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A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945-1955

Ronald H. Spector

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The war against Japan officially ended on September 2, 1945, but in Asia the fighting never really stopped. Civil war, communal violence, and insurgency engulfed almost all of Asia, from India to the Pacific Ocean, within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. A decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that formerly had been colonies of the European powers or conquests of the Japanese had become independent nations—after clashes that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians.

With A Continent Erupts, acclaimed military historian Ronald H. Spector provides, for the first time, a comprehensive military history and analysis of these little-known but decisive conflicts that changed the shape of Asia.