---
product_id: 227426027
title: "The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949"
price: "KSh13676"
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reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.co.ke/products/227426027-the-wars-for-asia-1911-1949
store_origin: KE
region: Kenya
---

# The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

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desertcart.com: The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949: 9781107697478: Paine, S. C. M.: Books

Review: A Rich, Profound and Transformative Work - There aren’t many books that can claim, at this late date, to fundamentally transform common American (mis)conceptions of the 20th Century. Professor Paine’s “The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949” is one of them. Like many Americans of my generation, I learned in college that the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe during the Second World War were the truly seminal military events of the 20th Century. These, so I was told, were the titanic, world-altering battles that created the world in which I lived, and would live, for the foreseeable future. The Pacific War, according to this view, began with Pearl Harbor, and ended with a triumphant democratic makeover of archaic Japanese militarism. The Chinese figured in these accounts primarily as helpless, pitiful victims, or incompetent, corrupt sidekicks. The Russians merited a mere footnote for declaring war against Japan at the 11th hour when, presumably, the Americans had already essentially won the war. "The Wars for Asia" offers a powerful counternarrative, making a very strong case for the global importance of the last century of Asian, particularly Chinese, History, and the serious, even dire, consequences of failing to understand its nature, course and development. By thoughtfully examining the course of three wars - a (very) long Chinese Civil War, a prolonged regional conflict among Japan, China, and the USSR, and an international struggle for domination involving European powers and America – Professor Paine convincingly demonstrates the inherent interest, enormous scale, and historical significance of military events in Asia. Such a riveting account was made possible only by her truly astonishing breadth of scholarship. Events in Asia have been seriously underreported in English, one suspects, because prior writers lacked her ability to consult original documents in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian. “Wars for Asia” is not, however, a polemical work. It offers a lively recounting of historical events, and a military historian’s deeply informed and wily assessment of the origin, and usually flawed nature, of strategies consciously or unconsciously, rationally or irrationally pursued by all sides. There is nothing of the dullness or tendentiousness of academic history here. The reader will perhaps develop a grudging respect for that much-maligned warlord of warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek, who probably would have destroyed Mao’s Communist remnants if it hadn’t been for Russian intervention and an ongoing war with several million occupying Japanese (a war in which Mao cannily let his opponent do the heavy lifting). Respect, that is, deeply tinged with horror: Chiang could order the destruction of the dikes holding back the Yellow River in order to stop a Japanese advance, despite the ensuing, predictable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants. The tragedy of Japan – a warrior society forced out of isolation in the 1850’s into a world of imperial rivalry to which it adapted all too well, and the victim of its own success in its wars with China in the 1890’s and with Russia in 1905 – is covered in revealing detail, as is Stalin’s too-clever attempt to initially support both sides of the Chinese Civil War in order to keep his huge southern neighbor divided and weak. The significance of Russian intervention in Manchuria at the end of the war, and its reverse colonialism there - extracting heavy industrial and transportation infrastructure created by the Japanese, rather than building anything of value - receives long-overdue attention. British and American diplomatic and military missteps, stemming from self-interest and ignorance about Asian history and culture, also receive due attention. . Korea plays a relatively minor role here: however, Professor Paine’s earlier work, “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895”, contains a wealth of information about the Hermit Kingdom’s own troubled emergence from isolation in the 1860's at the insistence of a “Big Brotherly” Japan, and the ensuing struggle between China and Japan over control of that strategically (and tragically) placed peninsula. One key insight Professor Paine employs throughout the book is the critical distinction between the economic motivations of maritime powers, like Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, that benefit from a relatively open global economic system, and continental powers like Russia and China, for whom a geographically defined political and economic system are practically synonymous. This renders continental powers particularly sensitive about borders and territorial control; Russian and Chinese interventionism and expansionism today certainly bears this out. "The Wars for Asia" is a must read for anyone with an interest in, not just the Asian past, but a complex and troubled global present.
Review: Masterful synthesis, bursting with insights - Broadly speaking, this is a military history of Northeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century, with China as the necessary center of gravity. In a narrower sense, however, this is really a book about China's 14-year struggle with Japan before and during World War II, with a lengthy prologue about events in the period until 1931, and a shorter epilogue about the civil war that devoured China from 1945 to 1949. Whether one decides to read this book one way or the other, it's a revelation. Virtually every page has a striking insight. To take one example, it has the clearest explanation of the 1936 Xian Incident, its political context and strategic consequences that I have read anywhere. To fully appreciate The Wars for Asia it probably helps to already know something about East Asian history, but I believe even "new readers" will benefit tremendously from this masterful work. What one gets from this book is, in essence, an intelligent synthesis of recent research into the period, seen through the prism of Dr Paine's sharp analytical mind. The array of sources cited in the text is staggering. The author has digested all the relevant literature in English, in addition to a huge literature of more marginal relevance. On top of this comes familiarity with a vast amount of research published in Chinese, Japanese and even Russian. The result is a story that is comprehensive in the best sense of the word. The author is a professor at the US Naval War College, and in a few places the book reads a bit like expanded lecture notes - but in a good way. It has the wry humor that experienced university teachers adopt to keep their students' attention, and in works well in written form as well, to make this not just an educational but also an entertaining read. I don't know Dr Paine's other book on East Asian history, an account of the First Sino-Japanese War in the late 19th century, but it's next on my reading list!

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #56,769 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #41 in Japanese History (Books) #53 in Chinese History (Books) #936 in Military History (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (209) |
| Dimensions  | 6 x 1.26 x 9 inches |
| Edition  | Reprint |
| ISBN-10  | 1107697476 |
| ISBN-13  | 978-1107697478 |
| Item Weight  | 1.5 pounds |
| Language  | English |
| Print length  | 504 pages |
| Publication date  | October 9, 2014 |
| Publisher  | Cambridge University Press |

## Images

![The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71KSA5djqcL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Rich, Profound and Transformative Work
*by R***R on May 6, 2021*

There aren’t many books that can claim, at this late date, to fundamentally transform common American (mis)conceptions of the 20th Century. Professor Paine’s “The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949” is one of them. Like many Americans of my generation, I learned in college that the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe during the Second World War were the truly seminal military events of the 20th Century. These, so I was told, were the titanic, world-altering battles that created the world in which I lived, and would live, for the foreseeable future. The Pacific War, according to this view, began with Pearl Harbor, and ended with a triumphant democratic makeover of archaic Japanese militarism. The Chinese figured in these accounts primarily as helpless, pitiful victims, or incompetent, corrupt sidekicks. The Russians merited a mere footnote for declaring war against Japan at the 11th hour when, presumably, the Americans had already essentially won the war. "The Wars for Asia" offers a powerful counternarrative, making a very strong case for the global importance of the last century of Asian, particularly Chinese, History, and the serious, even dire, consequences of failing to understand its nature, course and development. By thoughtfully examining the course of three wars - a (very) long Chinese Civil War, a prolonged regional conflict among Japan, China, and the USSR, and an international struggle for domination involving European powers and America – Professor Paine convincingly demonstrates the inherent interest, enormous scale, and historical significance of military events in Asia. Such a riveting account was made possible only by her truly astonishing breadth of scholarship. Events in Asia have been seriously underreported in English, one suspects, because prior writers lacked her ability to consult original documents in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian. “Wars for Asia” is not, however, a polemical work. It offers a lively recounting of historical events, and a military historian’s deeply informed and wily assessment of the origin, and usually flawed nature, of strategies consciously or unconsciously, rationally or irrationally pursued by all sides. There is nothing of the dullness or tendentiousness of academic history here. The reader will perhaps develop a grudging respect for that much-maligned warlord of warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek, who probably would have destroyed Mao’s Communist remnants if it hadn’t been for Russian intervention and an ongoing war with several million occupying Japanese (a war in which Mao cannily let his opponent do the heavy lifting). Respect, that is, deeply tinged with horror: Chiang could order the destruction of the dikes holding back the Yellow River in order to stop a Japanese advance, despite the ensuing, predictable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants. The tragedy of Japan – a warrior society forced out of isolation in the 1850’s into a world of imperial rivalry to which it adapted all too well, and the victim of its own success in its wars with China in the 1890’s and with Russia in 1905 – is covered in revealing detail, as is Stalin’s too-clever attempt to initially support both sides of the Chinese Civil War in order to keep his huge southern neighbor divided and weak. The significance of Russian intervention in Manchuria at the end of the war, and its reverse colonialism there - extracting heavy industrial and transportation infrastructure created by the Japanese, rather than building anything of value - receives long-overdue attention. British and American diplomatic and military missteps, stemming from self-interest and ignorance about Asian history and culture, also receive due attention. . Korea plays a relatively minor role here: however, Professor Paine’s earlier work, “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895”, contains a wealth of information about the Hermit Kingdom’s own troubled emergence from isolation in the 1860's at the insistence of a “Big Brotherly” Japan, and the ensuing struggle between China and Japan over control of that strategically (and tragically) placed peninsula. One key insight Professor Paine employs throughout the book is the critical distinction between the economic motivations of maritime powers, like Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, that benefit from a relatively open global economic system, and continental powers like Russia and China, for whom a geographically defined political and economic system are practically synonymous. This renders continental powers particularly sensitive about borders and territorial control; Russian and Chinese interventionism and expansionism today certainly bears this out. "The Wars for Asia" is a must read for anyone with an interest in, not just the Asian past, but a complex and troubled global present.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Masterful synthesis, bursting with insights
*by B***M on August 11, 2013*

Broadly speaking, this is a military history of Northeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century, with China as the necessary center of gravity. In a narrower sense, however, this is really a book about China's 14-year struggle with Japan before and during World War II, with a lengthy prologue about events in the period until 1931, and a shorter epilogue about the civil war that devoured China from 1945 to 1949. Whether one decides to read this book one way or the other, it's a revelation. Virtually every page has a striking insight. To take one example, it has the clearest explanation of the 1936 Xian Incident, its political context and strategic consequences that I have read anywhere. To fully appreciate The Wars for Asia it probably helps to already know something about East Asian history, but I believe even "new readers" will benefit tremendously from this masterful work. What one gets from this book is, in essence, an intelligent synthesis of recent research into the period, seen through the prism of Dr Paine's sharp analytical mind. The array of sources cited in the text is staggering. The author has digested all the relevant literature in English, in addition to a huge literature of more marginal relevance. On top of this comes familiarity with a vast amount of research published in Chinese, Japanese and even Russian. The result is a story that is comprehensive in the best sense of the word. The author is a professor at the US Naval War College, and in a few places the book reads a bit like expanded lecture notes - but in a good way. It has the wry humor that experienced university teachers adopt to keep their students' attention, and in works well in written form as well, to make this not just an educational but also an entertaining read. I don't know Dr Paine's other book on East Asian history, an account of the First Sino-Japanese War in the late 19th century, but it's next on my reading list!

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Brilliant History Writing
*by L***E on September 30, 2025*

Masterful history writing with an abundance of detail and insightful analysis. Prof. Paine, as in her lectures, thoughtfully explains the emergence of the present from the roots of the past.

## Frequently Bought Together

- The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949
- The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War
- Imperial Rivals: China, Russia and Their Disputed Frontier

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*Last updated: 2026-02-21*