Название: End of Empire: One Hundred Days in 1945 that Changed Asia and the World
Автор: David P. Chandler, Robert Cribb
Издательство: NIAS Press
Год: 2016
Страниц: 353
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 18.6 MB

European events are dominating global public discussions and reminiscences of World War II though no doubt Hiroshima will be remembered on 6 August as usual. Thereafter, the 70th anniversaries of Indonesian, Vietnamese and Korean independence will get mainly local attention. Aiming to redress this imbalance, "˜End of Empire' focuses on a brief, 100-day period at the end of the war across a broad sweep of eastern Asia "“ a time when the Indonesian and Vietnamese revolutions were born, the fragile wartime truce been Communists and Nationalists in China began to fray, and the first steps were made in Japan towards a new democratic order. Following a chronological order, the volume combines daily events with commentary, photographs, maps and personal accounts. More importantly, it is part of a radical, multi-faceted project to commemorate the period not just in print but also on screen and in "˜real-time broadcasts' published day by day. Here, perhaps, is the form of scholarly publishing and learning of the future but without abandoning traditional standards.

The Second World War began in Asia, with the Japanese invasion of China in July 1937; it ended there with Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945. Nowhere in Asia, however, did the end of the war mean the end of conflict. Political and social battles emerged and re-emerged on local, regional and international fronts. The nature and trajectory of these struggles, some of which persisted for decades, were profoundly influenced by the political and military circumstances of the 100 days that followed the Japanese surrender. August 15th marked the end of the Japanese empire but events of the subsequent 100 days foreshadowed the demise of other empires and set into motion developments that transformed the post-war world.

In 1937, Japan was the only truly sovereign power in Asia. It had three kinds of international identity. First, it was a modern power, the partner of comparable Western powers in directing and regulating world affairs. Two decades earlier, it had joined the Allies in fighting Germany in the First World War and had been rewarded with a share of the former German colonies and a permanent seat on the council of the League of Nations. Its position in this global elite became fraught because of its invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and it had temporarily withdrawn from the League. But the other powers soon accepted Japanese hegemony in Manchuria as a fait accompli and in 1936 Japan was selected to host the 1940 Olympic Games. Second, Japan was a colonial power. Since opening to the West in the mid-nineteenth century, it had established colonial rule over neighbouring regions – Okinawa, Sakhalin, Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria – basing both its imperialist rationale and its colonial practice on what it interpreted as Western models. After 1932, its efforts to expand its control and influence in China proper were increasingly aggressive. Third, Japan was a beacon for Asian societies by virtue of its successful modernization and its position in world affairs.

On 13 November 1945, 100 tumultuous days had passed since the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. One thousand days later, on 9 August 1948, the forces that had been set in train by Japan’s defeat and surrender continued to shape the face of Asia.