Author: Christopher Bayly File Type: mobi ReviewCombining breathtaking, evocative narrative with razor-sharp historical analysis, Bayly and Harper provide a dramatic account of independent Asias baptism of fire in the turbulent aftermath of the Second World War. They capture in vivid detail the euphoria and trauma that swept the crescent stretching from Calcutta to Singapore as Britains Asian empire unraveled. This brilliant book is indispensable reading for anyone interested in the history of Britain, Asia and empire.--Sugata Bose, author of A Hundred Horizons the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (20070701) Like their earlier collaborative volume, Forgotten Armies, Bayly and Harpers new book presents a fascinating story of Britains Asian empire in transition. Europeans, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Burmese, Malays, Indonesians, and many others interacted as they sought to define anew the nature of empire, territory, and citizenship. There is no better way to understand the regions survival and emergence as a center of economic development and prosperity than to revisit the immediate postwar years under the expert guidance provided by Bayly and Harper. --Akira Iriye, Professor of History Emeritus, Harvard University (20070813) Forgotten Wars is an insightful and original look at the fate of Britains Asian Empire in the wake of World War II. Engaging and provocative, the masterful discussion of the Malayan Emergency will be of interest to all concerned with the dilemmas presented by insurgencies in our contemporary world.--Ronald Spector, author of In the Ruins of Empire The Japanese Surrender and the Struggle for a Postwar Asia (20070809) Historians Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper chronicle the ensuing struggles for Britains Southeast Asian colonies in Forgotten Wars Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia, the sequel to their much-praised history of Britains Asian empire during World War II, Forgotten Armies The Fall of British Asia, 19411945. Primarily a diplomatic and political history rather than a military history, the new book focuses on the causes of armed conflict. After Japans capitulation, Messrs. Bayly and Harper contend, Southeast Asia remained in a state of war for the same reasons it had entered into such a state poverty, imperialism, and ethnic, religious, and ideological conflict. The authors have mined a very large number of sources. Most of their new historical unearthing can be found in the intricacies of Southeast Asian politics, which they describe in great detail and with careful nuance. Those deeply interested in the politics of Burma or Malaysia or other Southeast Asian countries will find much to delight them here.--Mark Moyar (_New York Sun_ 20070901) Two years after their brilliant and vivid Forgotten Armies The Fall of British Asia, 1941-45, the Cambridge historians Bayly and Harper produce a sequel that examines Britains conflicts in Southeast Asia in the four years after the Second World War. While adroitly analyzing Britains hard-fought battle against insurrectionary forces in Malaya, the authors explore lesser-known episodes Bengalese and Burmese skirmishes seldom highlighted in accounts of the Rajs end, and the British interregnums between the ends of the Japanese occupations of Indonesia and Vietnam and the restorations of the respective former colonial administrations. (_The Atlantic_ 20080401) Authoritative.--Pankaj Mishra (_New Yorker_ ) [A] compelling book...An extraordinary cast of characters populate Forgotten Wars...The authors write that the end of empire is not a pretty thing if examined too closely, but when examined so ably it is certainly fascinating.--Philip Delves Broughton (_Wall Street Journal_ ) The authors are particularly good in their analysis of the problems of state building, on the one hand, and nation building, on the other. (_Foreign Affairs_ ) Forgotten Wars movingly brings out the travails of ordinary people who got caught up within a vicious cycle of political turmoil, economic deprivation, and violence. This is a must read for those interested in histories of British imperialism and decolonization in Asia and those who would like an introduction to the comparative regional histories of nation-states in Southeast Asia after 1945.--Haimanti Roy (_Journal of British Studies_ ) This book is neither an old-fashioned top down history of imperial politics in the region, nor a regional bottom up account of nationalist resistance to European rule. Rather, it shows how British illusions about the nature of Britains power in Southeast Asia collided with Asian national movements. This book addresses an important phase of that tragic history, for which, as the authors show, Britain bore considerable responsibility. --A. Martin Wainwright (_American Historical Review_ ) In September 1945, after the fall of the atomic bomb--and with it, the Japanese empire--Asia was dominated by the British. Governing a vast crescent of land that stretched from India through Burma and down to Singapore, and with troops occupying the French and Dutch colonies in southern Vietnam and Indonesia, Britains imperial might had never seemed stronger. Yet within a few violent years, British power in the region would crumble, and myriad independent nations would struggle into existence. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper show how World War II never really ended in these ravaged Asian lands but instead continued in bloody civil wars, anti-colonial insurrections, and inter-communal massacres. These years became the most formative in modern Asian history, as Western imperialism vied with nascent nationalist and communist revolutionaries for political control. Forgotten Wars, a sequel to the authors acclaimed Forgotten Armies, is a panoramic account of the bitter wars of the end of empire, seen not only through the eyes of the fighters, but also through the personal stories of ordinary people the poor and bewildered caught up in Indias Hindu-Muslim massacres the peasant farmers ravaged by warfare between British forces and revolutionaries in Malaya the Burmese minorities devastated by separatist revolt. Throughout, we are given a stunning portrait of societies poised between the hope of independence and the fear of strife. Forgotten Wars vividly brings to life the inescapable conflicts and manifold dramas that shaped todays Asia. (20070425)

Author: Cheryl A. Wall File Type: pdf Although they have written in various genres, African American writers as notable and diverse as W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker have done their most influential work in the essay form. The Souls of Black Folk, The Fire Next Time, and In Search of Our Mothers Gardens are landmarks in African American literary history. Many other writers, such as Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Richard Wright, are acclaimed essayists but achieved greater fame for their work in other genres their essay work is often overlooked or studied only in the contexts of their better-known works. Here Cheryl A. Wall offers the first sustained study of the African American essay as a distinct literary genre. Beginning with the sermons, orations, and writing of nineteenth-century men and women like Frederick Douglass who laid the foundation for the African American essay, Wall examines the genres evolution through the Harlem Renaissance. She then turns her attention to four writers she regards as among the most influential essayists of the twentieth century Baldwin, Ellison, June Jordan, and Alice Walker. She closes the book with a discussion of the status of the essay in the twenty-first century as it shifts its medium from print to digital in the hands of writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Brittney Cooper. Walls beautifully written and insightful book is nothing less than a redefinition of how we understand the genres of African American literature. **Review A pathbreaking work of scholarship, invigorating interest in the essay as a portal to some of the most pressing issues of race, culture, and politics across history, including our present time.--Gene Andrew Jarrett, New York University Beautifully written and compellingly argued, this welcome and necessary book rescues the genre of the essay from the margins of our discussions about African American intellectual and cultural production.--Farah J. Griffin, Columbia University About the Author Cheryl A. Wall is the Board of Governors Zora Neale Hurston Professor of English at Rutgers University and author of Worrying the Line.