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Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia
War and Nationalism in China: 1925-1945
In 1937, the Nationalists under Chiang Kaishek were leading the Chinese war effort against Japan and were lauded in the West for their efforts to transform China into an independent and modern nation; yet this image was quickly tarnished. The Nationalists were soon denounced as militarily incompetent, corrupt, and antidemocratic and Chiang Kaishek, the same.
In this book, van de Ven investigates the myths and truths of Nationalist resistance including issues such War and Nationalism in China offers a major new interpretation of the Chinese Nationalists, placing their war of resistance against Japan in the context of their prolonged efforts to establish control over their own country and providing a critical reassessment of Allied Warfare in the region. This groundbreaking volume will interest students and researchers of Chinese History and Warfare.
In this book, van de Ven investigates the myths and truths of Nationalist resistance including issues such War and Nationalism in China offers a major new interpretation of the Chinese Nationalists, placing their war of resistance against Japan in the context of their prolonged efforts to establish control over their own country and providing a critical reassessment of Allied Warfare in the region. This groundbreaking volume will interest students and researchers of Chinese History and Warfare.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published June 12, 2003
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79 people want to read
About the author
Hans van de Ven
11 books14 followersJohan 'Hans' van de Ven is an authority on the history of 19th and 20th century China. He holds several positions at the University of Cambridge, where he is Professor of Modern Chinese History, Director in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Catharine's College and previously served as Chair of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. He studied sinology at Leiden University. Then, after studying with Susan Naquin at the University of Pennsylvania for a period of time, he moved to Harvard University, where he studied modern Chinese history under Philip Kuhn and received his PhD.
Van de Ven has particularly focused on the history of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese warfare, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the history of globalization in modern China.
Van de Ven is a guest professor at the History Department of Nanjing University and was an International Fellow at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, China, in 2005–06. In 2019, he was appointed as an honorary visiting professor at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Peking University.
He was awarded the Philip Lilienthal Prize of the University of California Press for best first book in Asian Studies for his book on the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1991 and the Society for Military History 2012 Book Prize for non-US work for the book The Battle for China, which he edited along with Mark Peattie and Edward Drea.
Van de Ven is married to Susan Kerr. They have three sons—Johan, Derek and Willem. His wife's father was the late Malcolm H. Kerr, political scientist and President of the American University of Beirut, who was assassinated in January 1984. She wrote a book about her family's quest for truth and justice. Van de Ven is the brother-in-law of Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, former Arizona Wildcats and Chicago Bulls player.
Van de Ven has particularly focused on the history of the Chinese Communist Party, Chinese warfare, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the history of globalization in modern China.
Van de Ven is a guest professor at the History Department of Nanjing University and was an International Fellow at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, China, in 2005–06. In 2019, he was appointed as an honorary visiting professor at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Peking University.
He was awarded the Philip Lilienthal Prize of the University of California Press for best first book in Asian Studies for his book on the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1991 and the Society for Military History 2012 Book Prize for non-US work for the book The Battle for China, which he edited along with Mark Peattie and Edward Drea.
Van de Ven is married to Susan Kerr. They have three sons—Johan, Derek and Willem. His wife's father was the late Malcolm H. Kerr, political scientist and President of the American University of Beirut, who was assassinated in January 1984. She wrote a book about her family's quest for truth and justice. Van de Ven is the brother-in-law of Steve Kerr, coach of the Golden State Warriors, former Arizona Wildcats and Chicago Bulls player.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
December 24, 2024
Like a Gobstopper candy, Van de Ven’s book is tasty but hard to swallow. Nobody can deny this is an incredible book on certain aspects of the history of Republican China in the English language but dear lord the density of its content is incomparable.
Read it, understand it, don’t read it again.
Read it, understand it, don’t read it again.
July 15, 2014
Hans van de Ven’s publication ‘War and Nationalism in China: 1925-1945’, seeks to challenge assumptions about the legacy of the nationalist government of the republic of China. His revisionist account places the military strategy of Chiang Kai-shek within the broader context of Allied wartime objectives and finds that the depiction of the nationalists after the US entry into World War II have been based on flawed notions concerning A) inherent military incompetence and corruption of the nationalists and B) an aggrandized image of US Army General, Joseph ‘Vinegar Joe’ Stilwell, who served in the China Burma India Theatre. Van der Ven believes that these two assumptions have operated as the dominant narrative due in part to the influential post-war publications of Barbara Tuchman and Theodore White, and gained further traction, as John Fitzgerald notes, during ‘the Cold War period by liberal critics hostile to post-war US postures in Asia and the Pacific.’ (244) By examining the historiography of the nationalists under the direction of Chiang Kai-shek, van der Ven questions the validity of the prevailing narrative before presenting his own analysis which offers a more nuanced account of the context in which decisions wartime were made. He achieves this objective by offering fresh perspectives on diplomatic records, military intelligence reports and personal diaries. Through his analysis, van der Ven also indirectly draws attention to the problematic nature of synthesisation in historical writing and the power of dominant social, political and cultural forces to shape potentially disingenuous interpretations. He makes plain that the effects of war upon the intellectual landscape have the capacity to echo for decades after the occurrence of the event.
According to van de Ven, the misrepresentation of the nationalists originated as a result of the incongruity between perception and reality of Chinese resistance to the Japanese military aggression. As US troops and journalists entered China in 1942, ‘they did not find a gallant country bravely resisting the Japanese, but rather factionalism, poverty, filth, stench, greed, ignorance, corruption, disunity, and trading with the enemy.’ (3) At the helm of the US interest in the China Burma India Theatre was General Stilwell, an iconic American, who, according to Barbara Tuchman, was given to ‘plain talk’ and couldn’t abide ‘phony propaganda.’ Although Stilwell was memorialized for his military prowess, diplomacy, and furthering US interest, his failure to achieve objectives outlined by the US – control of a unified Chinese national army – was thought to be a result of systemic problems within the Nationalist forces and the bizarre political intrigue of nationalist China, rather than any personal failings or strategic ineptitude on behalf of the general. At the request of President Roosevelt, on October 19th, 1944, Stilwell was recalled from his command. The purported mismanagement of funds and outright corruption and incompetence of the nationalists was perpetuated by both sides: the Communists and Americans, which seemingly certified the condemnation of the nationalists even in the eyes of the professed impartial reader.
Van der Ven reiterates the ideological position of the US before they joined the war as an introduction to the factors he believes have contributed to the negative portrayal of the Chinese nationalist’s. He states that American exceptionalism prevailed and Lieutenant General Stanley Embick, head of the Army’s War Planning Division, made a convincing argument for a strategy of hemispheric defensive, which, due to economic self-sufficiency, rendered US involvement in Europe or Asia unnecessary. It was thought that Britain desired to draw other countries into conflict in order to protect its own imperial trade network. Yet despite the US’s ‘cautious geo-strategic orientation, there existed a highly offensive operational doctrine in the US army itself’ which was promoted by General George Marshall, the appointed US Chief-of-Staff. (8) Despite his hesitancy to commit significant resources to the campaign in Burma when the US entered the war, Marshall could not be seen to abandon the operation due to the fact that the attack on Pearl Harbor was still an open wound for the US public. In 1942, Stillwell was selected as the commander of the China Burma India Theatre. Van de Ven perceives the selection of Stilwell as surprising, due to both his lack of experience and contention that he ‘possessed no outstanding military qualities.’ (26) He attributes Stilwell’s appointment to Marshall’s ‘paternalistic’ nature, their close relationship at Fort Benning, and the fact that Stilwell met Marshall’s newly conceived strategic requirements which emphasised simplicity and independent initiative, over complex and formalised thinking.
In regards to the post-war indictment of the nationalists, van de Ven asserts that the generous utilisation of Theodore White’s ‘Stilwell Paper’s’ as a cornerstone for the depiction of the nationalist’s military performance, presents only a partially formed image. It is argued that Stilwell’s perspective of events was shaped by ideological military tactics of WW1 and an Orientalist perception of China. These two positions combined to form a larger discourse of offensive military strategy being equated with modernity ‘and the values of industrialisation, mastery of nature and progress... while defensive strategies stood for emasculation, backwardness, degeneration, traditionalism, lack of discipline, and deceit.’ (10). The prudent, defensive strategies proposed by Chiang Kai-shek were therefore dismissed by Stilwell as passive and out of touch with the conduct of modern warfare. Van der Ven convincingly demonstrates that the USA and Britain were never serious about fighting Japan in China and certainly not with ground forces. The USA joint intelligence committee did not believe that ‘Japan must be defeated in China but were unable to abandon China due to public opinion; the middle kingdom was militarily important only to the extent that it tied down half a million Japanese troops.’ (35)
‘War and Nationalism in China’ concludes that the failure of the nationalists to meet the challenges of war against the Japanese was the result of an agrarian societies’ inability to conduct sustained warfare against an industrialized invader, which was in turn mischaracterised as ideological and cultural passivity. Van der Ven’s research is compatible with recent scholarship of military history which not only emphasis the role of warfare and the military as central to the history of the Chinese nationalist Party, but is also instrumental in ‘shaping long-term political, economic, social, and cultural developments’; challenging assertions that wars were ‘like natural disasters, utterly devastating but ultimately temporary.’ (13) (150) By constantly informing the reader of the varied contexts in which wartime decisions were made, van der Ven successfully sheds light upon the complex relationships of the Allied forces in WWII and the far-reaching implications of influential publications. Like many revisionist accounts, however, some critics have observed that the pendulum may have swung too far, and van der Ven’s overly sympathetic portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek ‘sits uneasily alongside incontrovertible evidence that he sacrificed Chinese lives on a massive scale when he flooded the Northern plains or press-ganged peasants for his brigades in a largely futile war effort.’ (244) Regardless of these criticisms, van der Ven’s exceptional contribution to the scholarship of war and nationalism in 20th century China cannot be denied.
At the beginning of his book, van der Ven states that he wished for his publication to be ‘accessible to a non-specialist audience.’ (1) Apart from an optimism regarding sales, this suggests to me a genuine concern with the misrepresentation of the nationalist government’s legacy. Van der Ven is competing with the powerful image of a national icon of World War 2 in the form of General Stilwell, a Pulitzer Prize winning publication, and a synthesised autobiographical account. The discipline of history is, however, dualistic by nature. It presents an interpretation of a past period or theme while simultaneously revealing – intentionally or unintentionally – the anxieties, celebrations or predictions of the authors’ present consciousness and experience. Current issues are often informed by the past, and people search for patterns of commonality or causality through historical antecedents. Although historiography may be perceived to operate at the theoretic and esoteric end of the academic history spectrum, if done well, as van der Ven has demonstrated, its enquiry has the capacity to identify misconceptions by exploring the fluid nature of historical interpretation.
According to van de Ven, the misrepresentation of the nationalists originated as a result of the incongruity between perception and reality of Chinese resistance to the Japanese military aggression. As US troops and journalists entered China in 1942, ‘they did not find a gallant country bravely resisting the Japanese, but rather factionalism, poverty, filth, stench, greed, ignorance, corruption, disunity, and trading with the enemy.’ (3) At the helm of the US interest in the China Burma India Theatre was General Stilwell, an iconic American, who, according to Barbara Tuchman, was given to ‘plain talk’ and couldn’t abide ‘phony propaganda.’ Although Stilwell was memorialized for his military prowess, diplomacy, and furthering US interest, his failure to achieve objectives outlined by the US – control of a unified Chinese national army – was thought to be a result of systemic problems within the Nationalist forces and the bizarre political intrigue of nationalist China, rather than any personal failings or strategic ineptitude on behalf of the general. At the request of President Roosevelt, on October 19th, 1944, Stilwell was recalled from his command. The purported mismanagement of funds and outright corruption and incompetence of the nationalists was perpetuated by both sides: the Communists and Americans, which seemingly certified the condemnation of the nationalists even in the eyes of the professed impartial reader.
Van der Ven reiterates the ideological position of the US before they joined the war as an introduction to the factors he believes have contributed to the negative portrayal of the Chinese nationalist’s. He states that American exceptionalism prevailed and Lieutenant General Stanley Embick, head of the Army’s War Planning Division, made a convincing argument for a strategy of hemispheric defensive, which, due to economic self-sufficiency, rendered US involvement in Europe or Asia unnecessary. It was thought that Britain desired to draw other countries into conflict in order to protect its own imperial trade network. Yet despite the US’s ‘cautious geo-strategic orientation, there existed a highly offensive operational doctrine in the US army itself’ which was promoted by General George Marshall, the appointed US Chief-of-Staff. (8) Despite his hesitancy to commit significant resources to the campaign in Burma when the US entered the war, Marshall could not be seen to abandon the operation due to the fact that the attack on Pearl Harbor was still an open wound for the US public. In 1942, Stillwell was selected as the commander of the China Burma India Theatre. Van de Ven perceives the selection of Stilwell as surprising, due to both his lack of experience and contention that he ‘possessed no outstanding military qualities.’ (26) He attributes Stilwell’s appointment to Marshall’s ‘paternalistic’ nature, their close relationship at Fort Benning, and the fact that Stilwell met Marshall’s newly conceived strategic requirements which emphasised simplicity and independent initiative, over complex and formalised thinking.
In regards to the post-war indictment of the nationalists, van de Ven asserts that the generous utilisation of Theodore White’s ‘Stilwell Paper’s’ as a cornerstone for the depiction of the nationalist’s military performance, presents only a partially formed image. It is argued that Stilwell’s perspective of events was shaped by ideological military tactics of WW1 and an Orientalist perception of China. These two positions combined to form a larger discourse of offensive military strategy being equated with modernity ‘and the values of industrialisation, mastery of nature and progress... while defensive strategies stood for emasculation, backwardness, degeneration, traditionalism, lack of discipline, and deceit.’ (10). The prudent, defensive strategies proposed by Chiang Kai-shek were therefore dismissed by Stilwell as passive and out of touch with the conduct of modern warfare. Van der Ven convincingly demonstrates that the USA and Britain were never serious about fighting Japan in China and certainly not with ground forces. The USA joint intelligence committee did not believe that ‘Japan must be defeated in China but were unable to abandon China due to public opinion; the middle kingdom was militarily important only to the extent that it tied down half a million Japanese troops.’ (35)
‘War and Nationalism in China’ concludes that the failure of the nationalists to meet the challenges of war against the Japanese was the result of an agrarian societies’ inability to conduct sustained warfare against an industrialized invader, which was in turn mischaracterised as ideological and cultural passivity. Van der Ven’s research is compatible with recent scholarship of military history which not only emphasis the role of warfare and the military as central to the history of the Chinese nationalist Party, but is also instrumental in ‘shaping long-term political, economic, social, and cultural developments’; challenging assertions that wars were ‘like natural disasters, utterly devastating but ultimately temporary.’ (13) (150) By constantly informing the reader of the varied contexts in which wartime decisions were made, van der Ven successfully sheds light upon the complex relationships of the Allied forces in WWII and the far-reaching implications of influential publications. Like many revisionist accounts, however, some critics have observed that the pendulum may have swung too far, and van der Ven’s overly sympathetic portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek ‘sits uneasily alongside incontrovertible evidence that he sacrificed Chinese lives on a massive scale when he flooded the Northern plains or press-ganged peasants for his brigades in a largely futile war effort.’ (244) Regardless of these criticisms, van der Ven’s exceptional contribution to the scholarship of war and nationalism in 20th century China cannot be denied.
At the beginning of his book, van der Ven states that he wished for his publication to be ‘accessible to a non-specialist audience.’ (1) Apart from an optimism regarding sales, this suggests to me a genuine concern with the misrepresentation of the nationalist government’s legacy. Van der Ven is competing with the powerful image of a national icon of World War 2 in the form of General Stilwell, a Pulitzer Prize winning publication, and a synthesised autobiographical account. The discipline of history is, however, dualistic by nature. It presents an interpretation of a past period or theme while simultaneously revealing – intentionally or unintentionally – the anxieties, celebrations or predictions of the authors’ present consciousness and experience. Current issues are often informed by the past, and people search for patterns of commonality or causality through historical antecedents. Although historiography may be perceived to operate at the theoretic and esoteric end of the academic history spectrum, if done well, as van der Ven has demonstrated, its enquiry has the capacity to identify misconceptions by exploring the fluid nature of historical interpretation.
March 25, 2018
Van de Ven aims at several correctives in this deeply researched history of Nationalist (KMT) competition with other Chinese factions and mobilization for war with Japan. First, he wants to write over the 'Vinegar Joe' Stilwell narrative and its many children, which argue that the KMT failed to prosecute the war with Japan effectively due to incompetence, corruption, and the prioritization of its competition the Communists and other rivals. Second, he wants to document the parameters that shaped and constrained KMT prosecution of the War of Resistance, including 1) the difficulty of directing a coalition of effectively independent regional and ideological militias, and, 2) the fiscal crisis and collapse of logistics that hurt the KMT and affiliates after 1941. Finally, he shows how KMT strategy was intimately twined with geopolitics, including the possibility of playing the Soviets and Japanese off one another and the need to sustain relations with Britain and the United States despite minimal short-term prospects of either being an effective ally against Japan at the start of the war.
This work, in delving into the complexity of Chinese militia politics, captures the fluidity of power and control at this time. Under different conditions, the Nationalists might have come to a different end, but such is true of the CCP and a number of temporary regional coalitions such as the Northwest Alliance as well. Years of total war against foreign occupiers destroyed Chinese infrastructure, social cohesion, and the military bases of previously dominant power players. International assistance to the KMT was minimal and designed more to keep China in the fight than to help it actually succeed. Van de Ven explains how and why the KMT was left in a very poor strategic position vis a vis other competitors, especially the CCP, in 1945 after the Japanese surrender.
This work, in delving into the complexity of Chinese militia politics, captures the fluidity of power and control at this time. Under different conditions, the Nationalists might have come to a different end, but such is true of the CCP and a number of temporary regional coalitions such as the Northwest Alliance as well. Years of total war against foreign occupiers destroyed Chinese infrastructure, social cohesion, and the military bases of previously dominant power players. International assistance to the KMT was minimal and designed more to keep China in the fight than to help it actually succeed. Van de Ven explains how and why the KMT was left in a very poor strategic position vis a vis other competitors, especially the CCP, in 1945 after the Japanese surrender.
December 4, 2017
dry like paste
author seems to hate punctuation
often feels like reading a series of telegrams
author seems to hate punctuation
often feels like reading a series of telegrams
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews