The Chinese People at War
Human Suffering and Social Transformation, 1937–1945

The tragic history of China's War of Resistance and its consequences from the perspective of those who went through it.

Diana Lary (Author)

9780521144100, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 26 July 2010

246 pages, 19 b/w illus. 7 maps
22.6 x 15 x 1.3 cm, 0.34 kg

"An outstanding book in the depth of its research on the suffering of the Chinese people during the War of Resistance, and also in its coverage of the entire war period from different regional perspectives... There is simply no comparable work of this scope on this topic." - Edward A. McCord, George Washington University

Diana Lary, one of the foremost historians of the period, tells the tragic history of China's War of Resistance and its consequences from the perspective of those who went through it. Using archival evidence only recently made available, interviews with survivors, and extracts from literature, she creates a vivid and highly disturbing picture of the havoc created by the war, the destruction of towns and villages, the displacement of peoples, and the accompanying economic and social disintegration. As the author suggests in this 2010 interpretation of modern Chinese history, far from stemming the spread of communism from the USSR, which was the Japanese pretext for invasion, the horrors of the war, and the damage it created, nurtured the Chinese Communist Party and helped it to win power in 1949.

Introduction: the human cost of a war
1. The high tide of war, 1937
2. Defeat and retreat, 1938
3. Stalemate and transformation, 1939–41
4. Grim years, 1942–4
5. Turning points, 1944–5
6. The immediate aftermath of the war, 1945–6
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], Asian history [HBJF]