You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Sino-Japanese war is one of the most important links in the development of the modern Far East. "A Dutch Spy in China" offers a selection from the reports written by a Dutch colonel at the request of the General Staff of the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. After his retirement colonel De Fremery joined the group of Western military specialists who were helping Chiang Kai Shek in his efforts to modernize the Nationalist Chinese armed forces. Having acted in an advisory capacity for several years, De Fremery resigned but continued to live in China. Mounting anxiety in the East-Indies about Japan's military activity urged the authorities to collect as much information about the Japanese armed forces as possible. De Fremery's reports on the Sino-Japanese war were in this period a most welcome source of information. Contemporary reports on this conflict by militarily qualified Western observers are very rare. Colonel De Fremery's account of the struggle forms an important contribution to our knowledge of its military aspects.
"One of the most interesting, important, and ambitious books about the conduct, and perhaps the ultimate futility, of war." --Gunther E. Rothenberg " A] highly scholarly and wonderfully absorbing study." --John Bayley, The London Review of Books "What Russell F. Weigley writes, the rest of us read. The Age of Battles is a persuasive reminder that even in the age of 'rational' warfare, one can honestly wonder why war seemed an unavoidable policy choice." --Allan R. Millett, The Journal of American History
Colonial armies were the focal points for some of the most dramatic tensions inherent in Chinese, Japanese and Western clashes with Southeast Asia. The international team of scholars take the reader on a compelling exploration from Ming China to the present day, examining their conquests, management and decolonization. The journey covers perennial themes such as the recruitment, loyalty, and varied impact of foreign-dominated forces. But it also ventures into unchartered waters by highlighting Asian use of ‘colonial’ forces to dominate other Asians. This sends the reader back in time to the fifteenth century Chinese expansion into Yunnan and Vietnam, and forwards to regional tensions in ...
In Resisting Rebellion, Anthony James Joes's discussion of insurgencies ranges across five continents and spans more than two centuries. Analyzing examples from North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, he identifies recurrent patterns and offers useful lessons for future policymakers. Insurgencies arise from many sources of discontent, including foreign occupation, fraudulent elections, and religious persecution, but they also stem from ethnic hostilities, the aspirations of would-be elites, and traditions of political violence. Because insurgency is as much a political phenomenon as a military one, effective counterinsurgency requires a thorough understanding of the insurgents' motives and sources of support. Clear political aims must guide military action if a counterinsurgency is to be successful and establish a lasting reconciliation within a deeply fragmented society.
In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat. After a career with the Dutch government at the frontlines of the Marshall Plan, European integration and transatlantic relations, Van der Beugel pursued a more freestyle approach to diplomacy as a private citizen, most notably through his role as Secretary-General of the illustrious Bilderberg Meetings and his ties to the European and American foreign policy establishments. This book also traces his close friendship with Henry Kissinger, which provided him with a direct line to the White House.
China’s mid-twentieth-century wars pose extraordinary interpretive challenges. The issue is not just that the Chinese fought for such a long time—from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of July 1937 until the close of the Korean War in 1953—across such vast territory. As Hans van de Ven explains, the greatest puzzles lie in understanding China’s simultaneous external and internal wars. Much is at stake, politically, in how this story is told. Today in its official history and public commemorations, the People’s Republic asserts Chinese unity against Japan during World War II. But this overwrites the era’s stark divisions between Communists and Nationalists, increasingly erasing the c...
First published in 2004. The International Bibliography of the Social Sciences is an annual four volume publication covering Economics, Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology. It is compiled by the British Library of Political and Economic Science under the auspices of the International Committee for Social Science Information and Documentation. Some 100,000 articles (from over 2,700 journals) and 20,000 books are scanned each year in the process of compiling the International Bibliography. Coverage is international with publications in over 70 languages from more than 60 countries. All titles are given in their original language and in English translation