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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2018
In a recent survey of modern China, historian Rana Mitter noted: “The war between China and Japan may have been the single most important event to shape twentieth-century China”. This perspective hasn't been around for very long. The relevance of China's War of Resistance against Japan (KangRi zhanzheng) has been revaluated by historians in recent years, a prime example of this being Mitter's book on the subject and the work of Hans van de Ven. For years, the victory of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 was crystallised into a crucial turning point and the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party/KMT) was seen as corrupt and ineffective, as epitomised by Lloyd Eastman's studies. Eastman's verdict is not entirely contradicted by some of the new scholarship, although important revisionist works have led to a reassessment of the KMT state-building efforts, in particular during their pre-war decade in power, the so-called Nanjing decade (1927–1937). Although the ‘rediscovery’ of the war came later in the English-language than it did in Chinese, it is undeniable that recent years have seen a growing interest in the period, both in academia and in popular culture. The three monographs under review here are, in many ways, illustrative of the best new research on the conflict. They provide comprehensive insight on the impact of the war on the Nationalists' state-building efforts in fiscal policy, propaganda, and justice. All are first monographs, springing from meticulous doctoral and post-doctoral research anchored on a plethora of new primary sources. They make important contributions to our understanding of the impact of the war in China, as well as to economic history, media studies, and legal history more broadly.
1 Mitter, R., ‘The War Years, 1937–1949’, in Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. (ed), The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China (Oxford, 2016), p. 150Google Scholar.
2 Mitter, R., China's War with Japan, 1937–1945: The Struggle for Survival (London, 2013)Google Scholar; van de Ven, H., China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China, 1937–1952 (London, 2017)Google Scholar; van de Ven, H., War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945 (London, 2003)Google Scholar.
3 Eastman, E.g. L. E., Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949 (Stanford, 1984)Google Scholar.
4 Recent examples (amongst several others) include van de Ven, H., Breaking with the Past: The Maritime Customs Service and the Global Origins of Modernity in China (New York, 2014)Google Scholar, Ladds, C., Empire Careers: Working for the Chinese Customs Service, 1854–1949 (Manchester, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chang, C., Government, Imperialism and Nationalism in China: The Maritime Customs Service and its Chinese Staff (London, 2012)Google Scholar; Bickers, R., ‘Anglo-Japanese Relations in Treaty Port China: The Case of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1899–1941’, in Best, A. (ed), The International History of East Asia, 1900–1968: Ideology, Trade and the Quest for Order (London, 2010), pp. 35–56Google Scholar; Bickers, R., ‘The Chinese Maritime Customs at War, 1941–1945’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36:2 (2008), pp. 295–311CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Brunero, D., Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service 1854–1949 (Abingdon, 2006)Google Scholar.
5 Thai, P., China's War on Smuggling: Law, Economic Life, and the Making of the Modern State, 1842–1965 (New York, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 E.g. MacKinnon, S. R., China Reporting: An Oral History of American Journalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar; Coble, P. M., China's War Reporters: The Legacy of Resistance against Japan (Cambridge, MA, 2015)Google Scholar.
7 Zanasi, M., ‘Globalizing Hanjian: The Suzhou Trials and the Post-World War II Discourse on Collaboration’, The American Historical Review 113/3 (2008), pp. 731–751CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Kushner, B., Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (Cambridge, MA, 2015), p. 302Google Scholar.
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10 On the wartime experience of Chinese communities in Southeast Asia see, for example: Lee, Y. H., KangRi yu FuRi: Huaqiao, Guomin zhengfu, Wang zhengquan [Anti-Japanese and Pro-Japanese: Overseas Chinese, the National Government, the Wang Regime] (Taipei, 2003)Google Scholar; Koh, E., Diaspora at War: The Chinese of Singapore between Empire and Nation, 1937–1945 (Leiden, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Kirby, W. C., ‘The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era’, The China Quarterly, 150 (1997), p. 433Google Scholar.
12 van de Ven, China at War, p. 12.