Forgotten Armies

Forgotten Armies PDF Author: Christopher Alan Bayly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674017481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

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Book Description
In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of the end of British dominion in the East and the rise of today's Asian world. More than a military history, this gripping account of groundbreaking battles and guerrilla campaigns creates a panoramic view of British Asia as it was ravaged by warfare, nationalist insurgency, disease, and famine. It breathes life into the armies of soldiers, civilians, laborers, businessmen, comfort women, doctors, and nurses who confronted the daily brutalities of a combat zone which extended from metropolitan cities to remote jungles, from tropical plantations to the Himalayas. Drawing upon a vast range of Indian, Burmese, Chinese, and Malay as well as British, American, and Japanese voices, the authors make vivid one of the central dramas of the twentieth century: the birth of modern south and southeast Asia and the death of British rule.

Forgotten Armies

Forgotten Armies PDF Author: Christopher Alan Bayly
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674017481
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 614

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of the end of British dominion in the East and the rise of today's Asian world. More than a military history, this gripping account of groundbreaking battles and guerrilla campaigns creates a panoramic view of British Asia as it was ravaged by warfare, nationalist insurgency, disease, and famine. It breathes life into the armies of soldiers, civilians, laborers, businessmen, comfort women, doctors, and nurses who confronted the daily brutalities of a combat zone which extended from metropolitan cities to remote jungles, from tropical plantations to the Himalayas. Drawing upon a vast range of Indian, Burmese, Chinese, and Malay as well as British, American, and Japanese voices, the authors make vivid one of the central dramas of the twentieth century: the birth of modern south and southeast Asia and the death of British rule.

Britain's Forgotten Wars

Britain's Forgotten Wars PDF Author: Ian Hernon
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750980567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 786

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Book Description
For Britain the nineteenth century began, in military terms, with the global upheavals of the Napoleonic Wars and ended with a 'modern' conflict in which machine-guns and a scorched-earth policy were deployed against the Boers. In between there was a supposed peace, marred only by glorious, if tragic, enterprises in the Crimea, Africa and Afghanistan, against the Zulus, the Boers, the Mahdi and Indian mutineers, providing the battles whose names remain proudly emblazoned on regimental banners: Balaclava, Sevastopol, Alma, Lucknow, Kabul, Khartoum, Omdurman. These are the campaigns, it seems, that forged an Empire unparalleled in size before or since, and built the careers of such military leaders as Garnet Wolseley and Lord Kitchener. They were the source of many Boy's Own stories and novels, as well as romantic cinema epics full of dramatic cavalry charges with sabres drawn against hordes of painted savages.

Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"

Churchill, Hitler, and Author: Patrick J. Buchanan
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307405168
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment? In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen– Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations. Among the British and Churchillian errors were: • The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France • The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler • Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest • The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.

Chusan

Chusan PDF Author: Liam D'Arcy-Brown
Publisher: Anchor Books
ISBN: 9780956384775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
"We must religiously observe our engagements with China, but I fear that Hong Kong is a sorry possession and Chusan is a magnificent island admirably placed for our purposes." So wrote the home secretary Sir James Graham to the prime minister Sir Robert Peel, as British diplomats prepared to return the island of Chusan to Chinese rule during the winter of 1845. For years, this now little-known island off the coast of Zhejiang province had been home to thousands of men, women and children of all classes and backgrounds, of all races and religions, from across the British Empire and beyond. Before the Union Jack ever flew over Hong Kong, it had been raised on Chusan. From a wealth of primary archives, Liam D'Arcy-Brown pieces together the forgotten story of how the British wrested Chusan from the Qing dynasty, only to hand it back for the sake of Queen Victoria's honour and Britain's national prestige. At a time when the Chinese Communist Party is inspiring a new brand of patriotism by revisiting the shame inflicted during the Opium Wars, here is a book that puts Britain's incursions into nineteenth-century China in a fascinating and revealing new light.

Another Man's War

Another Man's War PDF Author: Barnaby Phillips
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1780745230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
In December 1941 the Japanese invaded Burma. For the British, the longest land campaign of the Second World War had begun. 100,000 African soldiers were taken from Britain’s colonies to fight the Japanese in the Burmese jungles. They performed heroically in one of the most brutal theatres of war, yet their contribution has been largely ignored. Isaac Fadoyebo was one of those ‘Burma Boys’. At the age of sixteen he ran away from his Nigerian village to join the British Army. Sent to Burma, he was attacked and left for dead in the jungle by the Japanese. Sheltered by courageous local rice farmers, Isaac spent nine months in hiding before his eventual rescue. He returned to Nigeria a hero, but his story was soon forgotten. Barnaby Phillips travelled to Nigeria and Burma in search of Isaac, the family who saved his life, and the legacy of an Empire. Another Man’s War is Isaac’s story.

Battle Over Britain

Battle Over Britain PDF Author: Francis K. Mason
Publisher: Motorbooks International
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description


Trading in War

Trading in War PDF Author: Margarette Lincoln
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300235380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
A vivid account of the forgotten citizens of maritime London who sustained Britain during the Revolutionary Wars In the half-century before the Battle of Trafalgar the port of London became the commercial nexus of a global empire and launch pad of Britain’s military campaigns in North America and Napoleonic Europe. The unruly riverside parishes east of the Tower seethed with life, a crowded, cosmopolitan, and incendiary mix of sailors, soldiers, traders, and the network of ordinary citizens that served them. Harnessing little-known archival and archaeological sources, Lincoln recovers a forgotten maritime world. Her gripping narrative highlights the pervasive impact of war, which brought violence, smuggling, pilfering from ships on the river, and a susceptibility to subversive political ideas. It also commemorates the working maritime community: shipwrights and those who built London’s first docks, wives who coped while husbands were at sea, and early trade unions. This meticulously researched work reveals the lives of ordinary Londoners behind the unstoppable rise of Britain’s sea power and its eventual defeat of Napoleon.

Imperial Endgame

Imperial Endgame PDF Author: B. Grob-Fitzgibbon
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230300383
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 501

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Book Description
In this fresh and controversial account of Britain's end of empire, Grob-Fitzgibbon reveals that the British government developed a successful strategy of decolonization following the Second World War based on devolving power to indigenous peoples within the Commonwealth.

In These Times

In These Times PDF Author: Jenny Uglow
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1466828226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description
A beautifully observed history of the British home front during the Napoleonic Wars by a celebrated historian We know the thrilling, terrible stories of the battles of the Napoleonic Wars—but what of those left behind? The people on a Norfolk farm, in a Yorkshire mill, a Welsh iron foundry, an Irish village, a London bank, a Scottish mountain? The aristocrats and paupers, old and young, butchers and bakers and candlestick makers—how did the war touch their lives? Jenny Uglow, the prizewinning author of The Lunar Men and Nature's Engraver, follows the gripping back-and-forth of the first global war but turns the news upside down, seeing how it reached the people. Illustrated by the satires of Gillray and Rowlandson and the paintings of Turner and Constable, and combining the familiar voices of Austen, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron with others lost in the crowd, In These Times delves into the archives to tell the moving story of how people lived and loved and sang and wrote, struggling through hard times and opening new horizons that would change their country for a century.

The English Civil Wars

The English Civil Wars PDF Author: Blair Worden
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 0297857592
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
A brilliant appraisal of the Civil War and its long-term consequences, by an acclaimed historian. The political upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century has no parallel in English history. Other events have changed the occupancy and the powers of the throne, but the conflict of 1640-60 was more dramatic: the monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished, to be replaced by a republic and military rule. In this wonderfully readable account, Blair Worden explores the events of this period and their origins - the war between King and Parliament, the execution of Charles I, Cromwell's rule and the Restoration - while aiming to reveal something more elusive: the motivations of contemporaries on both sides and the concerns of later generations.