The British Army, the Gurkhas and Cold War Strategy in the Far East, 1947–1954
The British Army, the Gurkhas and Cold War Strategy in the Far East, 1947–1954

Author: Raffi Gregorian

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2002-05-10

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0230287166

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This book argues that postwar Britain's 'imperial over-extension' has been exaggerated. Britain developed and adjusted its defence strategy based upon the perceived Communist threat and available resources. It was especially successful at adapting to meet the strategic and resource challenges from the Far East from 1947-54. There British and Gurkha forces were deployed only in contingencies that threatened vital British interests, while the U.S. and Commonwealth allies were persuaded to accept key wartime missions, thus preserving Britain's ability to fight in Western Europe.

Fighting the People's War
Fighting the People's War

Author: Jonathan Fennell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-01-24

Total Pages: 967

ISBN-13: 1107030951

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Jonathan Fennell captures for the first time the true wartime experience of the ordinary soldiers from across the empire who made up the British and Commonwealth armies. He analyses why the great battles were won and lost and how the men that fought went on to change the world.

Burma '44
Burma '44

Author: James Holland

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2016-04-21

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 1473526523

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'A first-rate popular history of a fascinating and neglected battle... James Holland is a master of spinning narrative military history from accounts of men and women who were there and BURMA ’44 is a veritable page-turner' - BBC History In February 1944, a rag-tag collection of clerks, drivers, doctors, muleteers, and other base troops, stiffened by a few dogged Yorkshiremen and a handful of tank crews managed to hold out against some of the finest infantry in the Japanese Army, and then defeat them in what was one of the most astonishing battles of the Second World War. What became know as The Defence of the Admin Box, fought amongst the paddy fields and jungle of Northern Arakan over a fifteen-day period, turned the battle for Burma. Not only was it the first decisive victory for British troops against the Japanese, more significantly, it demonstrated how the Japanese could be defeated. The lessons learned in this tiny and otherwise insignificant corner of the Far East, set up the campaign in Burma that would follow, as General Slim’s Fourteenth Army finally turned defeat into victory. Burma '44 is a tale of incredible drama. As gripping as the story of Rorke's drift, as momentous as the battle for the Ardennes, the Admin Box was a triumph of human grit and heroism and remains one of the most significant yet undervalued conflicts of World War Two.

Betrayed Ally
Betrayed Ally

Author: Frances Wood

Publisher: Pen and Sword

Published: 2016-10-14

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 147387503X

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The Great War helped China emerge from humiliation and obscurity and take its first tentative steps as a full member of the global community.In 1912 the Qing Dynasty had ended. President Yuan Shikai, who seized power in 1914, offered the British 50,000 troops to recover the German colony in Shandong but this was refused. In 1916 China sent a vast army of labourers to Europe. In 1917 she declared war on Germany despite this effectively making the real enemy Japan an ally.The betrayal came when Japan was awarded the former German colony. This inspired the rise of Chinese nationalism and communism, enflamed by Russia. The scene was set for Japans incursions into China and thirty years of bloodshed.One hundred years on, the time is right for this accessible and authoritative account of Chinas role in The Great War and assessment of its national and international significance

Reading Colonies—Property and Control of the British Far East
Reading Colonies—Property and Control of the British Far East

Author: R.B.E. Price

Publisher: City University of HK Press

Published: 2017-12-01

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 9629372975

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By 1945, everywhere one looked in the Far East the British Empire was being openly questioned or was failing outright. Yet in the previous century, the British had been the pre-eminent imperial power from Weihaiwei to North Borneo. Reading Colonies: Property and Control of the British Far East investigates how the British held on for so long. Rent control legislation, and other measures of property law such as land improvement opportunities, are nominated as key tools used to frustrate decolonization in most Eastern colonies. British colonial administrations tried long and hard to inhibit the dialectical discord between their colonial hierarchism and local forms of nationalism with the prompts and plaudits of property policy. In cases where indigenous landlordism masqueraded as patriotism, independence came quickly (Ceylon and Burma). Where public housing established itself as a key post-war plank of social policy, freedom from British rule was a more gradual affair (British Malaya and Hong Kong). This study concludes that British colonial regimes did not offer a share of their industrial modernity to stay at the apex of political power, but readily adjusted old-style landlordism to keep nationalist usurpers at bay.

Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East, 1933-1939
Anglo-American Strategic Relations and the Far East, 1933-1939

Author: Greg Kennedy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-11

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 1136340157

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This volume charts how the national strategic needs of the United States of America and Great Britain created a "parallel but not joint" relationship towards the Far East as the crisis in that region evolved from 1933-39. In short, it is a look at the relationship shared between the two nations with respect to accommodating one another on certain strategic and diplomatic issues so that they could become more confident of one another in any potential showdowns with Japan.

Royal Navy Strategy in the Far East 1919-1939
Royal Navy Strategy in the Far East 1919-1939

Author: Andrew Field

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-05-20

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1135774080

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Between the ending of the Great War and the start of the Second World War in 1939, the Royal Navy remained the largest in the world. But with the League of Nations seeming to offer a solution to all future conflicts, a country weary of war and without an obvious enemy there seemed no need for a large battlefleet. The strategic focus shifted eastwards, to Japan, with its growing battlefleet as the new threat to the British Empire and to the Royal Navy's supremacy. From 1924 a strategic plan, War Memorandum (Eastern), was written and refined. The plan called for the Royal Navy, still the largest in the world, even after the Washington Naval Treaties, to move eastwards to a defended base at Singapore, cut off Japan and force her battlefleet into a decisive fleet battle. As a strategy War Memorandum (Eastern) had many flaws. Its real importance lay in the fact that it provided a justification for the Royal Navy to maintain its leading position in the world and to be in the forefront of the development of new tactical thinking. Through planning for a war with Japan the Royal Navy was able to test its readiness for a future war. Many of the lessons learnt during this period were ultimately put to good use against a different foe in 1939.