion draw out recurrent ideas from across the case studies. From these, the work attempts to draw lessons applicable to the Cold War context of the 1980s, during which this volume was produced. 

Argument

This volume demonstrates the significance of intelligence in the various powers’ failure to correctly anticipate, understand, or respond to events. The work thus, through exploring the topic of intelligence, serves to provide a more comprehensive picture of events preceding and at the beginning of the World Wars. 

What is clear throughout the volume is that the intelligence process had many components and levels. It was multifaceted, and a picture emerges of it being similar to a ‘machine’ with many moving parts. A fault in any one could derail the process and prevent the desired result (that is, policymakers correctly using intelligence to accurately assess situations and make decisions). 

Organisation type (the work loosely categorises government intelligence apparatuses into the groups ‘collegial’, ‘centralised’ and ‘authoritarian anarchy’) could affect the type of pitfalls each government was more prone to. Nevertheless, the work argues that no one organisation type showed significantly better results than the others. Rather, it was more important that there was organisational continuity, rather than change. This would allow for organisations to develop systems by which they could counteract the flaws of their own structure. 

It is argued throughout the work, and explicitly in the conclusion, that assumptions were the most prominent factor in tripping up intelligence processes. Time and time again personnel, especially leaders and other key decision-makers, defaulted to faulty presumptions, stereotypes, and prejudices, often in contradiction of available intelligence. Leaders often cherry-picked evidence to support existing ideas, or practised self-deception to avoid accepting unpalatable truths. It was very difficult for intelligence to convince decision-makers that existing orthodoxies were erroneous.
 
The conclusion’s analysis of the powers’ general tendencies pre-1914 versus in the 1930s emphasises the significance of presumption. It argues that faulty preconceptions regarding the nature of warfare led to failure, by pre-1914 intelligence, in assessing capabilities - military, but also economic and industrial. On the other hand, decision-makers of the 1930s fared worse in assessing proclivities - how states were likely to behave. This was due to preconceptions regarding how governments were organised, in particular failure to see how this had changed from the pre-1914 era. 

The work thus argues for the importance of asking ‘the right questions’ - that is, correctly identifying questions to which the ‘right answers could be useful guides to action’. This, rather than accuracy of intelligence, was key. Without being guided by the ‘right questions’, decision-makers - working instead on the basis of the ‘wrong questions’ based on faulty assumptions - would seek answers which while perhaps being accurate would not lead to beneficial courses of action. Vital intelligence, on the other hand, would be dismissed. Thus only by asking the ‘right questions’ could governments accurately direct the various parts of the intelligence process toward producing and employing useful information.

Annotated by Tang Sze Kay

O

Overy, Richard. Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945
Overy, Richard. Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945. New York. Allen Lane. 2021.
 
This is certainly not the first time someone has tried to capture the Second World War in a single volume, nor the first time they did so by trying to centre that conflict within the larger history of the century it did so much to define. But when those two objectives are critically addressed with the quality of insight, synthesis, and judgement displayed here, there will always be room for more. Richard Overy has long been one of the most highly regarded historians whose work concentrates on this second global and total war, and he brings a lifetime of reading, reflection, and study to this volume that, should he choose, would make a fitting capstone to an impressive body of work. Overy makes three principal arguments in this long and discursive study. First, the Second World War should be seen as the product of three challenges to the prevailing order by which the global international political system had been organized, challenges defined by ambitions to replace one order defined by imperialism with another. Second, those challenges rested on a territorial understanding of the project of empire; Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and Fascist Italy sought to reorder the world by creating new arrangements resting on profound territorial changes. Finally, the comprehensive defeat of all three challenges resulted in the destruction of a global order defined by projects of colonialism and empire, to be replaced by one defined by nation states.

There is nothing strikingly new about any of these arguments, nor will they command universal agreement. The contribution Overy makes, and it is important, is to remind us of three things. Territorial ambitions were indeed the foundation of the revisionist challenges to the prevailing order, whatever “ideological” programs they were intended to enable. But these challenges did not amount to any coordinated program to create a truly global new order, rather they focused on regional revision. And the only unifying theme that bound together those who defeated them was the negative theme: while the Allied powers could not really agree on what a new global order should be organized around, they did agree that Axis revisionist agendas must be destroyed. The Second World War was indeed about empires, and was certainly an “imperial war.”

Overy approaches his subject thematically, after early chapters that explain how and why regional frictions evolved into global conflict. Successive chapters on mobilization, the economics of war, on justifying war at the time, on the varied civilian experiences, and on the personal lived and learned experiences of total war take readers from the battlefields across the array of dimensions that constituted total war. Overy does not pull his punches in concluding chapters on crimes – “The Second World War was an atrocious war” – and consequences, extending his argument to suggest that political decolonization was the underlying rhythm that defined both the Cold War and the new global order expressed by the United Nations project. As there will always be in ambitious sweeping studies such as this, there are errors, or weak arguments, or passages resting on sources that cannot support the weight placed on them, that specialists will mark with the red pen. No one will be ever be across everything, or persuade everyone.

On one point this is not minor. Overy’s decision to join the brigade that argues the Second World War must be dated to the instigation of violence in Manchuria in September 1931 by junior elements of the Imperial Japanese Army does not persuade any more effectively than his predecessors. The chain of causation is too attenuated, Japanese agenda shaping and decision making too disorganized and ambivalent, to carry that point. Nor, to select a few examples, does Overy really grasp the core strategic problems involved in the Malayan Campaign of 1941-42; his brief depiction of the postwar Malayan Emergency will strike many as incomplete with regards to attitudes on the ground; and his argument that the Soviet Union should not be considered a postwar empire is almost pedantic. Yet on the whole, his grasp of sources, literature, archives, and the state of play of the scholarship, on one matter after another, is profoundly impressive. Here is an author who presents an up to date and persuasive critical discussion about logistics and generalship in North Africa, then goes on to unfold a penetrating evaluation of the many controversies surrounding popular wartime understandings of the ongoing conflict, at the same level of confidence and clarity. Overy’s point that the Axis powers had what we now consider an inverted understanding of the war – that in their view Allied desires to deny them the fruits of territory, resources, wealth, and power were the justifications for war – does not justify, but does something more important: it explains. It reminds us that critical understanding in history requires engaging all dimensions.

As a global history of a global conflict, with global consequences, this book succeeds. The Asian dimension is neither parallel nor secondary, but fully integrated within the wider shared experience. Overy quite fittingly singles out three Asian-focused developments that define his whole argument: that Japanese ambitions provoked the United States to pick up the mantle of champion of global order, and this connected the different conflicts; that the unexpected and jarring Communist victory in the postwar civil war in China was the defining geopolitical event of postwar reordering and the Cold War; and that the wars in Korea and Indochina marked the end of a global order defined by territorial imperialism. In this his most ambitious book, Overy, a scholar whose work always concentrated more on the European experience, began and ended in Asia. That speaks volumes.

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

P

Peden, G.C. Arms, Economics, and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs
Peden, G.C. Arms, Economics, and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 
 
Synopsis

This book deals with British defence policy from 1904 to 1969, and provides a study of British grand strategy during the period. While it devotes particular attention to how the use of arms was shaped by economic and technological factors of the day, Peden also examines the role of industrial, organisational, and geopolitical considerations. These developments and constraints shaped priorities and influenced policy makers. Overall, Peden details the processes by which British strategy and defence policy were developed, and in turn how these were executed, contextualised against broader developments such as the decline of global British influence. This study, therefore, provides a comprehensive account of military strategy and policy in the 20th century, and its role in British power as a whole. 

Scope

Peden’s work spans the years 1904-1969. It progresses chronologically, with each chapter covering a particular time period: the first examines the years leading up to the First World War, the second the war itself. Then the inter-war years are covered, followed by the Second World War. The postwar period is split into the ‘atomic phase’, and ‘thermonuclear phase’, with the dividing point between them being the first hydrogen-bomb tests, which occurred in 1954. 

The key topics stressed in this book are economics and technology (as related to British defence). Peden details changes in the British balance of payments over the years, as well as the sterling and devolution crises of the postwar era. He stresses the role of economic strength in deterrence, and the maintenance of Britain’s role as a great power. His analysis of the British economy is tied closely to his detailing of how military technology evolved throughout the 20th century - from the dreadnought to the H-bomb. These developments, and the associated rising costs, naturally impacted British finances, and shaped British strategy. 

Additionally, Peden also examines British industry and labour - key to arms development and manufacturing. The work also looks at the broader geopolitical context of the time: threats and alliances, as well as shifts in the global balance of power - including Britain’s declining influence - are dealt with in detail from the British perspective. Particularly prominent throughout the work are relations with continental European nations, as well as Anglo-American ties. American ascendancy, paired with declining British strength, are key trends featuring prominently throughout the work, and Peden details the increasing reliance of the latter on the former. Britain’s imperial commitments - such as its colonies, the Dominions - are also taken into account. 

Peden, throughout the work, demonstrates how these various considerations were weighed by and filtered through the British government machinery to produce strategy and policy: he stresses the consistent impact of interservice and interdepartmental rivalries, as well as the continuities and changes in organisation. The role of the Treasury is consistently prominent. The effect of influential personalities - such as Churchill, Bevin, and Baldwin - is also analysed. 

Throughout the book, Peden comprehensively demonstrates how these factors interacted with each other to produce British strategy and defence policy. In particular the work focuses on the relationship between military technology, economics, and strategy. The concept of ‘opportunity cost’ is prominent, as he details how policymakers formulated priorities and made decisions in light of the many considerations involved. 

Overall, each chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of British strategy and defence policy - how they were developed and executed, their strengths and flaws - within a particular time period. The chapters, taken together, offer a history of British defence and its role in Britain’s changing geopolitical position from 1904-1969.

Argument

Peden extensively builds on the works of other authors. He references David French and Avner Offer, who have examined the relationship between economics and strategy. He also cites scholars such as David Edgerton who have written on British military technology. Building on works such as these, while refuting claims made in others, he argues for the significance of both advances in military technology, as well as economic factors, in shaping grand strategy. 

The links between these can be seen in an assertion central to this work, that is: developments in military technology resulted in the rising costs of weapons systems, which tended to increase at a rate greater than that of the national income. This, in turn, necessitated changes in strategy.

Peden thus argues that the decreasing size of Britain’s armed forces, over the period covered, was not evidence of growing weakness. Rather, it was a sign of adaptability. Peden eschews the view that the British elite were overly-conservative, or attached to a ‘baroque arsenal’; on the contrary he consistently demonstrates the willingness of the British elite to adopt new technologies and weapons systems, in line with contemporary advances in military technology. Britain embraced these new weapons systems, the rising cost of which necessitated decreases in the size of Britain’s armed forces, and therefore new strategies for deterrence and warfare. These involved not only the armed forces, but also incorporated economic strengthening, and maintenance of a ‘special relationship’ by which Britain could influence the US.

Overall, Peden argues for British flexibility in keeping up with global geopolitical trends, technological advancements, and economic realities. It was these which shaped British strategy, rather than conservatism or attachment to any traditional ‘British way’. He does consistently criticise the chronic lack of interservice and interdepartmental cooperation; generally however he takes a complimentary view of British strategy in the period covered. It was, in his opinion, ‘extraordinarily ambitious and adaptable’. By detailing the interplay between the various factors behind British strategy, Peden provides a comprehensive account of its evolution from 1904-1969.

Annotated by Tang Sze Kay

Pomfret, John. The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present
Pomfret, John. The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. New York: Picador, 2016. 
 
If this is popular history, let us have more of it please. John Pomfret, experienced journalist, long-time student of and resident in China, presents almost a model exemplar of the genre “well-written and readable analytical overview of a substantial topic, spanning much time and many themes, that the specialist will find useful and the general reader will consider absorbing.” Pomfret presents a history of US-China relations that goes far beyond government to government intercourse, but treats that compelling theme with some insight. The book does not make the common mistake of overemphasizing the importance of individuals and personality, but demonstrates a good eye for the importance and colour provided by both. Pomfret treats each era as a substantial experience in its own right, rather than as part of an extended prologue to “set the scene” for the current state of affairs – and yet, more than once, he is able to point out how persistent some themes, impulses, perceptions, and reactions have been, running through this relationship into our own time. The word that perhaps best describes this study is balance. Pomfret presents a truly well-balanced extended essay that devotes ample time and space to Americans in China, Chinese in the USA, and the multi-layered relationships between the two peoples and countries, diplomatic and political, military, economic, social and cultural, psychological and personal. The balance defines his overall thesis: both partners have been weaving a web between each other that entangles, sometimes in oscillation, such themes as fear and loathing, respect and admiration, affection and trust, frustration and suspicion. No stone of significance is left unturned, but neither is anything important essentialized or stereotyped.

It would be difficult to tell which era or theme is the author’s personal area of greatest expertise and or his favourite, which is always a good sign. Some storylines do however stand out: a recurring American view of China as a protégé and a conviction that American tutelage could “reform,” “modernize,” and or “globalize” China; Chinese beliefs that American inventions, ideas, and techniques could provide vital stimulus to China’s development, offset by fear that having to adopt American attitudes and culture would make the cure worse than the disease; American determination to keep China intact and establish it as a modern power integrated in the international order; Chinese desire to leverage those feelings to do the same thing on their own terms; the mutual view of each other as exotic, battling with the view of each other as menacing. The familiar stories of the businessmen, missionaries, and diplomats in China are all here, as are the stories of the labourers, Chinatowns, and cultural influence in the USA. Individual arguments of note include: emphasis on the influence of all things American on what became a dynamic Republic of China, soured by the difficulties and challenges of fighting as allies during the Second World War; well-documented criticism of how at least two generations of “useful idiots” were taken for the proverbial ride by the Communist Party of China, including the interwar generation of journalists and writers led by Edgar Snow and the wartime diplomats led by John Paton Davies; critical emphasis on how badly Mao and the People’s Republic of China required an American bogeyman, especially for domestic political purposes, and how well they camouflaged that fact, both during the depth of hostility and through the thaw of the 1970s and beyond; sometimes trenchant criticism of American governments, from Nixon and Kissinger onwards, for being too forthcoming with a China they saw as they wished it to be, not as it was, and not being transactional enough.

Pomfret concludes that despite everything this always fraught relationship has been relatively well managed. Unfortunately, that seems more aspirational than evidence-based. In such wider contexts as developing a modern commercial market in interwar China, or managing educational and other interchanges, there is something to be said for that optimism. But the closer one gets to the all-important government to government political relationships, the more the picture appears to resemble such episodes as the failure of “dollar diplomacy” to keep late Qing and early Republican China’s door “open,” or American souring on Chiang Kai-Shek and the Guomindang as familiarity bred contempt, or Bill Clinton’s ill-fated and frankly naïve foray into “constructive engagement.” And it is that political relationship between states that has done most of the damage, in the negative experiences within these wider relationships between countries. It would be interesting to hear Pomfret’s views on how events after publication have affected his thinking, given the damage done by the escalated bellicosity towards the world driven by Xi Jinping, the wreckage strewn by Donald Trump and his incoherent presidency, and the impact of Covid-19, and how the PRC handled the virus, on the entire world. There is also one gap in this admittedly layered relationship that Pomfret overlooks in his otherwise very painstaking examination. There are millions of American citizens of Chinese ethnic descent, his wife included. There are negligible numbers of PRC citizens of American descent. That gap has not fundamentally changed since Chinese emigration during the nineteenth century. It adds something to this vibrant story of two deeply entangled civilizations trapped in proximate friction.

Annotated by Dr. Brian P. Farrell

T

Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Ripsman, Norrin M., and Lobell, Steven E. (ed.). The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars
Taliaferro, Jeffrey W., Ripsman, Norrin M., and Lobell, Steven E., ed. The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
 
Synopsis

This edited volume re-looks traditional narratives on great power politics in the interwar period. In examining the grand strategies of major actors - Britain, France, the US, the USSR, Germany, and Japan, the contributors provide a fresh look at long-held assumptions on the lead-up to World War II. They explore, in detail, the decision-making processes behind the policies of the era, detailing the political, economic, and strategic considerations at play. In so doing, this work challenges both conventional historical understandings of the interwar years, as well as the international relations theories with which they are intertwined.

Scope

This work defines the ‘interwar period’ as lasting from 11 November 1918 (the Armistice between Germany and the Allied Powers) and 11 December 1941 (Germany and Italy declare war against the US), and examines the great power politics of this era. 

In particular, it offers new perspectives on ‘appeasement’, re-looking British and French strategy toward Germany in the leadup to World War II. Other chapters challenge traditional views of axis decision-making, providing fresh views on issues such as the economic drivers of axis policy, as well as the alliances between these powers. Contributors such as Haas also revise old views regarding the role of ideological and realist logics in Soviet calculations. Additionally, Taliaferro provides a new perspective on the US entrance into the war, examining the interplay between US domestic politics and broader strategic developments. Further, the League of Nations’ role in the strategic landscape of the period is also given fresh treatment. 

Throughout the work the contributors relate historical analyses to relevant ideas in international relations. Traditional applications of theories such as realism and liberalism, to the events in question, are challenged and modified. 

The introductory and concluding chapters identify common threads running through the many provocative arguments offered. They also elucidate the significance of this work for the fields of History and International Relations, and draw links to contemporary geopolitical issues such as the rise of China. 

Argument

This edited volume is chiefly significant in that it revisits conventional, and seldom-questioned narratives on the period in question. Using new archival materials (with the opening of the British archives in 1967), the contributors re-look key events. They question traditional ideas which have been ingrained in the discipline of History, and have been pivotal to shaping the study of international relations, as well as contemporary policymaking. 

The relatively restricted nature of the time period studied allows multiple authors, each with their own perspective, to comment on the same issues. While all revise traditional narratives, they also build on, and dispute analyses forwarded by other contributors to the volume. Overall, however, the major commonalities and arguments that emerge are as follows: 

The authors stress the importance of the international environment in influencing strategic decision-making, in particular whether it is ‘permissive’ or ‘restrictive’. The former indicates an international environment in which there are fewer, or weaker constraints on the policy choices states may make. In a restrictive environment, however, these are greater, as threats tend to be more immediate and obvious, limiting policy options. The contributors emphasise the utility of this framework in analysing great power decision-making.

Secondly: key to this volume is the sympathetic treatment of British and French ‘appeasement’ toward Germany in the interwar years. Traditional narratives have depicted this strategy as being a result of naivete, weakness, or wishful thinking. The contributors here, however, argue that this view suffers from ‘outcome bias’, and fails to properly consider the constraints that France and Britain were operating under, or the nuances of French and British decision making at the time. They stress that British and French interwar policy, despite the eventual outcome, was the product not of weakness or naivete but rational and pragmatic calculations. Additionally, the League of Nations is also cast in a more positive light, with Webster arguing for its centrality to great power strategies. He also highlights its significant achievements, particularly in disarmament. 

The various contributors also highlight the inadequacy of current international relations theories and frameworks, and the ways they are applied, in explaining interwar great power politics. This is particularly salient in the chapters dealing with Axis and Soviet decision-making. Copeland, for example, attempts to both add on to and marry the liberal and realist approaches in explaining the economic drivers of axis behaviour. Haas, similarly, challenges the view that the USSR was motivated purely by realpolitik, and argues for seeing Soviet policy as arising from a blend of both ideological and realist considerations. Traditional understandings of alliance theories, and their applications, are also depicted as being inadequate in explaining the alliances between the Axis powers and the USSR. Additionally, in detailing US entrance into the war, Taliaferro builds on existing applications of ‘neoclassical realist’ theory to the issue by highlighting how this interacted with alliance dynamics.
 
In sum, this work challenges conventional historical narratives regarding great power politics in the interwar years, as well as the international relations theories which were shaped by them. The conventional views across both disciplines are depicted as being insufficiently nuanced, or the product of assumptions. The contributors hope that the fresh perspectives provided in this work will allow contemporary policy makers to more usefully draw on the lessons of the interwar period.

Annotated by Tang Sze Kay