sino -Japanese war
Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea, Hans J. van de Ven, eds. The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. Illustrations, maps. 664 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8047-6206-9.
Reviewed by Roger H. Brown (Saitama University)
Published on H-War (December, 2012)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
The Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 was immense both in its scale and consequences. Nevertheless, Western military histories of World War II have focused overwhelmingly on the campaigns of the European and Pacific theaters, and those specialized studies of the conflict that do exist deal primarily with such matters as diplomacy; politics; mass mobilization; and, in more recent years, Japanese atrocities and public memory. Indeed, as the editors of the volume under review attest, “a general history of the military operations during the war based on Japanese, Chinese, and Western sources does not exist in English” (p. xix). In 2004, Japanese, Chinese, and Western scholars gathered to remedy this situation and in the belief that such a close study of the operations and strategy of the Sino-Japanese War would “illustrate that, in this period, warfare drove much of what happened in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres in China and Japan.” They further recognized that because “much of the best scholarship on WWII in East Asia is naturally produced in China and Japan,” there was a need to “bring the fruits of Chinese and Japanese work to the attention of a wider public” (p. xx). Granting that the resulting volume is not exhaustive, the editors seek to bridge the inevitable gaps with “a general overview of the military campaigns, an accompanying chronology, and introductions to the several sections into which the chapters are grouped” (p. xxi). With that caveat behind them, coeditors Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea, and Hans J. van de Ven declare that the contributors have provided
Reviewed by Roger H. Brown (Saitama University)
Published on H-War (December, 2012)
Commissioned by Margaret Sankey
The Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 was immense both in its scale and consequences. Nevertheless, Western military histories of World War II have focused overwhelmingly on the campaigns of the European and Pacific theaters, and those specialized studies of the conflict that do exist deal primarily with such matters as diplomacy; politics; mass mobilization; and, in more recent years, Japanese atrocities and public memory. Indeed, as the editors of the volume under review attest, “a general history of the military operations during the war based on Japanese, Chinese, and Western sources does not exist in English” (p. xix). In 2004, Japanese, Chinese, and Western scholars gathered to remedy this situation and in the belief that such a close study of the operations and strategy of the Sino-Japanese War would “illustrate that, in this period, warfare drove much of what happened in the political, economic, social, and cultural spheres in China and Japan.” They further recognized that because “much of the best scholarship on WWII in East Asia is naturally produced in China and Japan,” there was a need to “bring the fruits of Chinese and Japanese work to the attention of a wider public” (p. xx). Granting that the resulting volume is not exhaustive, the editors seek to bridge the inevitable gaps with “a general overview of the military campaigns, an accompanying chronology, and introductions to the several sections into which the chapters are grouped” (p. xxi). With that caveat behind them, coeditors Mark R. Peattie, Edward J. Drea, and Hans J. van de Ven declare that the contributors have provided