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West Across the Pacific - American Involvement in East Asia from 1898 to the Vietnam War (Hardcover, New)
Loot Price: R2,938
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West Across the Pacific - American Involvement in East Asia from 1898 to the Vietnam War (Hardcover, New)
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This book addresses the problem of a country telling a grand
narrative to itself that does not hold up under closer examination,
a narrative that leads to possibly avoidable war. In particular,
the book explains and questions the narrative the United States was
telling itself about East Asia and the Pacific in the late 1930s,
with (in retrospect) the Pacific War only a few years away. Through
empirical methods, it details how the standard narrative failed to
understand what was really happening based on documents that later
became available. The documents researched are from the Diet
Library in Japan, the Foreign Office in London, the National
Archives in Washington, the University of Hawai'i library in
Honolulu and several other primary sources. This research reveals
opportunities unexplored that involve lessons of seeing things from
the "other side's" point of view and of valuing the contribution of
"in-between" people who tried to be peacemakers. The crux of the
standard narrative was that the United States, unlike European
imperialist powers, involved itself in East Asia in order to bring
openness (the Open Door) and democracy; and that it was
increasingly confronted by an opposing force, Japan, that had
imperial, closed, and undemocratic designs. This standard American
narrative was later opposed by a revisionist narrative that found
the United States culpable of a "neo-imperialism," just as the
European powers and Japan were guilty of "imperialism." However,
what West Across the Pacific shows is that, while there is
indubitably some truth in both the "standard" and the "revisionist"
versions, more careful documentary research reveals that the most
important thing "lost" in the1898-1941 period may have been the
real opportunity for mutual recognition and understanding, for
cooler heads and more neutral "realistic" policies to emerge; and
for more attention to the standpoint of the common men and women
caught up in the migrations of the period. West Across the Pacific
is both a contribution to peace research in history and to a
foreign policy guided modestly by empiricism and realism as the
most reliable method. It is a must read for diplomats and people
concerned about diplomacy, as it probes the microcosms of
diplomatic negotiations. This brings special relevance and
approachability as yet another generation of Americans returns from
war and occupation in Iraq. The book also speaks to Vietnam
veterans, by drawing lessons from the Japanese war in China for the
American war in Vietnam. This is particularly true of the
conclusion, co-authored by distinguished Vietnam specialist Sophie
Quinn-Judge.
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