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WAR AND NATIONALISM IN CHINA: 1925-1945. By Hans J. van de Ven. London, New York: RoutledgeCurzon. 2003. xii, 377 pp. (Maps, B&W photos, table.) US$129.95, cloth. ISBN 0-415-14571-6.
Cambridge University's van de Ven offers a comprehensively researched challenge to conventional Western wisdom on the Chinese Nationalist government's performance in the War of Resistance against Japan from 1931 to 1945. He begins with a devastating critique of the negative images of the Nationalists presented by American critics-in particular General Joseph Stilwell. Whether or not Stilwell was as narrow-minded and incompetent as van de Ven argues, he successfully establishes his wider case that neither Britain nor the US believed sufficiently in the strategic value of China to invest the resources needed by a Nationalist government exhausted by its previous efforts.
The main body of the book is devoted to analyzing the roots and nature of the War of Resistance. Van de Ven returns to the 1920s to show how the Nationalist movement developed an increasingly military orientation, perceiving a strong central army...