About book Forgotten Wars: The End Of Britains Asian Empire (2007)
This seemed like a fine introduction to the formal British Empire's final years in 'The Great Crescent' of Asia - comprising of what are now the states of Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore. The period covered in detail is relatively brief, between 1945 and (mostly) 1949. Most of what is narrated would probably fall under the rubric of social and political history. The scholarship, while not exhaustive by any means, seems nevertheless very wide-ranging, and strikes a nice balance between detailed description and incisive analysis. The bibliography is also very useful.Style-wise the writing is mostly rather dry and understated, if somewhat sympathetic all round, and occasionally extremely lurid. I found parts of the narrative genuinely upsetting, so much so that I had to stop reading the book for awhile. Oral testimonies were especially appalling. Some allegations arose from those who were detained en masse during the British-led crackdown that literally ripped apart Chinese communities during the Malayan Emergency: "When I was giving birth to my girl, the British imperialists did not give me anything to eat for a whole day, and after the baby was born I was only given a small piece of bread every day. The most cruel thing was that many female prisoners had to give birth to babies in the corridor of the hospital, and the British imperialists even forced them to drown their own babies in a cess pit"(485). This was only one of the more heartrending mass tragedies that went hand-in-hand with war and state-making in post-WW2 Asia. To be read in conjunction with Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945.
Do You like book Forgotten Wars: The End Of Britains Asian Empire (2007)?
