el cid again
Posts: 14601
Joined: 10/10/2005
Status: online
|
My reply to Big Red's pm request for more details was too long - so it is here -
in re the Chinese diplomacy in re the origins of the Pacific War:
See China and the Origins of the Pacific War
1931-1941
Youli Sun
St Martin's Press
ISBN 0-312-09010-2
or in paper 0-312-16454-8
1992
This was based on work as a graduate student at the University of Chicago
starting in 1987 by the author. Although based on ROC materials, Yaouli
was the first student from PRC of Japanese professor Akiria Iriye, whose
name implies he is Japanese. Likely these two - professor and student -
had a better grasp of how to read the Chinese language archives than most
people in the USA would have. Four other academics are cited for helping
the author, one of them Chinese and his professor of Chinese history,
three apparently "American" (a term I dislike using as it offends Canadians
and Latinos). That is - I do not suspect the writer of a PRC bias. His wife,
also Chinese, is also acknowledged as helping in the capacity of a librarian.
That is, this combination of people almost certainly have a superior grasp of
Chinese language materials than I do. The book is in English.
Material came from the Far Eastern Library of the University of Chicago,
the Library of Congress, the Hoover Institution, the Archival Section of
the Butler Library at the Columbia University (a major Chinese library,
under a different name in the new movie RED starring Bruce Willis),
the National Archives and the Franklin Roosevelt Library.
The author has a uniformly pro Chinese vs Imperial Japan attitude,
something common between both PRC and ROC during the War of
Resistance and afterward. He thinks China was the only one of the "9
powers" (referring I think to the 9 countries which relieved the siege
of Peking during the Boxer Rebellion and which established a new
regime for China) to resist Japan's unilateral breech of the deal in 1931.
The decision to fight Japan dates, he says, from 1937. [Other dates
include 1935 or 1931 - I usually say 1935 as the start of the War of
Resistance] Regardless, WWII properly begins here, in China, and
does not stop until 1945, by all measures. In important respects,
China is a vital strategic opponant to Japan, comparable to Russia for
Germany, one that possibly may be impossible to defeat. He cites
one book and two articles based on ROC materials prior to his own
work whch "revealed to us the active and shrewd diplomatic
maneuvers of the Chinese government from 1937 to 1945" He also
says the "best study of China's relations with Japan" is
Facing Japan: Chinese Politics and Japanese Imperialism" by
Park's Coble. It is "the most detailed treatment of Chinese politics
available in the English language and, while still following a somewhat
traditional approach, sheds much light on Chiang Kai-shek's polices
toward Japan." This implies Yaouli in his own mind is NOT following
a "taditional approach." He says there is much work on Japanese
politics, but not much on Chinese, in this period.
His view is there are two main points from a Chinese perspective:
1) Japan's aggression in China threatened Western interests;
also that there would be inivitable conflicts between Japan and
the other Imperialist powers in China.
2) It was practical to seek alliances against Japan not only to defend
the country, but also to permit ROC to concentrate on its domestic
enimies (which I assume means the Reds and various warlordy's).
This is entirely consistent with what I glean from Stillwell, among
others.
There was a serious movement toward an accomodation between
KMT and Japan (the No 2 politician, Wang Jing-wei, defected in fact,
and led the so-called pupit regime in Nanking, and it "made it
extremely difficult" for the ROC regime). Youli accounts
for the pressures, international and domestic, which caused the
concept of such accomodation to fail. There was real hope the
Soviet Union would intervene, as well as the United States. He cites
a political phrase re the USA unusually - in caps: "The Last Best Hope"
- to imply I suppose it was a very strong opinion. But I have run into
the same phrase without caps in other materials and it apparently was
in general use during the war.
The publisher's reviewer summarizes the material by saying that the
decision to keep fighting Japan as well as diplomacy were critical factors
in preventing a possible American-Japanese accomodation. We see an
example of such an accomodation after the Panay Incident. We also see
in the original terms of the embargo of oil, iron ore and rubber provisions
the intent not to fully impose them at once - although in fact they were -
for reasons unclear. This was the critical diplomatic development that led
to Japan's decision to mobilize in July 1941. [See Japan's Decision for
War, records of the 1941 Foreign Policy Conference, a study of Japanese
materials but, in this book, translated into English. Nobutaka Ike,
Stansford University Press, 1967 ISBN not in the original edition I have;
Library of Congress 940.5352 I26]
|
Printable Version
Japanese archives: Japan broke US, UK, ROC and Can codes! - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread