Santa Sede e Manciukuò (1932-1945), con appendice di documenti (review)

In recent years, the history of Manchukuo, the puppet state in Northeast China established by Japan and under its control between 1932 and 1945, has attracted increasing scholarly interest. Two studies, Rana Mitter's The Manchurian Myth: Nationalism, Resistance and Collaboration in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000) and Prasenjit Duara's Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), in particular, have shown the importance of the Manchukuo's nation-building experiment not only to understand Japanese colonialism and militarism, but, even more prominently, Chinese nationalism.

Giovanni Coco's Santa Sede e Manciukuò ("The Holy See and Man-chukuo"), while potentially useful to historians interested in East Asian nationalism and modernity, focuses on a specific issue in diplomatic history, the vexata quaestio of the Holy See's presumed recognition of Manchukuo. To this day, Chinese authorities customarily mention this matter as an offense against the Chinese nation. Given the tension that has characterized Sino-Vatican relations since 1949, a clarification of this puzzle has implication far beyond historical circles.

The book, enriched by historical photographs, is divided into two parts: an historical introduction in eleven short chapters (pp. 1-179), and a documentary appendix (pp. 181-468), including 168 documents in Italian, French, Latin, and English from the Vatican Archives and other ecclesiastical archives. The introduction details the complex diplomatic ballet that involved the Catholic Church on the one hand, and the Manchukuo, Japanese, and Chinese governments on the other. Within the Church, a fragmented front made up of several actors (the Congregation "De Propaganda Fide," the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Pope, the Vicars Apostolic in Manchuria, and the Apostolic Delegates in China and Japan) tried to defend the Catholic missions and their educational institutions in the region, without offering state recognition for Manchukuo. This was a dangerous game that could offend the Japanese and bring about repercussions on Catholics in Japan and Manchuria. For that reason, the pro-Japanese Apostolic Delegate Paolo Marella in Tokyo always pushed for recognition as the best solution. Moreover, Auguste Gaspais, MEP, a local Vicar Apostolic saddled against his will with the unofficial role of "Representative of the Holy See" in Manchukuo, maintained an ambiguous and deferential attitude to authorities, ably exploited by the Japanese government for propagandistic ends. In spite of a papal reception for a Manchukuo delegation in 1938, however, the Secretariat of State and two Popes (Pius XI and Pius XII) always remained noncommittal. Suspicious of Japanese militarism in general, the Church authorities were also dissuaded from establishing diplomatic relations by the Apostolic Delegates in China, Celso Costantini and Mario Zanin. These prelates reported to Rome the outrage shown not only by the Chinese government but also by Chinese Catholics and the general population for what many believed to be the Church's betrayal of China in a moment of national crisis.

The value of this book lies in its documentary appendix. While the introduction is useful, it is too preoccupied with diplomatic minutiae not always germane to the story, and offers contextual information on the history of Manchukuo based on textbook knowledge, rather than on up-to-date and in-depth studies like those cited above. The copious footnotes are rich in transcripts of primary sources, but are also replete with unnecessary information on well-known figures, making the apparatus so long as to exceed in length the text of the chapters. Finally, the entire volume is marred by typographical errors and inconsistencies in the romanization of the Chinese terms and names, problems that could have been solved through qualified editorial help. Reference in the historical narrative to the numbering of documents in the appendix is vague, forcing the reader to search through the pages for the appropriate source.

In spite of these limitations, by painstakingly gathering a number of original sources never published before, Coco...