---
product_id: 227426027
title: "The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949"
price: "NT$2454"
currency: TWD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.tw/products/227426027-the-wars-for-asia-1911-1949
store_origin: TW
region: Taiwan
---

# The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949

**Price:** NT$2454
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949
- **How much does it cost?** NT$2454 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.tw](https://www.desertcart.tw/products/227426027-the-wars-for-asia-1911-1949)

## Best For

- Customers looking for quality international products

## Why This Product

- Free international shipping included
- Worldwide delivery with tracking
- 15-day hassle-free returns

## Description

The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 shows that the Western treatment of World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War, and the Chinese Civil War as separate events misrepresents their overlapping connections and causes. The long Chinese Civil War precipitated a long regional war between China and Japan that went global in 1941 when the Chinese found themselves fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war. The global war that consumed Western attentions resulted from Japan's peripheral strategy to cut foreign aid to China by attacking Pearl Harbor and Western interests throughout the Pacific on December 7–8, 1941. S. C. M. Paine emphasizes the fears and ambitions of Japan, China, and Russia, and the pivotal decisions that set them on a collision course in the 1920s and 1930s. The resulting wars – the Chinese Civil War (1911–1949), the Second Sino-Japanese War (1931–1945), and World War II (1939–1945) – together yielded a viscerally anti-Japanese and unified Communist China, the still-angry rising power of the early twenty-first century. While these events are history in the West, they live on in Japan and especially China.

Review: A Rich, Profound and Transformative Work - There aren’t many books that can claim, at this late date, to fundamentally transform common American (mis)conceptions of the 20th Century. Professor Paine’s “The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949” is one of them. Like many Americans of my generation, I learned in college that the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe during the Second World War were the truly seminal military events of the 20th Century. These, so I was told, were the titanic, world-altering battles that created the world in which I lived, and would live, for the foreseeable future. The Pacific War, according to this view, began with Pearl Harbor, and ended with a triumphant democratic makeover of archaic Japanese militarism. The Chinese figured in these accounts primarily as helpless, pitiful victims, or incompetent, corrupt sidekicks. The Russians merited a mere footnote for declaring war against Japan at the 11th hour when, presumably, the Americans had already essentially won the war. "The Wars for Asia" offers a powerful counternarrative, making a very strong case for the global importance of the last century of Asian, particularly Chinese, History, and the serious, even dire, consequences of failing to understand its nature, course and development. By thoughtfully examining the course of three wars - a (very) long Chinese Civil War, a prolonged regional conflict among Japan, China, and the USSR, and an international struggle for domination involving European powers and America – Professor Paine convincingly demonstrates the inherent interest, enormous scale, and historical significance of military events in Asia. Such a riveting account was made possible only by her truly astonishing breadth of scholarship. Events in Asia have been seriously underreported in English, one suspects, because prior writers lacked her ability to consult original documents in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian. “Wars for Asia” is not, however, a polemical work. It offers a lively recounting of historical events, and a military historian’s deeply informed and wily assessment of the origin, and usually flawed nature, of strategies consciously or unconsciously, rationally or irrationally pursued by all sides. There is nothing of the dullness or tendentiousness of academic history here. The reader will perhaps develop a grudging respect for that much-maligned warlord of warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek, who probably would have destroyed Mao’s Communist remnants if it hadn’t been for Russian intervention and an ongoing war with several million occupying Japanese (a war in which Mao cannily let his opponent do the heavy lifting). Respect, that is, deeply tinged with horror: Chiang could order the destruction of the dikes holding back the Yellow River in order to stop a Japanese advance, despite the ensuing, predictable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants. The tragedy of Japan – a warrior society forced out of isolation in the 1850’s into a world of imperial rivalry to which it adapted all too well, and the victim of its own success in its wars with China in the 1890’s and with Russia in 1905 – is covered in revealing detail, as is Stalin’s too-clever attempt to initially support both sides of the Chinese Civil War in order to keep his huge southern neighbor divided and weak. The significance of Russian intervention in Manchuria at the end of the war, and its reverse colonialism there - extracting heavy industrial and transportation infrastructure created by the Japanese, rather than building anything of value - receives long-overdue attention. British and American diplomatic and military missteps, stemming from self-interest and ignorance about Asian history and culture, also receive due attention. . Korea plays a relatively minor role here: however, Professor Paine’s earlier work, “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895”, contains a wealth of information about the Hermit Kingdom’s own troubled emergence from isolation in the 1860's at the insistence of a “Big Brotherly” Japan, and the ensuing struggle between China and Japan over control of that strategically (and tragically) placed peninsula. One key insight Professor Paine employs throughout the book is the critical distinction between the economic motivations of maritime powers, like Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, that benefit from a relatively open global economic system, and continental powers like Russia and China, for whom a geographically defined political and economic system are practically synonymous. This renders continental powers particularly sensitive about borders and territorial control; Russian and Chinese interventionism and expansionism today certainly bears this out. "The Wars for Asia" is a must read for anyone with an interest in, not just the Asian past, but a complex and troubled global present.
Review: Outstanding! - There are thousands of books written about the second world war. Maybe even a million. All aspects of the fighting, the operations and strategy has been described in so many ways that buying a new one almost always just add information to a subject that you have read about so many times before. It used to be that the Eastern Front was a weak area in the literature but after the fall of the Soviet Union that has been changing rapidly. But there is one part of the whole war that has been and continue to be difficult to find good information on and that is the war in China. This huge part of the war is almost impossible to find any good information on. Until now. "The Wars for Asia, 1911 - 1949" by professor S.C.M. Paine is a fantastic book and reading it will open your eyes to a large part of the war that has until now been considered almost like a side-show. Professor Paine writes about operations in China and the area surrounding it. It is a book on the strategic and operational level but it deals with the three important parts of the wars there: The Civil War, The War against Japan and Chinas role in the Global second World war. The Time span 1911 - 1949 is needed to understand it all. I have seldom read a book that so clearly discuss and clarify what must be considered one of the most complicated part of the entire world war. It is not an easy read to follow everything in China and you must concentrate but the rewards are great. I started to take notes after 50 pages since I found so many interesting facts that I simply had to keep them in my files. Not only does the situation in China gets a long overdue treatment but Professor Paine's work on Russia and Japan is extremely well done as well. There are parts of the Russian involvement in this area that came as a complete surprise to me and I am not easily surprised when it comes to that part of the World. How many have heard of the war between China and Russia in 1929 that ran for five months and where the Russians deployed 100 000 men with tanks and bombers? Not only are the presentation of events outstanding but also the analysis that follows. The professor is very clear and few of the participants, on any side, gets a clean record. The Diplomacy of Josef Stalin towards China was at times far better than what he did on the western front. The Unbelievable way the Japanese decision process worked and it's result is an real eye opener. For many Americans it might be a surprise that the Japanese considered the attack on Pearl Harbor as a mere side-show to the real war in China. If you make a list of the 100 most important books to read about the Second World War this one must be on it. If you make a list of just ten this is a very important candidate for that list too. It is that good.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #206,653 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #25 in Asian History (Books) #73 in Military History (Books) #144 in Chinese History (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.6 out of 5 stars 231 Reviews |

## Images

![The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71KSA5djqcL.jpg)

## Available Options

This product comes in different **Media Format** options.

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Rich, Profound and Transformative Work
*by R***R on May 6, 2021*

There aren’t many books that can claim, at this late date, to fundamentally transform common American (mis)conceptions of the 20th Century. Professor Paine’s “The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949” is one of them. Like many Americans of my generation, I learned in college that the campaigns in Western and Eastern Europe during the Second World War were the truly seminal military events of the 20th Century. These, so I was told, were the titanic, world-altering battles that created the world in which I lived, and would live, for the foreseeable future. The Pacific War, according to this view, began with Pearl Harbor, and ended with a triumphant democratic makeover of archaic Japanese militarism. The Chinese figured in these accounts primarily as helpless, pitiful victims, or incompetent, corrupt sidekicks. The Russians merited a mere footnote for declaring war against Japan at the 11th hour when, presumably, the Americans had already essentially won the war. "The Wars for Asia" offers a powerful counternarrative, making a very strong case for the global importance of the last century of Asian, particularly Chinese, History, and the serious, even dire, consequences of failing to understand its nature, course and development. By thoughtfully examining the course of three wars - a (very) long Chinese Civil War, a prolonged regional conflict among Japan, China, and the USSR, and an international struggle for domination involving European powers and America – Professor Paine convincingly demonstrates the inherent interest, enormous scale, and historical significance of military events in Asia. Such a riveting account was made possible only by her truly astonishing breadth of scholarship. Events in Asia have been seriously underreported in English, one suspects, because prior writers lacked her ability to consult original documents in Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian. “Wars for Asia” is not, however, a polemical work. It offers a lively recounting of historical events, and a military historian’s deeply informed and wily assessment of the origin, and usually flawed nature, of strategies consciously or unconsciously, rationally or irrationally pursued by all sides. There is nothing of the dullness or tendentiousness of academic history here. The reader will perhaps develop a grudging respect for that much-maligned warlord of warlords, Chiang Kai-Shek, who probably would have destroyed Mao’s Communist remnants if it hadn’t been for Russian intervention and an ongoing war with several million occupying Japanese (a war in which Mao cannily let his opponent do the heavy lifting). Respect, that is, deeply tinged with horror: Chiang could order the destruction of the dikes holding back the Yellow River in order to stop a Japanese advance, despite the ensuing, predictable deaths of hundreds of thousands of Chinese peasants. The tragedy of Japan – a warrior society forced out of isolation in the 1850’s into a world of imperial rivalry to which it adapted all too well, and the victim of its own success in its wars with China in the 1890’s and with Russia in 1905 – is covered in revealing detail, as is Stalin’s too-clever attempt to initially support both sides of the Chinese Civil War in order to keep his huge southern neighbor divided and weak. The significance of Russian intervention in Manchuria at the end of the war, and its reverse colonialism there - extracting heavy industrial and transportation infrastructure created by the Japanese, rather than building anything of value - receives long-overdue attention. British and American diplomatic and military missteps, stemming from self-interest and ignorance about Asian history and culture, also receive due attention. . Korea plays a relatively minor role here: however, Professor Paine’s earlier work, “The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895”, contains a wealth of information about the Hermit Kingdom’s own troubled emergence from isolation in the 1860's at the insistence of a “Big Brotherly” Japan, and the ensuing struggle between China and Japan over control of that strategically (and tragically) placed peninsula. One key insight Professor Paine employs throughout the book is the critical distinction between the economic motivations of maritime powers, like Great Britain, Japan, and the United States, that benefit from a relatively open global economic system, and continental powers like Russia and China, for whom a geographically defined political and economic system are practically synonymous. This renders continental powers particularly sensitive about borders and territorial control; Russian and Chinese interventionism and expansionism today certainly bears this out. "The Wars for Asia" is a must read for anyone with an interest in, not just the Asian past, but a complex and troubled global present.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Outstanding!
*by S***4 on February 24, 2013*

There are thousands of books written about the second world war. Maybe even a million. All aspects of the fighting, the operations and strategy has been described in so many ways that buying a new one almost always just add information to a subject that you have read about so many times before. It used to be that the Eastern Front was a weak area in the literature but after the fall of the Soviet Union that has been changing rapidly. But there is one part of the whole war that has been and continue to be difficult to find good information on and that is the war in China. This huge part of the war is almost impossible to find any good information on. Until now. "The Wars for Asia, 1911 - 1949" by professor S.C.M. Paine is a fantastic book and reading it will open your eyes to a large part of the war that has until now been considered almost like a side-show. Professor Paine writes about operations in China and the area surrounding it. It is a book on the strategic and operational level but it deals with the three important parts of the wars there: The Civil War, The War against Japan and Chinas role in the Global second World war. The Time span 1911 - 1949 is needed to understand it all. I have seldom read a book that so clearly discuss and clarify what must be considered one of the most complicated part of the entire world war. It is not an easy read to follow everything in China and you must concentrate but the rewards are great. I started to take notes after 50 pages since I found so many interesting facts that I simply had to keep them in my files. Not only does the situation in China gets a long overdue treatment but Professor Paine's work on Russia and Japan is extremely well done as well. There are parts of the Russian involvement in this area that came as a complete surprise to me and I am not easily surprised when it comes to that part of the World. How many have heard of the war between China and Russia in 1929 that ran for five months and where the Russians deployed 100 000 men with tanks and bombers? Not only are the presentation of events outstanding but also the analysis that follows. The professor is very clear and few of the participants, on any side, gets a clean record. The Diplomacy of Josef Stalin towards China was at times far better than what he did on the western front. The Unbelievable way the Japanese decision process worked and it's result is an real eye opener. For many Americans it might be a surprise that the Japanese considered the attack on Pearl Harbor as a mere side-show to the real war in China. If you make a list of the 100 most important books to read about the Second World War this one must be on it. If you make a list of just ten this is a very important candidate for that list too. It is that good.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Masterful synthesis, bursting with insights
*by B***M on August 11, 2013*

Broadly speaking, this is a military history of Northeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century, with China as the necessary center of gravity. In a narrower sense, however, this is really a book about China's 14-year struggle with Japan before and during World War II, with a lengthy prologue about events in the period until 1931, and a shorter epilogue about the civil war that devoured China from 1945 to 1949. Whether one decides to read this book one way or the other, it's a revelation. Virtually every page has a striking insight. To take one example, it has the clearest explanation of the 1936 Xian Incident, its political context and strategic consequences that I have read anywhere. To fully appreciate The Wars for Asia it probably helps to already know something about East Asian history, but I believe even "new readers" will benefit tremendously from this masterful work. What one gets from this book is, in essence, an intelligent synthesis of recent research into the period, seen through the prism of Dr Paine's sharp analytical mind. The array of sources cited in the text is staggering. The author has digested all the relevant literature in English, in addition to a huge literature of more marginal relevance. On top of this comes familiarity with a vast amount of research published in Chinese, Japanese and even Russian. The result is a story that is comprehensive in the best sense of the word. The author is a professor at the US Naval War College, and in a few places the book reads a bit like expanded lecture notes - but in a good way. It has the wry humor that experienced university teachers adopt to keep their students' attention, and in works well in written form as well, to make this not just an educational but also an entertaining read. I don't know Dr Paine's other book on East Asian history, an account of the First Sino-Japanese War in the late 19th century, but it's next on my reading list!

## Frequently Bought Together

- The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949
- The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War
- Imperial Rivals: China, Russia and Their Disputed Frontier

---

## Why Shop on Desertcart?

- 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016
- 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories
- 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price
- 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members)
- 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection
- ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews

**Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.tw/products/227426027-the-wars-for-asia-1911-1949](https://www.desertcart.tw/products/227426027-the-wars-for-asia-1911-1949)

---

*Product available on Desertcart Taiwan*
*Store origin: TW*
*Last updated: 2026-11-02*