Shaped by Conflict: New Writing on China’s Wartime Experience in the Early Twentieth Century

The influence of war and the military on the politics of Republican China has become a prominent emphasis of scholarship. Three recent books display the multiple ways in which conflict, particularly against Japan, shaped both Republican China and its successor, the People’s Republic of China, highlighting—among other insights—the significance of contingency.

This essay discusses the following works. Kwong Chi Man. War and Geopolitics in Interwar Manchuria: Zhang Zuolin and the Fengtian Clique during the Northern Expedition. Studies on Modern East Asian History. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 327 pp. $119.00 (cloth). | Hans van de Ven. China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China. London: Profile Books, 2017; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 352 pp. $35.00 (cloth). | Peter Worthing. General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 316 pp. $110.00 (cloth), $31.99 (paper).