Book contents
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume IV
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction to Volume IV
- Part I Ordering a World of States
- 1 Global Capitalist Infrastructure and US Power
- 2 Overseas Bases and the Expansion of US Military Presence
- 3 The Consolidation of the Nuclear Age
- 4 American Knowledge of the World
- 5 The American Construction of the Communist Threat
- 6 The Fractured World of the Cold War
- 7 The US and the United Nations System
- 8 American Development Aid, Decolonization, and the Cold War
- 9 Decolonization and US Intervention in Asia
- Part II Challenging a World of States
- Part III New World Disorder?
- Index
9 - Decolonization and US Intervention in Asia
from Part I - Ordering a World of States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2021
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors to Volume IV
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction to Volume IV
- Part I Ordering a World of States
- 1 Global Capitalist Infrastructure and US Power
- 2 Overseas Bases and the Expansion of US Military Presence
- 3 The Consolidation of the Nuclear Age
- 4 American Knowledge of the World
- 5 The American Construction of the Communist Threat
- 6 The Fractured World of the Cold War
- 7 The US and the United Nations System
- 8 American Development Aid, Decolonization, and the Cold War
- 9 Decolonization and US Intervention in Asia
- Part II Challenging a World of States
- Part III New World Disorder?
- Index
Summary
On September 2, 1945, the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, boarded the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. He was there to preside over the unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan. The site for the ceremony closing the Asian chapter of World War II was intentional: In 1853, US Admiral Matthew Perry’s coal-burning Black Ships had first entered this harbor to “open” Japan to the world as the Americans pushed an arc of power across the Pacific Ocean from California to Canton. And open Japan did. By World War I, Japan had begun industrializing, joined the club of the “great powers,” and was playing the Western “imperial game” with nationalist gusto. So much so that its expansionism in the 1930s triggered war with the Americans in 1941, when Tokyo tried to make an empire of the Asia-Pacific by seizing Guam, attacking Hawai‘i, and then conquering Southeast Asia.
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- The Cambridge History of America and the World , pp. 213 - 234Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022