Nanking
Nanking

Author: Masahiro Yamamoto

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2000-08-30

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0313000964

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The December 1937 incident that has come to be known as the Rape of Nanking is, without doubt, a tragedy that will not soon be forgotten. While acknowledging that a tremendous loss of life occurred, this study challenges the current prevailing notion that the incident was a deliberate, planned effort on the part of the Japanese military and analyzes events to produce an accurate estimate of the scale of the atrocities. Drawing on Chinese, Japanese, and English sources, Yamamoto determines that what happened at Nanking were unfortunate atrocities of conventional war with precedents in both Eastern and Western military history. He concludes that post-war events such as the war crimes trials and the impact of the Holocaust in Europe affected public opinion regarding Nanking and led to a dramatic reinterpretation of events. The Rape of Nanking consisted of two distinct phases: the mass execution of prisoners of war (as well as conscription age men who appeared to be combatants) and the delinquent acts of individual soldiers. The first phase, which occurred immediately after Nanking's fall and which claimed most of the atrocity victims, was the result of the Japanese military's attempt to clear the city of Chinese soldiers thought to be in plain clothes. The second phase, which lasted approximately six weeks, was horrible, but resulted in a much smaller number of fatalities. It was characterized by numerous criminal acts, ranging from rape and murder to arson and theft, committed by unrestrained Japanese soldiers. The root cause for both phases was the Japanese military's bureaucratic inefficiency and command irresponsibility. While both Chinese and American contemporary sources initially attributed the incident to these causes, subsequent Japanese atrocities against both military and civilian Allied personnel during World War II and evidence presented at war crimes trials would come to reshape perceptions of the Nanking events as an Asian counterpart to the Nazi Holocaust.

British Propaganda and Wars of Empire
British Propaganda and Wars of Empire

Author: Christopher Tuck

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1317171551

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'Influence' is a slippery concept, yet one of tremendous relevance for those wishing to understand global politics. From debates on the changing sources of power in the international system, through to analyses of its value as an alternative to the active use of force as a policy instrument, influence has become a recurrent theme in discussions of international relations and foreign policy. In order to provide a better understanding of the multifaceted and shifting nature of influence, this volume looks at how the British government employed various forms of pressure and persuasion to achieve its goals across the twentieth century. By focusing on Britain - a global actor with great power objectives but declining physical means - the collection provides a wide range of case studies to assess how influence was brought to bear on a wide array of non-western cultures and societies. It furthermore allows for an assessment of just how effective - or ineffective - British efforts were at influencing non-Western targets over a hundred years of operations. By shedding important light on the efficacy of British efforts to sustain and advance its interests in the twentieth century, the volume will be of interest not only to historians, but to anyone interested in contemporary problems surrounding the operation of influence as a foreign policy tool.