Empires On The Pacific

by Robert S Thompson

Overview

By moving China to center stage, Robert Smith Thompson expands the traditional boundaries of the Pacific Theater of World War II and casts the conflict in an entirely new light. What is commonly viewed as a discrete military conflict between an aggressive Japan with imperial ambitions and a reluctant, passive America now becomes the stuff of Greek tragedy. The overreaching British Empire is waning, yet is unwilling to relinquish its foothold in China, while an increasingly ambitious Japan is determined to dominate the region and conquer China as part of that plan. Enter the young upstart, America, with imperial ambitions of its own in Asia. The United States meant to replace Britain as the dominant power in Asia and saw Japan as a direct threat to that dominance. For Franklin Delano Roosevelt and for the United States, the war with Japan had little to do with revenge for Pearl Harbor. Japan would have to be vanquished so that it would never again be an imperial rival. This recasting of the Asian conflict profoundly alters our understanding not just of World War II in the Pacific but also of what followed in the Korean War and the war in Vietnam. Revisionist history at its best, Empires on the Pacific will provoke discussion and debate and it will alter our view of what many still consider the last "good war. "Interest in WWII has never been higher: The summertime release of Touchstone Pictures' blockbuster Pearl Harbor-accompanied by Basic Books' own Pearl Harbor (April 19 release)-will create tremendous interest in the Pacific theater of WWII. Timely publication: The book anticipates the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 2001. Striking, revisionist, controversial: America's wartime actions in the Pacific were not revenge for Pearl Harbor but were part of America's larger imperial ambitions to replace the British Empire as the dominant force in Asia, and, especially, in China. America won the war with Japan but lost the peace, which led, inevitably, to the Korean War and to the war in Vietnam. A long overdue explanation of what America's war against Japan was all about-in a word: China.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465085767
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	12/18/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	472
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Lexile:	1110L (what's this?)

About the Author

Robert Smith Thompson teaches at the University of South Carolina. His book A Time for War: FDR and the Path to Pearl Harbor was the first serious work to argue that FDR provoked the attack on Pearl Harbor as a way of justifying America's entry into war. He lives in Columbia, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	Prologue: Washington, December 8, 1941	xi
Part I	The Road to War
1	The Fall of Imperial China	3
2	Japan's Response to the West	21
3	The Open Door	41
4	New Order in East Asia	57
5	The Road to Pearl Harbor	75
Part II	Japan's Far-Flung Battle Line
6	The Onslaught	101
7	The Singapore Debacle	123
8	Warriors of the Rising Sun	141
9	But Not in Shame	159
10	Midway	177
Part III	The Receding of the Tide
11	America Rising	199
12	The Hammer and the Anvil	221
13	Grand Strategy	239
14	Unanswerable Strength	257
15	Turning Points	277
Part IV	Recasting the Imperial Far East
16	Yalta	297
17	Return to the Colonies	313
18	The New Taipans	327
19	The Masters	343
20	They Call It Peace	363
	Epilogue: World War II and the Road to Vietnam	377
	Notes	391
	Sources	401
	Index	415

Editorial Reviews

Thompson's title is somewhat misleading since his book is primarily about the United States, China, and Japan, while other countries are only supporting players. There is no argument from this reviewer that the Great Pacific War was among empires and that Japan's war against China was the primary cause of U.S.-Japanese friction, but the author's attempt to show that the United States was primarily fighting to control China in the postwar world is not at all well substantiated. There is too much narrative of the familiar military operations in the Pacific and not enough about the undoubted diplomatic and political maneuvering to extend America's influence in Asia. More a history of the war than an expos of evil imperialist aims, this work can be considered a companion to Thompson's earlier A Time for War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor (LJ 7/91), which blamed the president for the Japanese attack. This jumble of a book will be of interest only to large World War II, diplomatic, and Asian history collections. (Maps, photos, and index not seen.) -Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

Library Journal

Revisionist history casting the 20th-century struggle for control of the Pacific Rim nations as a conflict among various expanding empires. Noted for arguing in A Time for War (1991) that President Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Thompson (History/Univ. of South Carolina) turns here to mid-20th-century attempts by Britain, China, Japan, and the US to gain supremacy in the Far East. He argues that as British colonialism waned, a political void emerged throughout eastern Asia and inspired the Japanese government, starved for natural resources, to fill the resulting power vacuum. As early victories in China created momentum, Japan's armies forcibly expelled the British from much of the region and, according to Thompson, awakened a national belief that it could take on the industrial might of the US. The author also explores infighting between Chinese nationalist Chiang Kai-shek and communist Mao Zedong and suggests that the US attempted to position itself to assume Britain's economic role following the ultimate defeat of Japan. Thompson further supports his argument by documenting General Douglas MacArthur's obsession with reestablishing himself as the most important figure in the Philippines after his early flight from the island fortress of Corregidor. This combination of opportunism and paternalism, Thompson asserts, established a new economic colonialism that eventually led the US into morally ambiguous conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. While of possible interest to a general audience seeking to explore the historically neglected WWII Pacific theater, this generally conventional history fails to provoke the controversy many readers will expect.

Kirkus Reviews