Blood dawn: World War II and the making of modern Asia

In the early 20th century, from India to China, Western imperial powers dominated Asia. Then, in the 1930s, Japan began to tear down this old order in pursuit of its own imperial ambitions - first by invading China, and then by launching its assault against British, Dutch, and American outposts across Asia and the Pacific in December 1941. As Japanese forces seized vast swaths of territory and pressed toward India, the brutal fighting cost millions of lives across the continent. Simultaneously, the war's chaos and suffering supercharged anti-colonial movements from British India to Dutch Indonesia. Ultimately, it was the leaders of these movements - Mao, Nehru, Sukarno - who built the new Asia of independent nation-states that emerged in the war's bloody wake. Drawing on archival research across continents, historian Hans van de Ven tells the story of how Asia's people mobilized to defeat both Japanese aggression and European imperialism.

Genres

History

Language

English

Publisher

Basic Books

ISBN

9781529346909