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Palgrave Macmillan

British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914–1941

  • Book
  • © 2002

Overview

Authors:
  1. Antony Best
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Part of the book series: Studies in Military and Strategic History (SMSH)

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiii
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  2. Introduction

    • Antony Best
    Pages 1-10

  3. The British Empire in East Asia in 1914

    • Antony Best
    Pages 11-21

  4. The Erosion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1914–21

    • Antony Best
    Pages 22-48

  5. ‘A Cubist Picture’: The Soviet Menace in China, 1918–27

    • Antony Best
    Pages 49-69

  6. Dealing with the Comintern Threat, 1927–31

    • Antony Best
    Pages 70-82

  7. From ‘Weak Power’ to Potential Enemy: Japan, 1921–33

    • Antony Best
    Pages 83-104

  8. ‘The Situation in the Far East Has Changed Completely’, 1933–37

    • Antony Best
    Pages 105-132

  9. The Sino-Japanese War, 1937–40

    • Antony Best
    Pages 133-159

  10. The Immediate Origins of the Pacific War

    • Antony Best
    Pages 160-187

  11. ‘The Jap is Good’: Epilogue and Conclusions

    • Antony Best
    Pages 188-197

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 198-269
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Keywords

About this book

This is the first full-length study of the role played by British Intelligence in influencing policy towards Japan from the decline of the Alliance to the outbreak of the Pacific War. Using many previously classified records it describes how the image of Japan generated by Intelligence during this period led Britain to underestimate Japanese military capabilities in 1941. The book shows how this image was derived from a lack of adequate intelligence resources and racially driven assumptions about Japanese national characteristics.

Reviews

'This is a superb example of intelligence history.' - Peter Dennis, Australian Defence Force Academy, Journal of Military History

'This is an important work and it does much to enhance our understanding of the process that marked the decline of British power in Asia in the twentieth-century.' - Peter Lowe, University of Manchester, EHR

About the author

ANTONY BEST is Lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbour: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936-41 and a number of scholarly articles on Anglo-Japanese relations in the 1930s.

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