Britain and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1939: A Study in the Dilemmas of British Decline

by Bradford A. Lee

Important new information on the road to war in the Pacific and on Britain's decline as an Asian power is revealed in this book, which is based largely on newly opened, unpublished British Foreign Office and Cabinet records.

The book also takes a fresh look at the continuing debate over appeasement, explaining why Britain pursued a firm line with Japan while assiduously trying to conciliate Germany and Italy. In exploring these contrasting ways of dealing with what were perceived as essentially similar expansionist threats, the author quite naturally examines the interaction of developments in East Asia and Europe. Never losing sight of the importance of Anglo-American relations or of Britain's military weakness, he attempts to place Britain's East Asian policy within the overall framework of her response to a global crisis.

Considerable attention is given to showing how profoundly the Chamberlain government's inaccurate estimates of the relative strengths of the Chinese Nationalist government, the Japanese militarists, the Chinese Communist movement, and Soviet capabilities in the Far East affected the development and implementation of British policy.

319 pages, Hardcover

First published August 9, 1973

About the author

An accomplished scholar of foreign policy, military strategy and international relations, Bradford Lee is the Philip A. Crowl Professor of Comparative Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. Prior to the U.S. Naval War College, Lee was an associate professor at Harvard University, teaching the modern international history of the United States, Europe and East Asia. He was educated at Yale University, where he was a scholar-athlete, at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, where he received his Ph.D. in history, and at Harvard University, where was a Junior Fellow in the prestigious Society of Fellows.