(Part 2) Best asian history books according to redditors
We found 3,470 Reddit comments discussing the best asian history books. We ranked the 1,461 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
I'm going to specifically compare Churchill's notion about Greco-Roman thought to the importance of Chinese classics in East Asia. I'd say it is comparable, but distinct from the Roman/Greek case, especially colored by the very recent history running up to where Churchill was.
In the Chinese case, on-and-off dynasties were run according to the precepts of the "four books and five classics." The four books were a set of texts written (or at least compiled by) Confucius and Mencius. While composed as mostly anecdotes, they established a system of propriety, morality, and "right action" that extended upwards and outwards from the home to the government. The classics were the basis of ancient Chinese religious, poetic, and ritual thought. They established a huge amount of the underlying aesthetic, religious, and cosmological worldviews that you see for millennia. These were seen as seminal to almost all literate Chinese individuals, right up until the reforms and upheavals towards the end of the Qing empire as the 19th century ended.
A specific example of their importance is the "Imperial exam system." Set up in the 600s, it determined participation in government work was based almost exclusively on these texts. Specific forms varied and, as time wore on, some texts and requirements were added or subtracted based on which dynasty was giving the test. The underlying basis, though, was always the four books and five classics.
The thought (and, specifically, the Four Books/Five Classics) was also extremely important to the Imperial forms of government in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam (to varying degrees based on place, time, and who in particular was running things).
Chinese Dynastic succession kept up at a reasonably fast pace and established successive, stable empires, with only a century or two of chaos in between--even foreign invaders like the Mongols or Manchu would acquire Han-educated advisors and set up governments based largely on Confucian tenets (Yuan and Qing were both 'foreign' dynasties). The thought of ancient China wasn't seen as something of a bygone age--it was immediate and current, seen as a lineage. As the Qing declined throughout the 19th and early 20th century, however, many saw it as clear to them that the entire worldview was flawed. Western nations, with their own notions of the world, were militarily superior and bullied the Qing Empire (dealing with its own massive internal issues, including a civil war that left more dead than 20 American Civil Wars). As a result, the ancient thought was discredited and a variety of Western ideologies took root. The one that eventually triumphed, Maoist Communism, explicitly sought to utterly destroy Confucian thought in the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese Communist Party has significantly moderated that stance since then, though, and the classics are once again revered. This is at least partially to set up a credible competing nationalist ideology to "the West,"
and one which isn't based on the now also largely discredited (and also, really, Western) Communist thought.
In Europe, you have the fall of Rome in the 400s and largely, there's chaos thereafter (Things are different in the East with the continuation of Byzantium, but Churchill speaks to a specifically Western European mode of thought). There were various Renaissances (many more than most people give credit for, I don't mean to get any Medievalists on me for downplaying the achievements in the period too much)--Charlamagne, the Ottonians, and others. Still, though, none of them succeeded in achieving anything close to the political hegemony of the Romans, much less in physical, engineering terms. Importantly, also, none of them had the control or longevity to be compared to really any of the dynasties that followed the Roman-comparable Han in our contrasting Chinese example. Rather than the living, functional, developing ideology that informed Empire after Empire, Rome was an ancient wonder. It was present--they could see it around them in the roads and aqueducts they used, the Christian religion they practiced, and the cities they lived in--but they couldn't match it. While pretensions to being "successors" to Rome and many aspects of Roman culture had remained, much of the specific text and practice had long passed by the wayside to be rediscovered during the Renaissance.
In the 'Renaissance that stuck' in the 1400s and onwards, they looked on Roman thought and art as something ancient and wonderful. Statues dug up, texts acquired from the Islamic world (where they had been continuing study of Plato/Aristotle for many of the intervening centuries), and other aspects of greco-roman thought created an idealized past of the "ancients" for the "moderns" to compare their world to. Since there was such distance, I would editorialize, it allowed for way more idolization. As the Renaissance and Enlightenment spread, modern nation-states still based a great deal of thought and practice rooted in this source of cultural legitimacy: A perfect empire that existed an untold amount of time ago.
This is where Churchill is coming from; an agent of a modern empire that, still, desperately wanted to cast itself in the mold of the source of ancient legitimacy. Rather than seeing ancient thought as shackles on modernity, it was (mostly rightly) seen as the seed from which the Enlightenment, Scientific Revolution, and subsequent ability to dominate most of the globe had sprung.
To sum up the difference: In China, you have a constant lineage of social and political thought that was in operation in an Empire torn to shreds and thus discredited, though later redeemed as a source of cultural/nationalist pride. In the UK, you have a strain of thought, the specifics of which were lost, held in reverence as a golden age before centuries of intermittent warfare and chaos. Its rediscovery sets off, in part, a sequence of events that sets the UK up as a truly global empire--reflecting on the idealized past, the British Empire is lionized as a "new Rome," necessarily owing much to the ideas from the "old Rome." Nothing legitimizes your social and political thought (in your mind, anyway) than literally conquering most of the planet with it.
Edited to add sources of where I formed these views--by no means exhaustive, mainly what I can remember off the top of my head/can pull off a bookshelf:
Chinese history:
European:
Roman period:
Renaissance thought:
Enlightenment-Beyond:
Most of the answers here are providing opinions, rather than actual historical context. I am a practicing Hindu, so let me add my own voice to this.
Most Hindus believe in the supreme authority of the Vedas, the four sacred books written in Sanskrit. There are many other supplementary works around them.
The three main concepts are
The religious belief and practices can be divided into roughly four categories -
Hindus believe there are 330 million gods, which is assumed that it is the founder's estimate of number of unique creatures in nature.
Most Hindus will consider either Shiva or Vishnu or one of Vishnu's incarnations - Krishna, Ram etc. to be supreme. Among others, most will consider the goddess Durga in that position
All belief systems in Hinduism can be seen through this lens. Some like Swami Vivekananda tried to thread the needle by saying it is hard to envision and believe in a formless omnipresent being so most people find it easier to worship through a physical form, like an idol, with the thought of eventually graduating to more complex forms of worship.
Such a complex belief system means Hindus just assume they are Hindu at birth. There was no process of converting to Hindu (which has changed with ISKCON and some other institutions having rituals to convert people to Hinduism) When Hinduism is under threat, they simply absorb the other religion's ideas. When Buddhism was on the rise, Hindus decided being vegetarian was an important part of the religion and Buddha was made into one of the Avataras(appearings) of the God Vishnu. Hindus will also go and worship in a mosque or church or have the idol of Mother Mary or Jesus Christ next to their own religions idols in their house place of worship.
Lastly, this post is not really worthy of being in r/history but hope the mods will let it stand or at least inform me before deleting.
I am from Goa, a state in India which was ruled by the Portuguese, rather than the British. While the Portuguese managed to convert most people to Christianity, some people escaped by going deep in the jungles and establishing their temples and deities there. You can see it today, with most temples within a few square miles of each other.
Here are some sources
I find history is deeply murky on Hinduism and pre-colonial India but this is what I could find.
Personally, I am a follower of Vivekananda.
Edit - Edited for formatting.
Edit 2 - Adding a link to the Goa Inquisition by the Portuguese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goa_Inquisition This was used to punish those who had been converted to Christianity but had secretly returned to their original rituals and beliefs. I don't know about Muslims but converting Hindus was relatively easy. The Brahmins of the time believed in the superiority of their own religion and had numerous restrictions on the populace and ways one could be outcast. For example, traveling by sea or drinking tea in a porcelain cup or even eating bread. The Portuguese and the British missionaries would simply drop bread in the community village and whoever drank water from that would be ostracized by their own brethren and considered to have converted to Christianity. Ironically, it took the British unification of India and the liberalization of the religion to enable it to survive the onslaught.
Even today, in Goa, if someone visits the temple and mentions their overseas trip, they have to go through a purification, involving a ritual bath, cleansing chanting by a priest and being sprinkled with a drop of cow urine before entering the inner sanctum and worshipping.
The book is : Rape of Nanjing by Iris Chang
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0140277447.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
It's a large part of many desert and steppe societies (basically those that live in harsh and unforgiving climates: Inuits, Samis, and other Arctic peoples can be included here) to provide some bare minimum of sustenance and safety to travellers.
In a world where everyone historically (and still do in some modern places) lived a nomadic or semi-nomadic life, it was a basic politeness to provide these things to any traveller, as you may at any day find yourself in a similar position to theirs and having to rely on the same goodwill and custom that you would provide. You can trace some of these customs in places like Afghanistan, Iran, and North Africa to the proliferation of travelling scholars, monks, or other learned men in the Roman Christian period and later in the dar-al-Islam and Caliphate periods.
You can see evidence in this is a number of modern travel journals for contemporary sources. I'd recommend On the Trail of Genghis Khan, about Australian Tim Cope's travels by horseback from Mongolia to Ukraine, or The Places in Between, which covers Rory Stewart's 2002 solo trek across Afghanistan, where he spends nights with Taliban commanders (among others) in the beginning periods of the NATO intervention by relying on a knowledge of these kinds of customs and traditions. They're not scholarly articles by any means, but they provide a modern view of how these customs and traditions still shape contemporary interactions in these places.
This is what real rape culture looks like
You should know the difference between their "regular" concentration camps and the ones for special political prisoners. pretty sure you got no foosball or big screen TV's in either.
They can't pretend we don't know all this
Or that it's all an American lie
Or that this shit hasn't been known for decades already and confirmed repeatedly, again, and again
They can even criticize Trump's approach to the DPRK if it makes them feel better but this extravagant kind of heated lie is just offensive to both the world and the individuals who survive the Kim family horror show.
If you want a book recommendation about life in North Korea, check out Nothing to Envy
If you want to read from the perspective of a prison camp escapee, try Escape from Camp 14
Both are quite fascinating.
they weren't necessarily lucky, at least in the short term. post war, the north was extremely prosperous, (due to the USSR's backing), whilst the south went through military dictatorships, food shortages, police states and constant political unrest. the south only began to economically eclipse the north in (I think) the 1980s. This is a bad source but it's the best I can find on short notice, (the section on the Korean Rivalry). This book gives a much better breakdown of the two countries' differing fortunes if anyone is interested. edit: grammar
> How do I pitch this kind of story to an editor?
You don't.
Not until you've a) proven you can deliver fantastic, expertly written stories; and b) done something so extraordinary in your life that readers would be more interested in you than the fascinating people editors normally want their writers to cover — world leaders, movie stars, disease-curing scientists, and war heroes.
The way you do that is you work your way up the ranks covering more and more interesting people and topics until you've earned a reputation as top-notch feature writer. Then you dive into something so wild, people will pay to hear your tale of your experiences. Like when Rory Stewart walked alone across Afghanistan with a war going on all around him.
Hunter S. Thompson spent years working his way up from entry-level journalism jobs until he started writing magazine-style features. His "gonzo" career took off after he got a magazine assignment to cover the Hell's Angels. He spent nearly two years living with the gang and turned his experiences into a book.
Anthony Bourdain spent 20 years as a chef before writing a magazine article about the crazy, drug-fuelled shit that goes on in New York kitchens he worked in. That earned him a deal to turn the article into a best-selling book.
No one wants to read about a nobody who has done nothing.
Most of the time, journalists cover people who are far more fascinating than themselves. Even Pulitzer-winner Katherine Boo, who spent three years in an Indian slum researching her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, doesn't say a word about herself in it, preferring to tell the stories of the slum inhabitants.
So start with writing profiles and features for your school paper or magazine. Maybe there's a prof on campus with a great back story who has made some big discovery. Write their stories with depth and colour. Move up to pitching stories to magazines about other amazing people doing incredible things. Transition into some travel writing to work on some more first-person stories. Or, as /u/CoolBeans17 points out, perhaps there are some alternative papers, city magazines, and blogs near you who will take more offbeat writing. I know few writers in my city who eventually earned semi-regular first-person feature spots in local publications. One started out doing quirky coverage of the local music scene, moved up to covering visiting bands, and now does his weird shit with big name acts. He's more interesting than a lot of musicians he covers, but he still doesn't try to outshine them.
Once you've developed nearly celebrity status and are on good terms with big-time editors, then you can call one of them up and say, "Hey, remember that awesome profile I did for you about that princess? She's asked me to lead her band of rebels when we try to blow up the Death Star. Can I give you 4,000 first-person words on it for the August issue when I get back?"
Then you get your literary agent to line up a book deal and movie rights.
Edit: some corrections.
Every time I read these they become worse. Let's concentrate on some thing I noted this time:
>For example, it is very easy to include God or gods in one's definition of church. In that case, we throw out Buddhism, which is surely a legitimate religion. I assume your version of separation of church and state includes separation of Buddhism and state. Mine sure does. And what about Scientology? Shouldn't we have separation of Scientology and state? I'm guessing you'll sign up for this one as well.
...Buddhism, as the great majority of Buddhists worldwide practice it, is in no way contrary to the existence of gods, quite the other way around. An argument has been made that the whole idea of Buddhism as an atheist religion is mainly the result of a relatively recent process of interplay between (South) Asian nationalists and their state-building projects and British post-Enlightenment intellectuals projecting their own values on an exotic religion. Don't know enough to say, but seems plausible. Likewise, I can't say my theological knowledge of Scientology is vast, but according to Wikipedia, it is a theist religion:
>Scientologists believe in an "Infinity" ("the All-ness of All"). They recite a formal prayer for total freedom at meetings, which include the verses "May the author of the universe enable all men to reach an understanding of their spiritual nature. May awareness and understanding of life expand, so that all may come to know the author of the universe. And may others also reach this understanding which brings Total Freedom ... Freedom from war, and poverty, and want; freedom to be; freedom to do and freedom to have. Freedom to use and understand Man's potential – a potential that is God-given and Godlike." The prayer commences with "May God let it be so."[51] [52]
Scientologists affirm the existence of a deity without defining or describing its nature. L. Ron Hubbard explains in his book Science of Survival, "No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical and less valuable." Instead of defining God, members assert that reaching higher states of enlightenment will enable individuals to make their own conclusions about the Supreme Being.[53]
Okay, is that important? Yes, because at this point, Moldbug's argument is basically "Yes, you could defined a church through belief in a God or gods, but what about Buddhist and Scientology, then? Huh? Huh" which, at the very least, rests on very thin ice... and then Moldbug starts taking this badly founded argument and expanding it to an entire worldview.
Another thing that I've thought many times but really only now conceived: how parochial Moldbug's worldview is. The second entry is based on the notion that maybe American revolution was a bad thing - possibly a mindblowing thing to someone who has grown up amidst American patriotic mythos, at most an interesting thought experiment to basically everyone else. There's a whole country to the north of US that was basically founded on the principle that American revolution was a bad thing and which Moldbug does not mention once. United Empire Loyalists Association of Canada continues to exist, contrary to:"Loyalism gives us an extremely foreign perspective of the present world. There are no other Loyalists in 2009. So, when we think as Loyalists, we have no choice but to think for ourselves."
Of course, current Canadians, or Canadian Loyalists, don't probably support the same values that the original Tories who went to Canada did, but that brings me to another point - a rather common habit of taking one movement at point A (hundreds of years ago), then finding a descendant of that movement at point B (now, or may be a few decades ago) and then going "See, it's the same thing!" For instance, here Moldy takes Puritans and the current American mainstream ideology - and, indeed, a case can be made that there's a continuity; certainly American patriotism is in many ways built on what originally were Reformed movements inside and outside the Anglican church and the foundations of current American liberalism are in many ways built on the mainline Protestant variety of this ideology.
However, that would ignore the complete shift in Protestant thinking that modernism brought, how fundamentalism was specifically a reaction that aimed to return Protestantism back to its "fundaments" from mainline's changes, how American patriotism was also affected by Deist and Christian-Deist enlightenment thinking, how current liberalism is also the child of progressivism, populism, Catholic social gospel, reform Judaism etc. and so on. But that's complicated! "Modern Left is Puritans, that's that" is easier and punchier.
Fourth thing is a general comment on neoreaction in general - the biggest reason why the whole movement was a flash-in-the-pan affectation of the few intellectuals was that the original reaction was, essentially, very much a religious movement expressing in the political arena its fear of Enlightenment usurping religion as the main source of societal justification, and much of neoreaction has been at most culturally religious. It just doesn't work! You might as well try to build a movement that's re-establishing the Caliphate - not due to any sort of a belief in Islam, but due to a belief that it just would form the best societal structure to do... well, whatever you want it to do.
Nick Turse wrote a book on war crimes that were confirmed by the Pentagon, in the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group.
From Wikipedia:"The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by the Freedom of Information Act, and relocated to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, where they went largely unnoticed. Nick Turse, a freelance journalist, discovered the archive while researching his doctoral dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at Columbia University. He managed to examine most of the files, and obtained copies of about 3,000 pages — representing roughly a third of the total — before government officials removed them from the public shelves in 2002, stating they contained personal information that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act."
I think the fact of denial of systematic war crimes committed by the US government at this point is a hard case to make.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_Crimes_Working_Group
http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919
Bakgrunden här är alltså att 1861 pågår Taipingupproret, ett av världshistoriens blodigaste konflikter än idag, där en religös sekt ledd av Hong Xiuquan - självutnämnd son av gud och bror av Jesus - gick i öppen revolt mot Kinas styrande Qingdynastin. Då försvagad av Opiumkrigen och med en sedan-länge försvagad centralstat. Rebellerna tar över en stor region av södra Kina och Nanjing blir deras huvudstad, 30 mil uppför Yangtzefloden från Shanghai, som då är internationell fördragshamn med sjömän och äventyrare från hela världen.
Så en del västerlänningar därifrån tar värvning som legosoldater - flest för Qingdynastin men ett fåtal för rebellerna. Vapensmuggling till rebellerna är också en lönsam verksamhet som många västerlänningar ägnar sig åt. ("the bulk of foreign gunrunners are British or American, but some are Belgian, Swedish, Prussian or Italian" - Johnathan Spence) Det var också västerländskt hjälp som i slutändan bidrog till att avsluta upproret.
Beskrivnigen slätar över att det sannolika syftet var att sälja vapen för siden. Den utpekar inte männen direkt som rebeller men beskrivningen 'långt hår' och med röda band identifierar dem för samtiden som Taipingrebeller. Det långa håret visade trots mot den av den manchuriska frisyren som Qingdynastin påtvingat kineserna. Kineserna kallade också Taipingrebellerna för 'de långhåriga'.
Okänt varför svensken har ett engelskklingande namn - kan vara ett alias, eller en förengelskning av ett svenskt namn - ingendera vore särskilt ovanligt för sjömän/äventyrare av den tiden.
"Hell in a Very Small Place" taught me how insane they were in Vietnam. They had guys make there first Airborne jump, into an encircled DZ. Like holy shit.
Also made you appreciate how good of a general Giap was. One of the best books about a battle I've ever read. The author sadly died in Vietnam when he was reporting on the American effort there.
https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Very-Small-Place-Siege/dp/030681157X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1538095807&sr=8-1&keywords=hell+in+a+very+small+place
> These are some of the signs of stagnation, as it were.
it's not stagnation, it's Afghanistan going back to what it was. If we can work with the Taliban, laying aside all principle, we have a chance at affecting it positively.
The following is based on a book by a us anthropologist/afghanistan expert that I read about 8 years ago
Afghanistan is one of the worlds very few remaining pre-industrial societies (not the whole of it but the larger part), meaning that its people aren't as economically dependent on a small group of institutions as most of the rest of the world is. The regions sustain themself with small scale agriculture and the only technology higher than that is the odd AK (and by now probably a few cellphones originally used to set off IEDs). Outside the major cities the regions barely communicate. This means that there isn't a central hub in the infrastructure that you can take over to gain control and influence over all afghan life. Most afghans have no direct dealings with the central government in their lifetimes (compare that to the amount of taxes you pay and paperwork you're supposed to keep track of, the loans you're likely taken or will take, etc). The central government has no reach in most of Afghanistan. Afghanistan has not had a centralised monopoly on violence for a very, very long time (probably since its inception in the 1700s), meaning its government doesn't really govern large parts of the country in any sense of the word we're used to.
This is doubly true now, when the central government is arguably losing a civil war against the Taliban.
Any aid to the afghan countryside would have to be organized on a per-village basis, security could never be guaranteed for more than maybe 3 days at a time, and when the villages fall the Taliban will start on their curriculum either way.
Joseon era:
I prefer the 'Review' more, but it might come across as a little dry. I feel that it does a fair job of discussing a number of topics related to the creation and running of the Joseon Dynasty, breaking the dynasty up into smaller components and then focusing on some areas (arts, military, cultural practices) within those smaller time frames. 'Sources' for me came across as more academic than 'Review' but you might enjoy it more. 'Sources' includes translations of primary sources, which is helpful, while 'Review' includes images such as paintings and maps.
General:
A comic book that goes into the 'making' of Korea and Korean culture. I have some reservations about this one but if you don't take it too seriously it can be a fun and easy way to get introduced to a number of topics related to Korea.
'Modern' Korea:
Lankov's book is a collection of newspaper articles he wrote entertaining subjects like the story of Korea's first automobiles, the introduction of the first telephones, etc. Easy to digest and they offer a glimpse of what society was like at each point in time; not a 'serious' book on Korean history, though. Neff's book was a chore to get through and it felt like no editing had gone into the book before publishing. If I'm not mistaken this also started out as a series of articles for one of the local newspapers; the transition from article to book did not go quite as well.
It's probably been 10 years since I read the books from Breen, Oberdorfer and Cummings, which makes it a little difficult to write a lot about them. Cummings I know gets criticized for being pro-North Korea in his writing, so that's something to keep in mind, while Oberdorfer I think was a correspondent living in Korea so may have a more 'eyewitness' approach to some of the events. Bird's book is a description of her travels in Korea during the Joseon period and I remember it being an interesting read. Not a balanced historical account by any means - and it obviously suffers from being written from an outside perspective at a time when ethnocentrism was more prevalent - but it may be an alternative to consider. You should be able to find a .pdf copy of that one online.
Haven't read this one, but I've seen others mention it in the past. It's another first-person account from Korea at the cusp of the 20th century, this time from the perspective of a medical missionary. Again, not an objective history book, but if you prefer first-person narratives it may at least be worth a look. A .pdf copy has been published online, this one by the University of Oregon.
Edit: One I forgot to mention, but which I've also heard is used in some English-language classes on Korean history/studies:
Targetting minorities and intellectuals to begin with. With death count of 300,000 ~ 3 million. How is this not genocide? Just because of cold war politics the West chose to ignore this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/30/opinion/nixon-and-kissingers-forgotten-shame.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/23/unholy-alliances-3
There are tapes of US counse in Bangladesh describing genocide to Nixon, who choose to ignore it. And abuse India for helping Bangladeshi Insurgents. More than 10 million refugees had fled to India during the war.
https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Telegram-Kissinger-Forgotten-Genocide/dp/0307744620
Shame Pakistan it seems? It has blood of millions of Bengalis and you are talking about shame?
Unfortunately, the most efficient way to become knowledgable about the Middle East is to read. A lot. The Middle East is a far more complex place than most people imagine and understanding the region requires a great deal of knowledge. I have been studying the Middle East for nearly a decade and I still feel like there is so much that I do not know. I would start by reading reputable news sources every day. Places like The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BBC, Financial Times, are the Los Angeles Times are good English language news sources that you should look at. Additionally, I have written up a suggested reading list for learning about the Middle East, though it is a bit more security-related since that's my area of expertise. I hope it helps. And feel free to ask any questions if you have them.
Books - General History of the Middle East
Books - Middle East Military History
Books - Middle East Terrorism and Substate Violence
Books - U.S. Foreign Policy in the Middle East
Think Tanks
Below is a list of several different think tanks, which frequently publish everything from extension research and analysis to quick and succinct blog posts about the issues in the Middle East. Some of these think tanks specifically focus on the Middle East, while for others it is only one area of their research.
Journals, Blogs, Podcasts, and other Publications
> The planning and execution of the attack on Pearl was rooted deeply in the Japanese doctrine of the decisive battle. The objective of IJN battle plans throughout the war was to bring their enemy into a single large battle and defeat them in one blow.
This is a key point. For more on it, I recommend Kaigun and the combinedfleet.com website.
I agree, but understand the context; there was the equivalent of a My Lei massacre every week of the war and even conscripts were heavily involved in murdering of civilians there:
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/17/vietnam_was_even_more_horrific_than_we_thought/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_Crimes_Working_Group_Files
http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919
The American people were more aware of what atrocities American forces were committing during the war and unfairly took that out on the veterans wholesale, but there was a reason why they did it other than just being dicks. Most of the vets weren't to blame for what was going on, but the litany of horrors and atrocities that were going on were horrifying and were in the same category of what the German army was doing in Russia in WW2 (not the Holocaust part, but the massacres of civilians suspecting of supporting guerrilas and the torture and murder of prisoners).
I can think of a few
fanshen or red star over china
I believe this is mostly a misconception. Despite how the government tries, North Koreans are more aware than you might think. There’s a fantastic book about life in NK that I highly recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-Envy-Ordinary-Lives-North-ebook/dp/B002ZB26AO
Well, the obvious immediate go-to would be Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941, which is pretty much exactly what you're looking for.
In addition to describing the design philosophies driving Japanese naval architecture during their buildup to the Second World War, it also describes the evolution of the strategy, tactics, organization, culture, and technology developed by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
The book also has a fairly broad chronological focus, encompassing the entire era between the foundation of the IJN and the opening battles of the Pacific War.
It's considered one of the more prominent Western works on the topic in recent years. It's also fairly engagingly written, so I'd recommend you check it out.
If you're interested in naval air power's development by Japan, I'd also check out Sunburst, by one of the same authors, as well as the acclaimed Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway by Parshall and Tully, which both provide in-depth analysis of Japanese carrier doctrine and tactics. The latter book is particularly groundbreaking in the Western scholarship of the battle for overturning several longstanding myths surrounding Midway.
EDIT: Fun fact - Kaigun is the only reason why I know who the heck Emile Bertin was :)
Anyone downvoting Kropotki seriously needs to read Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse.
The US military had a policy of "punishing" units that had a low kill ratio (including sending them on land mine clearing duty considered the most dangerous work) and rewarding units with high kill ratios with things like crates of beer and extra R&R time.
The policy led to soldiers killing civilians to boost up there kill ratios. Why the US lost the war it was against the "Winning hearts and minds" counter insurgency strategy.
For modern India, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi. The dude digs up every memo, every administrative note, personal letter available, to narrate the story of India from around independence till current times (still have to get there). Lots of details, but it is sometimes quite gripping. The whole correspondence between Chou En Lai and Nehru, culminating in the War of '62, is particularly worth reading. Highlights the different governance of the two countries, and causes for India's defeat. There's a lot more. The story of Partition, and how Vallabhai Patel and his secretary (VP Menon) worked to accomplish the daunting task of integrating the over 500 princely states into one, democratic Indian Union is essential.
For ancient India, I am just starting. I just got into John Keay's India: A History. This is a beautiful book. Starts with India's most ancient known civilisation, the Harappas, and proceeds to chronicle the evolution of the country ever since, from the consequential "invasion" of Arya, to the skirmish with Alexander, the rise of Mauryan empire (and Ashoka the great) and the Indian "Dark Age" (that's as far as I have gotten!), and beyond (emergence of the Gupta empire is just around the corner). It is pragmatic, unbiased, thorough narrative of this subcontinent. I really enjoyed the chapter on Vedic era; finally got to know what is reliable and what isn't from that era, and a brief glimpse into how historians work to check the veracity of all the bold claims in the two great epics of Indian literature, Mahabharata and Ramayana. There is also frequent mention of the lineage of kings in Puranas (it is mostly unreliable, with little to know details of the time periods).
This is a novice beginning for me, and I will have to re-read these two books alone several times, to cement any idea of the complexity and diversity of Indian history. Maybe someday, I will get to move on to European history and everything in between!
As far as China goes, Fanshen, The Unknown Cultural Revolution, and The Battle for China's Past are probably a great place to start.
Sinologist Jonathan Spence actually has an excellent book on this topic: God's Chinese Son.
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Chinese-Son-Taiping-Heavenly/dp/0393315568
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0805086919/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20
I haven't read this yet (it's on my list) but it seems like one of the few books on the vietnam war that actually outlines the atrocities. I'm definitely curious to hear from anyone who has read it and their thoughts.
Every time a discussion regarding tourism to North Korea starts, this point always comes up. After all, it is a valid and natural point of concern.
Yes, North Korea has concentration camps and an atrocious human rights record. Nobody (except the North Korean government) is going to deny that. Yes, any foreigners in North Korea will have significant restrictions on freedom of movement. No one who has gone there is going to tell you otherwise.
Having been educated and cultivated in the West, where oftentimes we can take matters like human rights and freedom of movement for granted, our instant reaction is to be disgusted by this - so disgusted that we'll cry out "North Korea is the most evil place in the world" and instantly clam up in anger. Sometimes that anger, and the lack of reliable information about North Korea, will lead us to sensationalize. We'll try to explain unexplainable evil as a massive prison camp or a farcical socialist movie set.
This is natural and has basis in reality, but, in my opinion, is unhelpful.
If we want to truly make some sense out of that unexplainable evil, which to an appreciable extent is a prerequisite for any sort of meaningful change, we need to take a more nuanced approach. Sometimes, that could involve taking a visit.
From my perspective, going on a tour to North Korea is not supposed to be like sunning in Mallorca or frolicking in Disneyworld. You don't go there to have "fun", you go there to learn. If your objective in traveling is to have "fun", then by god don't go to North Korea. But my objective in traveling places is not to have "fun"; it's to learn.
The next instinctual response is to cry out: "But you won't learn anything! They're just going to parade you around and show you propaganda!"
Again, I think this line of thinking trivializes the matter. In earlier stages of Western education systems, we oftentimes learn about bias and come to perceive it as an absolute negative. In secondary schools you might hear kids going "oh, this source is biased, so we can't use it!" This is incorrect. Bias is not an absolute negative; biased sources like propaganda simply need to be approached differently. Propaganda is rich with information, but not the factual, face-value information you might expect from some place like an encyclopedia. Instead, you glean the wealth of contextual information it offers. Let's say you're reading Chinese propaganda from the Cultural Revolution, and some of it praises this guy named Lin Biao, while some of it denounces him. From that you shouldn't conclude "some of this shit must be fake". Instead, you can extract hints of the regime's worldview, and use the propaganda to piece together the context that perhaps Lin Biao had a falling out with Mao.
Visiting North Korea is much like that. There's a richness of context from both what's seen and unseen, from what's heard and unheard. If you're equipped with the right advance knowledge and the right academic mindset, there is in fact a lot you can internalize about actual North Koreans and the country itself.
Yes, there remains the issue of lining the pockets of the regime and whatnot, and I'm fully aware of that fact. As with everything else relating to the DPRK, there's layers of nuance to this financial facet of the regime that would take rather long to explain, so I won't do it here.
If you do want to hear that explained/debated, and go beyond CNN articles and "Team America", I'd recommend starting off with the following books:
If after you finish reading all that stuff you get curious enough to go, then that's your choice. If you don't, no one's going to force you to go either. We're fortunate enough to live in societies that generally respect freedom of choice and movement; if we want to play the game of moral superiority, being able to visit North Korea is the ultimate manifestation of that freedom.
> I sort of wish Ken Burns would do a documentary on Vietnam. A lot of the feature length stuff about it just seems over dramatized.
Have you seen Vietnam: The 10,000 Day War or Vietnam: A Television History?
Both are extensive examinations and outstanding in their depth and breadth. Vietnam: A Television History also has a super thorough companion book called Vietnam: A History written by journalist/historian Stanley Karnow. It's perhaps the best single-volume history of the Vietnam war.
I actually feel ok today. I have been in a bad rut for most of this year, and I'm not out of it, but I think I may have found the ladder and am starting to climb.
Also, I started reading this book,Afghanistan is a fascinating country.
>The north invaded the south. The US and allies responded and the rest is history.
It really wasn’t that clear-cut. The actual start of the Korean War was preceeded with a large number of border skirmishes along the 38th parallel, with forays over the border by both sides. As many as 10,000 North and South Korean soldiers had already died in these skirmishes before the war even broke out.
The 38th parallel was not respected by any Korean leaders and basically non-existant to the Korean populace (I’ll discuss why in a minute), and both Syngman Rhee and Kim il-Sung were planning to invade the other and become the leader of Korea.
> "On February 8, 1949, the South Korean president met with Ambassador John Muccio and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall in Seoul. Here the Korean president listed the following as justifications for initiating a war with the North: the South Korean military could easily be increased by 100,000 if it drew from the 150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who had recently fought with the Japanese or the Nationalist Chinese. Moreover, the morale of the South Korean military was greater than that of the North Koreans. If war broke out he expected mass defections from the enemy. Finally, the United Nations’ recognition of South Korea legitimized its rule over the entire peninsula (as stipulated in its constitution). Thus, he concluded, there was "nothing [to be] gained by waiting."
Source
>"Kim I Sek, a South Korean leader, said that Dulles told Rhee, 'Start the aggression against the north, accompanied by a counter-propaganda on the grounds that the North has invaded the South first. If you can but hold out for two weeks, everything will go smoothly, for during this period the United States, by accusing North Korea of attacking South Korea, will compel the United Nations to take action, in whose name land, naval and air forces would be mobilised.'"
Source
Anyways, let’s briefly recount the history of Korea between their liberation from the Japanese and the Korean War to see why the 38th parallel was not widely considered to be a valid demarcation by Koreans.
Before the trusteeship even began the Koreans were building up a new independent government based in Seoul, the PRK. This government was based on networks of local governments (people’s committees), and the local governments in the north were lead by Korean nationalists like Cho Man-sik. While the northern committees had close connections with the Soviets (as they had just fought a mutual war with the Japanese in Manchukuo), the Soviets recognized the PRK as legitimate and allowed these councils to develop independently (Source).
Contrast this with the US, who upon landing in the South after the events of WW2 outlawed the PRK and deposed of it with military force. The US then declared the United States Army Military Government in place of the PRK. This government, being wholly unaware of the situation in Korea (to the point where they didn't even speak the language), was completely incompetent and largely reviled by the Korean people. Even more egregiously, the US military government in Korea appointed mostly former Japanese governors as advisors. This continued until, as part of America's containment policy, diplomats Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel proposed a trustee solution between the US and the Soviets. This trusteeship was also popularly reviled, and both Cho Man-sik in the north, and Kim Ku (who formerly lead the PRK) in the south put up a fight against it. The Soviets, despite having a hands-off relationship with Cho Man-sik previously, were pressured to accept the trusteeship solution (the alternative being that the whole of the peninsula be used as a US foothold directly to the south of the Soviets), and so they found a leader who didn't strongly oppose the trusteeship- Kim Il-sung. Cho Man-sik was eventually put under house arrest. And what happened in the South? They had "elections", except Syngman Rhee was flown into the ROK from America (he was exiled at the time), the elections were rigged, and Kim Ku (the former PRK leader who dissented to the elections) was assassinated by a Korean found in documents declassified in 2001 to have been working for the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps.
So the bottom line of all of this is, the “North vs. South” distinction didn’t really exist in the general Korean mindset prior to the outbreak of the war. There was a predominant opinion, especially in the northern part of the peninsula but also among the southern nationalists, that the ROK government under Rhee was invalid and came about as a result of US aggression and manipulation. That the US initiated acts of aggression in the South is not up for debate, though I think the issue at hand here is how long a complicated chain of cause and effect has to be before you can reasonably call something “self-defense”.
Excellent analysis. I've been reading Kaigun and it goes into depth on this. You can attribute this primarily to Japan's complicated range and targeting scheme. Funnily enough, Japan's system was pretty terrible, so all the effort had been for naught.
Well, Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan right after the USA invaded in 2002. It is a good read.
http://www.amazon.com/Places-Between-Rory-Stewart/dp/0156031566
> Are there books on why
what a surprise /s. there are
The Battle for china's past by Mobo Gao
Was Mao Really A Monster by Gregor Benton
The rise of the Chinese people's communes by Anna Louise Strong
The Chinese road to socialism: Economics of the cultural revolution by E. L Wheelwright
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village by William Hinton
Turning Point in China: An Essay on the Cultural Revolution by William Hinton
It's only one, but I've recently read one of /r/askhistorian's recommendations, Afghanistan A Cultural and Political History which completely changed my view on the Afghan people. This little country is actually incredibly interesting and its people are among the most diverse imaginable for the size of their nation.
It's a phase he's going through. Trying to separate himelf from the other "slopes" and "gooks" by trying to identify as just "murican".
He will learn that no matter how much red, white and blue he bleeds, when veneer is scratched most muricans will view him as a slant eyed perpetual foreigner/perpetual outsider.
And murica is #1 bc they have/had the military tech to rape farming based countries back around the world and steal their resources for pennies on the dollar.
I'd recommend u suggest he reads up "Kill anything that moves" https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919
and articles/books about the pheonix program https://theinternationalreporter.org/2016/02/08/the-cias-phoenix-program-in-vietnam-and-the-war-on-terror-review-of-doug-valentines-book/
I'd also try to point him to the fact that the murican invasion of vietnam was a continuation of the viet vinh freedom fighters trying to liberate themselves from the white french colonizing them.
I'd hint to him that vietnam was invaded/occupied/colonized by white french and that Ho Chi Minh was a freedom fighter who idolized murica and her "Bill of Rights" until the US president at the time used him to fight the japanese and threw him away like garbage after WW2.
Also the French tried to get murica to drop a nuclear bomb on Hanoi to help their colonial occupier asses out.
And how after murica "liberated" France from the big bad Nazis, Murica then helped/armed/funded the French to reinvade/occupy Vietnam.
I'd try to say , "you know, one of the reasons the richest most influential ethnic group in murica got to where they are because they live by a motto:NEVER FORGET.
They remember their history and teach their kids their history. And from that history they draw an unrivaled strength & drive to succeed in murica".
I would recommend this book by John Keay, an excellent survey of Chinese history. Tons of great podcasts have been mentioned as well, so I'll mention the Romance of the 3 Kingdoms Podcast, which is a reading of the novel by someone who can explain all the very detailed Chinese cultural references to a Western audience.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.amazon.com/China-History-John-Keay/dp/0465025188&ved=2ahUKEwje3fekgsTiAhXIpJ4KHVc5DvcQFjAAegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw1ambvpkQIWi_Lllth9hcFO
Some recommendations:
What's more, Thoreau was the first to translate (parts of) the Lotus Sutra into English, in a Transcendentalist magazine. This romanticized version of Buddhism not only took root in the West, but also found its way back to Asia: David McMahan's book The Making of Buddhist Modernism will tell you all you need to know about this process.
A lot of the notions you find on this subreddit (secular Buddhism, Buddhism as a philosophy and not a religion, meditation as the core of Buddhism, rebirth as metaphor, etc.) come from this source.
I really enjoyed Three Cups of Tea, The Places In Between is another great read, this one is about a man who decides to walk across Afghanistan. A very eye opening account of how life is lived all over Afghanistan.
Most books pertaining to the American war in Vietnam trace its origin in the French conflict, though. If that leaves one longing for more, Street without Joy and Hell in a Very Small Place were recently reprinted, and Fredrik Logevall's Embers of War fills any holes left by Bernard Fall, really.
Ha-Joon Chang, The East Asian Development Experience: The Miracle, the Crisis and the Future (2007)
This title isn't entirely about South Korea, but it is written by a well-know Korean-born Cambridge economist and offers a non-Marxist heterodox perspective on East Asia in general and has a lot about South Korea. Might be worth checking out for you. But you may already know about this one, since Chang is fairly famous. He has more works that specifically focus on South Korea, but I'm not sure if they're translated into English.
Bruce Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (2005)
This one is more about general history of the Korean peninsula, but it still has a fairly extensive section devoted to the post-war economic development of the Korean peninsula, especially the similar yet ultimately divergent economic paths of the two Koreas. For all its detractors, it is definitely a classic in Korean historiography written in the English language, so if you haven't heard of it yet, it is definitely worth checking out.
Atul Kohli, State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery (2004)
This one is also a comparative historical study, but it devotes almost a third of its length on South Korea, and provides a very good overview of the link between colonization and economic development in South Korea, in addition to covering the latter years of modern Korean history. It is written by a Princeton political scientist that has extensive knowledge of comparative economic development, so it would be worth a look as well.
One note of caution though is that, if you really want to understand the post-war South Korean economic history, you also have to have some background on the economic impact of Japanese colonization (and this topic is a very, very, very, very contentious one in modern Korean history). The last one may be of help on this count.
Try this one http://www.amazon.com/The-Blood-Telegram-Gary-Bass/dp/0307744620
After the war, what the Japanese did was mostly ignored, and communism became the new scary boogieman. The biological weapons created and used by the Japanese were hushed up, and because orientals were discriminated against in the US, and oriental languages were rarely taught in schools, it was very hard for what was happening in Asia to get to the media, or even common people.
Two books that can probably be found in your local library are:
The Korean War: A History
Korea's Place in the Sun
The response by the US to the Korean War was to drastically raise the amount of military spending (which had dropped to almost nothing after WW2) and this rise of the "military industrial complex" drove all the subsequent wars. Cumings is rather controversial for making the claim that the Korean War was the most important war that the US ever fought, as well as being controversial for not calling the North Koreans total loonies.
If you look at current NK propaganda, you'd think that they were still at war with Japan and the US. The NK regime considers their beginning about a decade prior to the semi-official recognition of NK being a country because 1937 is when the Kim family started fighting the Japanese - who had been occupying Korea with the blessing of the west for more than a quarter century.
Fantastic recommendation, I got to read Junger's memoir last year and thoroughly enjoyed it. Absolutely horrifying and enlightening.
One of my favorite WWI books is A World Undone, by G. J. Meyer. Which is ironic since I don't think I've ever posted a single anecdote from it (an error I need to severely correct).
It's super dense, but probably one of the best overviews of the war, encapsulating a deep amount of academic research, primary sources from soldiers, civilians, leaders- all the while providing important historical context and background for the many many actors/nations involved, their motives, and goals.
I recommend this book to ANYONE interested in WWI besides a passing understanding. At 816 pages it can be daunting to most readers, but if you have the interest, absolutely check out this book.
Another great book is Max Hastings's Inferno, which is one of the best "social histories" of the war IMO. The wide-range of intimate, tragic, surprising, and sometimes funny testimonies collected in the book, along with Hastings's excellent prose, is one of the most "human" retellings of WWII, I've ever read and is a must for anyone who is interested in the war beyond just the military and political aspects.
Edit: I also want to include Hastings's Retribution which covers the Pacific campaign (1944-45) in equally masterful prose and heartwrenching testimony. Learned not only a lot about the Japanese perspective but also of people's lives under Japanese occupation.
Also Rick Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy, which is a fantastic (American POV) of the war and incredibly well written.
Read Fanshen.
http://www.amazon.com/Fanshen-Documentary-Revolution-Chinese-Village/dp/1583671757
it's the ultimate documentive account of what life was like in the Maoist communes.
> It's a fairly recent phenomenon brought about by the actions of the communist regime.
No. This is a myth.
Public defecation was common in 19th century China--their use of nightsoil was largely what kept the country's large population going for centuries. I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/China-History-John-Keay/dp/0465025188
>: Did the Japanese ever study how they'd get the raw materials from the captured islands back to Japan? It is my recollection that the Japanese merchant fleet was ill suited to transport significant quantities of oil even before the war began. I am less sure about the Japanese ability to transport large quantities of other materials.
I've read extensively about the IJN and IJA, and by and large, they did not. the Japanese military in general was incredibly bad at logistics and combat support.
> nothing suggests the US public would support a declaration of war on Japan.
I tend to feel the same way, but the Japanese military leadership did not. Perhaps they did not understand the degree to which american leadership was constrained by public opinion.
>With that said, I still think the mistake was attacking Pearl Harbor.
The mistake was going to war with the US, period. The japanese were not a first rate power in the 1930s. they had benefited for years from their geographic isolation and lack of local opposition, which gave them delusions of grandeur, but they were third rate at best. When the best of the Japanese army got absolutely pasted by second rate russian divisions, this should have been a huge wakeup call to japanese leadership. Instead, it was used by the navy as a justification for making war on the US and UK simultaneously.
>the Japanese would have surely cut off China's supply lines and forced the Chinese to surrender or agree to an advantageous peace treaty
Unlikely. resistance by Mao and Chang would have continued, if perhaps much more weakly. China was simply too large for japan to control, a bottomless pit capable of swallowing endless numbers of japanese soldiers and, perhaps more importantly, supplies that they could not spare.
>Japan could have improved upon the Zero fairly easy if its vulnerabilities were discovered - at the very least the generational changes such as a supercharger, pilot armor, self sealing tanks, and larger ammo capacities could have been implemented
Again, not very likely. It is important to remember that while japanese progress at modernization was very impressive, they were no where near the level of the west. My favorite story to demonstrate this is the zero. when it was first built, it was arguably the most advanced plane in the world, but the first prototypes were carried from the factory to the airfield in wooden, horse drawn, hay carts. Japanese industrial development was very shallow, and concentrated in a few frontline areas, with an overall capacity only about that of Italy. the zero was such a lightweight plane because of the inability of japanese industry to build engines of sufficient power density and reliability for heavier planes.
On a more philosophical level, the Japanese were unlikely to discover the weaknesses in their strategy because they would have been spending most of their effort fighting the the chinese and colonial garrisons. Their enormous weaknesses in mechanization and, for lack of a better term, weight, would not have been made apparent battling enemies who were even more industrially deficient than they were. Meanwhile, the US would still have been building big, heavy planes capable of surviving over germany.
>Everything in Hawaii had to be shipped from the United States.
this cuts two ways. the US had a considerably easier time, and much more capacity, for delivering supplies to Hawaii than the Japanese could ever have for delivering ordinance. And in the eastern pacific, there are no islands for bases for subs, planes, etc. to raid those supply lines
>they could have repeatedly sortied 8-10 carriers worth of aircraft on Hawaii's military installations, rendering it unusable for a long period of time.
repeatedly only in the sense of months apart, which would give the US more than enough time for the US to pour far more into Hawaii than the Japanese could ever hope to bring against it. As for invading the islands, it was almost a complete impossibility. The Pearl Harbor operation really represented the limit of japanese logistical capabilities. They did not have the manpower or amphibious transport to mount an invasion on the scale needed to take islands with so many american troops (tens of thousands even before the war). And given the japanese deficiencies in material, artillery, etc, I cannot imagine them storming beaches marine style without truly enormous casualties.
Anyhow, don't mean to be rude, you were asking good questions, I just happen to have read a lot about this particular topic. If you are interested, I would recomend Kaigun and its companion book Sunburst as the single best resource on the IJN. They are masterful books.
edit: several points for clarity.
There is also the fantastic Kaigun, which is a complete history of the IJN and how it developed its tactics, technology, strategy, organization, everything from day one until the end. Amazing book
John Keay is pretty awesome
There is one big factor at play as to why the Japanese did it: It was the only chance they had for an "honorable" ending to the war. Early on, Roosevelt had insisted, over the early objections of Churchill, on demanding nothing less than unconditional surrender from both Germany and Japan. The result of this was that the US effectively told Japan that no matter the circumstances, if they surrendered they were to become a subject people.
This had the massive problem of leaving the Japanese without an honorable "out." Thus they saw that their only option, starting in 1944 when it became resolutely clear that there was no way to win or even fight America to a draw, was to make the price of unconditional surrender so steep that the Americans would change their mind. This is why sacrificing a few barely trained pilots and poorly made planes to sink even one American warship became a beneficial trade-off.
Therefore in reality, all the talk about Bushido and the honor of Seppuku was merely a ploy by the top Japanese generals to convince the soldiers into fighting to the absolute and bitter end.
If you would like to know more, my best suggestion is the book Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 by Max Hastings. He interviewed many soldiers and witnesses to the events of that time including Japanese soldiers.
Nope, não só brancos escravizaram brancos.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_on_the_Barbary_Coast
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/white-slaves-barbary-002171
https://thefederalistpapers.org/us/white-slaves-of-barbary
https://sovereignnations.com/2018/02/07/white-slaves-barbary/
https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Mediterranean/dp/1403945519
Vietnam: A History, by Stanley Karnow.
It was made into a PBS series in the 1980's, and is in my opinion the best account of the country, their history, and the war.
https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-History-Stanley-Karnow/dp/0140265473
Lol, I totally understand. Still, I think there's considerable value in his works, particularly from the 80s. When he's working to synthesize the experience of socialism and advance its theory, it's pretty good stuff. When he's trying to convince people he's the only hope for the world, not so much.
Some other sources I've found useful:
A World to Win magazine had a number of important articles which are well worth digging into.
Corrigan, Philip, Harvie Ramsay, and Derek Sayer. 1979. For Mao: Essays on Historical Materialism. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Starr, John Bryan. 1979. Continuing the Revolution: The Political Thought of Mao. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
(These are from academics and focus more on the theoretical aspects. They're the best academic works I know of on Mao though and are very nice overviews.)
Another academic work which has an excellent chapter on Mao (though the bulk of it deals with other aspects) is Martin, Bill. 2008. Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. Open Court.
Badiou has a nice analysis of the GPCR in Badiou, Alain. 2008. The Communist Hypothesis. Verso.
(Some journalistic/historical accounts of Maoism in practice/development in China):
Belden, Jack. 1949. China Shakes the World. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Han Suyin. 1976. Wind in the Tower: Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Revolution, 1948-1975. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Hinton, William. 1966. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. New York:
Vintage.
Horn, Joshua S. 1969. Away with All Pests: An English Surgeon in People’s China, 1954-1969. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Hunter, Iris. 1986. They Made Revolution Within the Revolution: The Story of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Chicago: RCP Publications.
Milton, David and Nancy Dall Milton. 1971. The Wind Will Not Subside. New York: Pantheon.
Myrdal, Jan. 1965. Report from a Chinese Village. New York: Signet.
Finally, Li Onesto has good book on the Nepalese revolution which unfortunately was betrayed by the leadership.
[https://www.amazon.com/Search-Modern-China-Third/dp/0393934519/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487811047&sr=8-1&keywords=the+search+for+modern+china](You need this book) and [https://www.amazon.com/China-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143121316/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1487811112&sr=8-1&keywords=On+China](this book)
It is impossible to answer your question without understanding the "Century of Humiliation." A lot of that is still prevalent in modern China, and those two books will be some solid go-tos. Spence focuses on China; Kissinger discusses the United States.
Edit: I have no idea why it is not formatting correctly.
I just finished reading this book on Chinese history and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a primer on the subject. One interesting fact that could be used by u/Kimiimar0 in the next version is that the voyages (all of them) were led by a Palace Eunuch called Zheng He who became a part of the bureaucracy after being captured from his native place in South-Eastern China, being castrated and being packed off to Beijing as a 11 year old.
Sure! I recommend:
I Saw Tokyo Burning by Robert Guillain, a Frenchman who lived in Japan throughout the war.
War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, another one by John Dower.
Retribution by Max Hastings
Japan at War: an Oral History by Haruko and Theodore Cook
I'm firmly in the first camp, I think the influence of the US government is generally a net negative; not just in terms of a fiscal perspective, but in terms of basic humanitarian perspective.
For example, I was just reading reviews of The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and the Forgotten Genocide (2014) in The New York Times and The Economist, that blasts the Nixon Administration for willfully supporting Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and the ensuing genocide.
And this is just one example of the immense bloodshed, violence, and cynicism that has time and time again defined the way the US government approaches its geopolitical and foreign policy goals, and how it chooses and cultivates its allies. This has been the case whether you're looking at the systemic policies of indiscriminate, mass violence that defined policy in Vietnam, to the various forms of criminal militarism that defined the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.
>If you feel like diversity is a way of killing your race, I want to understand why (I personally find that belief to be ridiculous).
I don't "feel" this way. I know it's true, because some "diversity" groups have openly urged that the white race be eliminated. There's a college degree program at many elite universities called "whiteness studies" that's non-stop bashing of people of European descent. There's a journal called Race Traitor that publishes papers by top professors about how to eliminate white people.
>White men haven't ever been oppressed
More white people (including men) were enslaved by Muslim slavers than Africans were enslaved by Europeans. http://www.amazon.com/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Mediterranean/dp/1403945519
>I would think that anyone with even a tiny inkling of world history would know that diversity in white, male dominated areas is just a way of restoring equality.
blah blah blah. learn history before you make a fool of yourself again.
Korea's place in the sun by Bruce Cummings and Korea's 20th century Odyssey by Michael Robinson are both good overviews of modern Korean history starting in the late 19th century.
Sources of Korean tradition is a good collection of primary sources with background and analysis.
Peter Hessler's writings on China are great reads for people who are interested in the region. I particularly enjoyed River Town and country Driving, but Oracle Bones (which I haven't read) is a more historical outlook.
South East Asia is a big and varied region, is there a particular region or specific area in history you're interested in? In 20th century history there are many great biographies on Gandhi and also a lot of informative non-fiction on the Vietnam conflict
Amazon got the hook up, as always
Link: https://www.amazon.com/China-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143121316
This help?
>Ho didn't defend shit, his regime proudly valued their Marxist allies' aid more than morality or anything approaching people's rights if they opposed that of the state.
HCM was actually a pretty shrewd diplomat who played the Chinese off against the USSR and used both for aid while completing his domestic objective of unifying the country. Need I remind you that he appealed to the United States first before going to the socialist bloc for aid? America was too busy propping up the French and later the "Republic" of Vietnam.
Ho listened to the Chinese and used their resources to develop a "people's war" division in the form of the Viet Cong and stockpiled Soviet heavy artillery, tanks, and aircraft because they wanted him to fight a conventional land war against the RoV. By never fullying adopting one doctrine but switching between the two as time went on, the North was able to wheedle more aid out than was strictly necessary by making China and Russia compete to see who could be more influential. And as Nixon withdrew they were able to dial back the VC and ramp up the conventional combined arms conflict to crush the South.
I recommend reading Karnow's Vietnam: A History if you want the most comprehensive take on the war, with interviews from senior officials on all 3 sides of the conflict.
>Both are now backwater countries that have been superseded by their neighbors.
Which neighbors? The US leveled nearly all of SE Asia with the exception of Thailand.
> No, but it's just as corrupt as a system that instead of buying land, let's you "rent it from the state" with payouts to the appropriate cadre members. Is this really what you want for the future of Asia?
At the risk of sounding like a pot kettle attack that's how real estate works everywhere. Trump pays the mafia to develop. People in north St. Louis are going to get kicked out of their homes when the defense mapping agency moves across town. Ever since Kelo v. City of New London the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can seize your property as a taking for the enjoyment of private developers, not just in the public interest.
>Just like the unwillingness of this sub to be anything but a pro-communist echo chamber.
It's not like I even think state socialism or Mao is that great of a dude. I just don't see a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that the Republic of Korea, the KMT, or any of the other groups they fought against were that much better. If their causes were so righteous and backed by the world's preeminent superpower then how did they lose?
First, I would recommend two books by Bernard B Fall, a French war correspondent and historian. They are peerless historical accountings of the First Indochina War, and are essential to understanding the American debacle in Vietnam. His analysis of the failings of the French were a direct warning to the US, which were largely ignored, resulting in a predictable failure. He died in 1967 while embedded with US Marines in Vietnam after stepping on a mine.
I also recommend a book by Romeo Dallaire, a Canadian general.
Many causes. First, anti-Qing sentiment. The Qing were never beloved, as they were foreign invaders and viewed as usurpers to the throne. Although the Qing had become quite sinised by the 19th century (e.g. few of the bannermen spoke Manchu anymore), the Chinese were still reminded of this daily, such as in being force to have their hair in a queue. The Chinese had been forced to wear this Manchu hairstyle since 1644 as a sign of submission to Manchu rule. Secret societies like the Tiandihui existed, with an agenda to reinstate the Ming dynasty. (in reality this never seems to have made the top of their to-do list, but the ambition itself is witness to the anti-Qing sentiment).
Losing the first Opium War did of course not help. There was naturally outrage at this loss and the terms the Qing had accepted, accompanied by the loss of military strength, social upheavals and unrest, and the scourge of opium of course. Another factor Spence points out here is the westerners had used their naval power to drive the pirates away (threat to their trade after all), which pushed many of them to move to inland banditry, not least to the mountains of Guangxi, which is where the rebellion got started.
There was of course the introduction of radical new Christian ideas, aided not least by the free movement of missionaries being allowed by the peace treaty after the war. Although the contemporary Buddhist-Taoist tract the Jade Record seems to have had some influence on Hong Xiuquan as well.
It also had great populist appeal: They went against the authorities, against Confucianism, against the nobility. They promised a kind of proto-socialist redistribution of land and property. In short they targeted the disenfranchised and promised them a better future with better opportunities in the 'Heavenly Kingdom'.
Then, as Warband14 points out, there was a significant ethnic dimension as well. Hong Xiuquan was a Hakka, and the movement first caught on among that ethnic group. Elements of the Taiping doctrine - a ban on foot-binding, women workers and soldiers - likely came from Hakka custom (their women worked, they never practiced foot-binding). It might be pointed out that although they were indeed outsiders and lower in status than Han chinese, they still had a related language and weren't outsiders to the extent, say, the Miao were.
The Taiping relations with western natiosn were a bit ambivalent. Dissatisfaction with the Opium War was after all one of their recruiting points, but Hong obviously had an belief (of his own making) and respect for Christianity. This did not come to him through the British though; his main sources had been a Christian tract by Liang Fa and Gützlaff's bible translation. (which Hong later was to make his own changes to, removing some things he must have found disagreeable, such as Noah getting drunk - the Taiping had banned alcohol and opium) His bible instruction came from the American Baptist missionary Issachar Roberts, who later became one of the westerners advocating in favor of the Taiping - until he eventually fell out with them. Not least over the heterodox (to say the least) theology of the Taiping.
For most of its existence after the capture of Nanjing, the 'Heavenly Kingdom' was in a stalemate with the Qing. The Taiping's offensive campaigns (among others, north towards Beijing) had failed, but so did the Qing's. During that period they made repeated failed attempts to secure the westerners as allies, or at least their neutrality. Hong made a particularily fanciful attempt to recruit the 8th Lord Elgin, as he passed Nanjing (in a more well-known incident, Elgin was soon to burn the Summer Palace in Beijing)
Their last major offense was towards Shanghai. The western nations saw this as a threat to their trade and the international settlement (despite the Taiping's best attempts to reassure them that they and their property woudl not be harmed). But the westerners defended Shanghai, and you had the formation of the Ever Victorious Army and French Ever Triumphant Army, now taking an active role in fighting the Taiping. It was all downhill from there.
Again as Warband14 wrote, besides the devastation and millions killed, the Taiping rebellion was a significant factor in the demise of the Qing empire.
It does also play a certain role in Chinese Communist historiography. Regarding those populist demands for redistribution of land, Marx himself related a story from the translator of Hong's bible, Gützlaff:
> When Herr Gützlaff came back among civilized people and Europeans after twenty years' absence, he heard talk of socialism and asked what it was. When he was told, he exclaimed in alarm: 'Am I nowhere to escape this ruinous doctrine? Precisely the same thing has been preached for some time in China by many people from the mob.'
This was in 1850, at the very start of the Taiping Rebellion, and while Marx noted that "Chinese socialism may, of course, bear the same relation to European socialism as Chinese to Hegelian philosophy.", and found it amusing that the western bourgoise had helped precipitate such a revolution, he expressed hopes for it as a 'socialist' revolution. (not unlike how other westerners projected their hopes for a Christian China onto them)
Marx did not write a great deal about them, but by 1862 he had apparently become as disillusioned with them as those hoping for a Christian revolution. He wrote:
> They represent a still greater torment for the masses of the people than for the old rulers. Their motive seems to be nothing else than to bring into play against the conservative marasmus grotesquely repulsive forms of destruction, destruction without any germ of regeneration.
Marx's view of the Taiping is understandably, not that dissimilar from that taken by the Chinese Communists themselves, although the latter are perhaps less condemnatory.
Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow is the best non-fiction book I have read regarding the war.
As far as fiction goes, if you are looking for an idiosyncratic, unconventional, and hilarious analysis of the conflict, I highly recommend Norman Mailer's Why Are We In Vietnam? Note: at first glance it may seem like this book has NOTHING to do with Vietnam (in fact, the word "Vietnam" appears nowhere in the text itself) but bear with it! It provides an amazing critique of American culture and foreign policy during the fifties and sixties. One of the best and most decisive works from the greatest war writer of all time.
If anyone is interested in how messed up the entire NK situation is, I highly recommend this book.
The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future
Taken from this.
Also, Manchukuo was in existance until the unconditional surrender of Japan.
The fact that some of their gains had been taken during the war doesn't mean that Japan had no intention to argue for them during peace negotiations. The notion of a settled peace agreement to the Japanese did not include peace on the Allies' terms.
For history of India .. a good place to start is john keay's India
http://www.amazon.in/India-History-Revised-John-Keay/dp/0802145582
I am a Historian I think many of those books highlighted are not really a master list but a good jumping off point to delve into the region. I would suggest for India to read " India after Gandhi" http://www.amazon.com/India-After-Gandhi-History-Democracy/dp/0060958588.
Also a good primer would be: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802145582/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_dp_ss_2?pf_rd_p=1944579842&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0060958588&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1NYR2DTB6GR13K5JBN1S
I don't know of one book that fits all of those descriptions, but individually, here is a sampling of the books I have in my collection.
Korea Old and New : History
Korea's Place in the Sun, by Bruce Cumings
The Park Chung Hee Era, edited by Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel
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I hope these help!
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Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu - Bernard Fall
Some of my reccommendations
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Anthony Beevor's books on Stalingrad and The Fall of Berlin
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Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place about the Siege of Dien Bien Phu
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Osprey's book on Infantry Anti Tank Tactics. I thoroughly enjoyed this and gave me some insight into tactis that I can try out in the Combat Mission games.
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Koran Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan 2002-2007 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199326355/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Pw6rzbGW39TW2
War, Politics and Society in Afghanistan, 1978-1992 https://www.amazon.com/dp/0878407588/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_lx6rzb509WDTW
Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 https://www.amazon.com/dp/019983265X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_dz6rzbDMP6KG2
No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GVRVAXM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_VB6rzbJ0EBR87
The Afghan Campaign: A Novel https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767922387/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_WC6rzbEDZ3B3Z
Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691154414/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_jD6rzb6MQ4J2N
Buddhism isn't and doesn't claim to be a divine revelation. It developed out of Indian asceticism, which to my understanding has always had an attitude of utter disgust towards the world and sensory pleasures. Now, there is a definite logic to the renunciate position. Dealing with pleasures of the world does naturally generate craving, so isolating yourself from those can be an effective first step towards extinguishing craving. This is a pretty interesting read on the subject, and Buddha's rant to the poor sod who had sex with his wife once out of filial duty was outright funny. Better to stick it into the mouth of a black viper or pit of embers, indeed...
However, there are other approaches. Buddhism changed long ago on entering China, and it changed when it entered West. If I had to quickly summarize McMahan's The Making of Buddhist Modernism, I'd say that what's practiced in the West tends to be a sort of syncretic tradition with elements from traditional Buddhism, Protestant Christianity, modern psychology and Romanticism. Since we aren't talking about Divine Truth here, being different from the early Buddhism doesn't make this intrinsically wrong.
What it might be is less effective at attaining its goals, but personally, I think it just has different strengths. Sure, staying engaged with the world and its beauty will probably keep you experiencing subtle levels of craving and suffering much longer than going ascetic. Yet suffering less is a worthy goal in itself, and the enlightenment found in ascetic setting seems to be vulnerable to collapsing outside of it. If you Awaken while living in the world, in the process you've probably rooted out all kinds of dysfunctional habits and patterns of thinking that monks just don't encounter.
Tl;dr: Suttas are worth reading and thinking about, but not something to take as given truth or to imitate despite deep misgivings.
theres a book done by an american historian called the blood telegram
pretty dope book
Read this and you guys can answer all your own questions about the end of the war: https://www.amazon.com/Retribution-Battle-1944-45-Max-Hastings/dp/0307275361/ref=pd_sim_14_3/132-6370175-6170745?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0307275361&pd_rd_r=a8ce1a4b-ba8b-11e8-a904-6bfe9a9fef2d&pd_rd_w=BUzyi&pd_rd_wg=TDVrt&pf_rd_i=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_p=18bb0b78-4200-49b9-ac91-f141d61a1780&pf_rd_r=6XVV33RTYCH490BRYHBZ&pf_rd_s=desktop-dp-sims&pf_rd_t=40701&psc=1&refRID=6XVV33RTYCH490BRYHBZ
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I'd recommend something from a journalist who's traveled in a specific region or regions (it usually goes hand in hand), it can give you a great perspective from the ground up.
Something like. http://www.amazon.com/The-Places-Between-Rory-Stewart/dp/0156031566
Honestly. Check this out.
If you want literature, I really like these books:
Check out Fairbank, it's amazing.
Or maybe: John Keay
Or try: Ying-Shih Yü
Or alternatively, google it (see first link). If you don't want to pay for any of these books just check your local library (-Genesis). I wouldn't call you out for torrenting/DLing them, since that would make me a hypocrite.
I'm reading a history of China that suggests that stone was not as available in the near east compared to Europe.
http://www.amazon.com/China-A-History-John-Keay/dp/0465025188
He talks at length about how prevalent packed mud bricks are in construction and much less durable over the centuries it is compared to stone even if it is a perfectly reasonable building material over the short or new term.
One of the best books I ever read was about the French in Vietnam.
"Hell in a Very Small Place"
They were airdropping in troops into a DZ that had been encircled by Vietnamese forces. They learned that it was better if the paratroopers were going on their first jump versus second/third jump as they would be less likely to seize up.
http://www.amazon.com/Hell-In-Very-Small-Place/dp/030681157X
While the bot is trying to be helpful, there's no book on the Taiping Rebellion on that list. Try this. Jonathan Spence is a very well know historian of China and is very readable. Enjoy!
http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Chinese-Son-Taiping-Heavenly/dp/0393315568/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1421024376&sr=8-2&keywords=taiping+rebellion
Hahaha, my pleasure! I've been reading up on language and culture in Afghanistan for a few years now, so I love it when people ask questions like yours. Afghanistan is one of the most interesting countries in the world when it comes to languages--Persian is an incredibly diverse language in this country, so much so that individual valleys (and even towns within them!) have their own dialects.
Hazaragi is especially interesting as it has a substantial inventory of Mongolic loanwords. This makes some sense when you see what the Hazara (3rd largest ethnic group in Afghanistan) look like. Linguists and historians speculate that the etymology of Hazara comes from the Persian word for 1,000 (hezar) as these folks are thought to be descendants of garrisons Ghengis Khan left in Bamyan after he wrecked shit there--his forces were divided into groups of 1,000 soldiers. Many Afghans are still salty about the devastation brought by the Mongols, a fact not helped by the fact that the majority of Hazara are Twelver Shia'a in a country more rooted in Sunni tradition--life ain't easy for the Hazara nowadays.
Besides Persian (an Indo-European language in the Indo-Iranian >> Western Iranian >> Southwestern Iranian family), Afghanistan has a shit ton of other languages. You mentioned Pashto, which is an Eastern Iranian language (so not mutually intelligible with Persian--no data to back this up, but I'd hazard the difference is like English and Norwegian or something like that). There's also the Pamiri languages (pretty sparse, also Eastern Iranian but of the northern subset), Balochi (Northwestern), and a whole independent group of Indo-Iranian languages called Nuristani, which is spoken in the very last area of Afghanistan to have been converted to Islam (late 18th century, I think!). Outside the Indo-Euro family, there are large groups of Turkic speakers, particularly Uzbek and Turkmen in the northern parts of the country, though there are some Kirghiz speakers way up in the Wakhan (the little panhandle stickin out to China).
Not on the list is Arabic--contrary to what a lot of people here in the West think, Arabic is spoken by hardly anybody in Afghanistan! It is a Semetic language of the Afro-Asiatic family and the last of its native speakers in this area of the world were Persianized quite some time ago (though Persian and Pashto both have a large number of Arabic loanwords on account of the Arab conquests and the spread of Islam). This is interesting as, especially in more conservative areas, there is still a massive reverence towards those who earn the title "Guardian" or Hafez (not the poet, though people love him too) by memorizing the Quran in its entirety, even if they don't understand 95% of what's being said in it! If you're into recent history in this area of the world, there's plenty of food for thought in how fundamentalism and extremism took such strong roots in a country that doesn't have the language or educational infrastructure in place to "home grow" such interpretations of religion.
Woah holy shit /rant. Didn't mean to type this much! Probably way more than you wanted to read! In the offchance it isn't, I recommend reading The Places In Between by Rory Stewart to wet your appetite. Homeboy walked across Afghanistan (Herat --> Kabul) in December 2001 and documented his adventure pretty well. No bias, no sugarcoating, no demonizing--he really does a good job showing the humanity of the place. If you're like me and want to dive more deeply into this fascinating country, Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History is a bone dry but informationally rich textbook on the country. Land Beyond the River provides a great collection of well-researched anecdotes dealing with recent history in the areas directly north of Afghanistan and provides great light on how the Russian conquests of the Khanates and city-states to the north impacted Afghanistan, culminating in the Soviet invasion in the late 70s.
Alright, now I'm done.
One of the best historiographies ever composed on USA involvement in Viet-Nam:
https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Lake-Vietnamese-Americans-Vietnam/dp/0316159190/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505052020&sr=1-1&keywords=fire+in+the+lake+by+frances+fitzgerald
Pretty good:
https://www.amazon.com/Embers-War-Empire-Americas-Vietnam/dp/0375756477/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505068806&sr=1-1&keywords=embers+of+war+logevall
Pretty good:
https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-History-Stanley-Karnow/dp/0140265473/ref=sr_1_1_twi_pap_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505068845&sr=1-1&keywords=vietnam+a+history
If you haven’t read the book, I highly recommend it. Prepare to be outraged.
Would probably read this one first to get some general background. It’s a lighter read: https://www.amazon.com/China-21st-Century-Everyone-Needs/dp/0199974969
Perhaps the most authoritative reading on Deng specifically: https://www.amazon.com/Deng-Xiaoping-Transformation-China-Vogel/dp/0674725867
Another good one (more about international relations): https://www.amazon.com/China-Henry-Kissinger/dp/0143121316
This is a good one if you want to learn about the economic reforms under Deng: https://www.amazon.com/Markets-over-Mao-Private-Business/dp/0881326933
Showing people (mostly in the West because they are never taught it in school) the Japanese atrocities of the Chinese in WW2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
Recommended reading, Rape of Nanking.
http://www.amazon.com/Rape-Nanking-Forgotten-Holocaust-World/dp/0140277447/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293380940&sr=8-1
Several external empires have successfully conquered and held the territory that would become Afghanistan. Pre-historic archaeological evidence shows that the Indus Valley Civilization had outposts as far northwest as modern Afghanistan, and the ancient nomadic Indo-Europeans conquered the region, probably coming from the north before moving on to India - beginning a trend of nomads of various stripes conquering the region and then moving on.
The first significant historical empire to conquer and hold Afghanistan was Archaemenid Persia, which controlled the region for around 200 years before the conquests of Alexander the Great. After Alexander's brief rule, the region passed through the control of several Hellenistic successor states, punctuated by invasion by the India Maurya Empire before reverting to the rule of the Persian (or Persianized Central Asian) successor Parthian, Indo-Parthian, Kushan, Sassanid, and Indo-Sassanid states.
After the mid-7th Century CE the region was conquered, lost, and reconquered by a variety of Muslim rulers/states of Arab, Iranian, and Turkic origin, with imperial dynasties indigenous to what would become Afghanistan themselves emerging at this time from the regions around Balkh, Herat, and - most notably - Ghazna.
The Mongols first took the region in 1219 CE, and for the next 500 years the Mongols and their successor (including the Timurids and Mughals) controlled portions of modern Afghanistan, often alongside Persian (Safavid, etc) and other (Turkic, etc) Central Asian rulers.
The modern idea of an Afghan state arguably began with the Durrani Empire after Nadir Shah threw an invading Afghan dynasty out of Iran and then invaded Afghanistan, only to be driven out by a coalition led by Ahmad Shah Durrani, who would go on to conquer large portions of Iran, Central Asia, and Mughal North India. The Duranni Empire was the high-point of Afghan expansion in modern times, and though it would quickly lose much of its overseas territories Afghanistan has not been successfully invaded and held by a foreign power for a prolonged period since.
I found this book to be a good introduction to the topic, though its scope is limited by its national focus.
I recommend another Henry Kissinger book, since you liked that one. Try On China. It's about China, and Kissinger knows it well since he and Nixon were the architects for the sudden U.S. surprise opening to China in the middle of the Cold War.
Aqui, muita gente não leu sobre isso. Escravidão branca por africanos, principalmente por piratas da barbária.
"Arabs also enslaved Europeans. According to Robert Davis, between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured between the 16th and 19th centuries by Barbary corsairs, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and sold as slaves."
Não só isso poderia acontecer como de fato aconteceu, claro q em proporção menor.
https://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piratas_da_Barb%C3%A1ria
http://www.amazon.com.br/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Mediterranean/dp/1403945519
Edit: gramática e mais info
This is probably the best book to start with. This is also good.
History
The classic Fairbanks book, China: a New History for overview.
The always classic, Cambridge Illustrated History of China for reference. Though the real reference is the completely 12 volumes of The Cambridge History of China, which is not for the faint of heart. At that point, you might as learn Chinese and read The Comprehensive Mirror yourself.
For an aspiring historian
China: A Macro Hisotry
Culture
For old pre-revolutionary China, My Country and My People by Lin Yutang
For modern China, you're better off watching TV dramas. I recommend Ode to Joy as a start.
"To the contrary," of what? Please repeat your question in a full sentence so that I know what you are asking about. There is no logical 'contrary' position to my statement.
I expressed that I understood why Warner didn't call POTUS an idiot. I went on to express that Warner made himself look like a putz by indicating that any part of POTUS' actions before, during, or after those meetings was 'the right thing'. Nothing about any of the recent photo-op meetings with the DPRK was anything but theater for morons.
Go read The Impossible State. It's impossible in a few sentences, paragraphs, or even pages to plumb the depths of just how bad POTUS fucked up his approach to the DPRK. The evidence speaks for itself.
It was suggested I post here. I have to say it's pretty outside of my location and timeframe. Most of my reading is centered around Buddhism and what I know about India that's not political in nature is mostly centered around Buddhism. Even the concepts I know of Hinduism are usually through a Buddhist lens.
What I do know about the development I also can't provide a source. I studied at the Royal Thimphu College and once sat down with a Bengali professor who explained her own dissertation to me about the development of the Varna system in India, which ended up being a primer on "Brahmanism." (Which then led to a long discussion on the inaccuracy of the term "Hinduism" which was developed post-independence as a response to the development of Pakistan for Muslims, India for Hindus. When I presented the irony that "India" and "Hindu" both stem from the "Indus River" which is currently in Pakistan, Runa, aforementioned professor, winked at me and said "Exactly. Hindus are political, Brahmanists are religious." The logic being that Brahmanists derive religious authority from the Brahmin Varna, just as Christians derive religious authority from Christ, and Muslims from submission to God.)
Anyway, I'll just point out some of the books that have helped me in understanding this complex religion and maybe you can go on with your search from there.
Originally I was interested in Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History but found out it was full of selective information and skewed perspectives. I was more interested in a general history of India and fell upon John Keay's India: A History which he describes as "A historiography of India as well as a history." And he does go over developments of Brahmanism threaded with the rise and fall of conquerors through the region.
My introduction to Brahmanism (though he DOES refer to it as Hinduism) was Huston Smith's The World's Religions which doesn't go over the history as much of any of the religions, but is a nice starting point, especially when comparing say Buddhism with Brahmanism, which most people regularly do. It's also a good outliner for the different Brahmanist traditions (or at least the major trends in Brahmanism).
Finally, probably the most accurate to your original question though it has a broader focus and a point to make, Karen Armstrong's *The Great Transformation remains one of my favorite books on the Axial Age in which she covers the religious shifts that occurred more or less simultaneously in Greece, the Levant, India, and China. Of interest to you would be the Vedic response to the growth of Buddhism and Jainism, the development of the Mahabharata, and the changing understandings of the Vedas and Upanishads. It's a pretty great book, and Karen Armstrong can of course lead you further down the path of Indian religious history.
Hope that helps at all.
Let's get it started then. What would you be interested in reading? I have some options on my reading list, maybe you are interested. If not, you can also suggest some titles and then we can decide.
On China by Kissinger is a very good read. It is much more detailed after about 1900 and especially after 1949, but the other parts are all good too. He just tends to boil down empires and dynasties into a few key themes to avoid boring the nonacademic reader with repetitive and insignificant details
I think the best two parts of the book are 1. He condenses a lot of the drier information without completely discounting it and 2. He was there for a lot of it and can give a unique perspective on what it was like to work with many of the CCP leaders.
Has anyone read Spence's God's Chinese Son on the Taiping? His book The Search for Modern China was terrific, but I haven't read any of his other works.
This probably isn't the response you were wanting, but rather than reinventing the wheel I would recommend either reading the Wikipedia pages if you want the short answer to this question or Bruce Cumming's book, "Korea's Place in the Sun" for the long answer to Korea's contemporary history.
http://www.amazon.com/Koreas-Place-Sun-History-Updated/dp/0393327027
I highly recommend The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David McMahan for anyone interested in better understanding this topic and the complex problems arising as Buddhism finds its place in the 'western' world.
I read this one years ago and loved it.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/China-New-History-JK-Fairbank/dp/0674018281
I just finished [Kill Anything That Moves by Nick Turse] (http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/0805086919) and it was fantastic. It's graphic but it explains the policy of The US and the training of the soldiers through documents and first person interviews.
Well, I have to tell you you are totally wrong. We do know a lot about the domestic life from defectors to the south, aid workers, Chinese business men that travel there frequently, and the occasional tourist. There are extensive accounts of what life is like there in the city and in the country. But nice try Mr. Know-it-all.
Unlike you I can substantiate my claims with sources:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10206210/As-Pyongyang-celebrates-British-aid-worker-reveals-poverty-of-rural-North-Korea.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0786428392/ref=cm_sw_su_dp
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ZB26AO/ref=cm_sw_su_dp#nav-subnav
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/01/tales-north-korea-defector-story-160107131430263.html
http://www.libertyinnorthkorea.org/blog/category/refugee-stories/
China: A History and India: A History by John Keay.
http://www.amazon.com/China-History-Second-Enlarged-Edition/dp/0674018281/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332176566&sr=8-1 is a good place to start then. It's comprehensive enough without being nitpicky.
I like stories of personal journeys/pilgrimages sort to speak. It that is your taste I would recommend:
Waking the Dead got me through a pretty tough stretch while the others keep me on the road.
Stanley Karnow: Vietnam A History
That's the book to read. It was our textbook at University.
https://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-History-Stanley-Karnow/dp/0140265473
Others in the thread have recommended some really great books. My two cents would be to add Hell in a Very Small Place looking at the siege of Dien Bien Phu, the end of the French occupation in Vietnam, and the rise of Ho Chi Min as both a military and political leader. Really good read.
On China by Henry Kissinger is the first book to start out with.
I don't know any real comparative political approaches, but another book that outlines the general Western Thinking at that time, like /u/imaspacesuit suggested, is End of History and the Last Man. Realize that End of History was originally written in 1992 and it outlines the neoliberal perspective of the late 1980's and early 1990's after the fall of the Soviet Union:
>What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_History_and_the_Last_Man
The whole existential threat that the neoliberal world order is trying to wrestle with is whether China proving this thesis wrong, or does it just need more time, or does it need to be forced or coerced to realize the end of history?
Edit: The Wikipedia links a good article from 2008 from Fukuyama which talks about China. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082202395.html
>Not so fast. We are certainly moving into what Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria labels a "post-American" world. But while bullies can still throw their weight around, democracy and capitalism still have no real competitors. The facile historical analogies to earlier eras have two problems: They presuppose a cartoonish view of international politics during these previous periods, and they imply that "authoritarian government" constitutes a clearly defined type of regime -- one that's aggressive abroad, abusive at home and inevitably dangerous to world order. In fact, today's authoritarian governments have little in common, save their lack of democratic institutions. Few have the combination of brawn, cohesion and ideas required to truly dominate the global system, and none dream of overthrowing the globalized economy.
This is what scares so many today: China could potentially dominate and overthrow the globalized economy and world order. The more time goes on, the more strength China gets, and the more brawn, cohesion and ideas required to truly dominate the global system, and might dream of overthrowing the globalized economy.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Blood-Telegram-Gary-Bass/dp/0307744620
http://www.amazon.com/Kissingers-Shadow-Americas-Controversial-Statesman/dp/1627794492
What world do you live in? Seriously, I would really like to know what deluded fantasy that you live in where this kind of money goes back to the people. It doesn't. You think this tourism helps people, think its help them open their eyes? Well what happens then if their eyes are somehow magically opened by the tourists who they have little to no contact with. Its not like you can walk up to someone and start talking to them, or does somehow the sight of a foreigner open their eyes to over 60 years of continuous brainwashing? But say they are somehow magically opened, what then? They are stuck in a country where their neighbors would rat them out for a hint of dissent, and they and their entire family would be shipped off to concentration camps that would make the Nazis proud.
Are you so fucking naive to believe this actually helps the citizens? Every time we try to give aid to the North, we can't even get the simplest guarantee from them that they would go to the people. They can't even finish their own infrastructures without foreign help, and even if they finish the outside they don't even bother to work on the inside. The vast majority of their spending goes to the military, we know this for a fact, that's why they invest so heavily into nuclear weapons and they actually have been able to accomplish some things (albeit poorly).
Economic liberalization would be helpful to the North for a variety of reasons but this is all tightly controlled, regulated and run by the state. This is not some private enterprise of North Koreans, they are carefully, screened, chosen and watched by a state, whose only purpose is to keep itself afloat and to keep its top people rich off the backs of its own citizens. But this tourism is stupid, especially when people come back with these misguided ideas of "Oh it doesn't look so bad". To think that this benefits anyone other than the state is a complete delusion. If you actually want to learn something about North Korea I would reccomend those books.
from kissinger's on china, Maoism was predicated on the idea of 'constant revolution.' However, people realized that continual political upheaval was....unproductive, and stopped at 1.
You would like this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Kaigun-Strategy-Technology-Imperial-1887-1941/dp/159114244X
https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Mediterranean/dp/1403945519
I completely agree that public perception played an important role, and in fact I think a large part of my point is that popularity plays too large a role. I also agree that he is demonized far more than he deserves on many issues. I learned a lot from reading his books, in particular On China, which helps reveal his mindset a lot better (and helps humanize him and his situation).
Try reading the Rape of Nanking sometime. Firecrackers in women's vaginas post-rape, forcing fathers to rape daughters, decapitation contests, it's all here
If you don't get an AMA, then this book was quite an interesting read.
It's by Victor Cha, Wikipedia describes him as follows:
>He is a former Director for Asian Affairs in the White House's National Security Council, with responsibility for Japan, North and South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.[1] He was President Bush's top advisor on North Korean affairs.[2] He currently holds the D. S. Song-Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and is the Director of the Asian Studies program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Cha is also senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
I suggest reading Fanshen by William Hinton
https://www.amazon.com/Fanshen-Documentary-Revolution-Chinese-Village/dp/1583671757
It describes Mao's China as experienced by a small village called Long Bow. It really gave me a good understanding of the great potential of socialism, what went wrong, and why the failure wasn't inevitable.
https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Slaves-Muslim-Masters-Mediterranean/dp/1403945519
Almost anything by Bernard B. Fall.
Street Without Joy for a history of the French involvement
https://www.amazon.com/Street-Without-Joy-Indochina-Stackpole-ebook/dp/B001GIPFD2/ref=la_B000APUSOI_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505155856&sr=1-1
Hell in a Very Small Place for Dien Bien Phu
https://www.amazon.com/Hell-Very-Small-Place-Siege/dp/030681157X/ref=la_B000APUSOI_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505155856&sr=1-2
The Two Viet-Nams for the politicals
https://www.amazon.com/Viet-Nams-Political-Military-Analysis-Revised/dp/B000IVEVDS/ref=la_B000APUSOI_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505155856&sr=1-5
Last Reflections on a War -- If memory serves, he actually had at least one interview with Ho Chi Minh in that one.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Reflections-War-Bernard-Fall-ebook/dp/B005JYXU1S/ref=la_B000APUSOI_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1505155856&sr=1-4
If anyone's interested in these walking adventures The Places In Between was a really good read.
What do you mean by ancient China? I only consider anything before 221 BC to be ancient China. If that the case try
Cambridge History of Ancient China
I would consider Taiping rebellion to be part of modern Chinese history.
Try
[God's Chinese Son] (http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Chinese-Son-Taiping-Heavenly/dp/0393315568/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346216640&sr=1-1&keywords=god%27s+chinese+son)
and
Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom
For something in between ancient china and taiping rebellion try
Imperial China 900-1800
There still 1300 years gap that I don't have good book to recommend to you.
For good introduction to modern China
try Search for Modern China Keep in mind that the book start at 1500 AD.
I'm glad to see someone was handling the troll. It's a pretty rich argument though, America cuts off oil supplies to the Empire of Japan due to their wars of aggression in the Pacific, and it's the U.S.'s fault that Japan counter-strikes in a coward attack?
On the topic of learning though, The Rape of Nanking is a horrifying description of some of the events of the Nanking Massacre perpetuated by the Imperial Japanese Army in China. The author of the book would later commit suicide.
The Nanking Massacre started in 1937, years before the U.S. supposed forced the Empire of Japan to attack...
They didn't "come to America," but yes of course the conflict between the United States and the Islamic world started before the events you outlined. I'll outline the relevant points as summarily as I can. For brevity, I will include history only related to the United States and not broader Western civilization. The case of the United States is salient and representative.
History of Islam: Muhammad to 1776
Muhammad first began teaching among Pagan Arabs who were more or less friendly until he began to teach that there is only one God and all other religions' followers shall burn in hell. When they began to threaten him and his people, he fled to Mecca and Medina, subsequently taking over the western half of Saudi Arabia along with the eastern tip (Oman). Almost all secular scholars of the Qur'an agree that it is as much a political guidebook (how to run a society) as a religious text (how to be a good person). Upon his death in 632, his followers interpreted the book as they did, and a system of Caliphates began to rule the Islamic world. By 661, all of what we call the Middle East and northeastern Africa was under the Caliphate. By the 8th century, the Caliphate had extended to include land from Spain to Pakistan. This was unsustainable militarily (given few people liked being ruled under Islamic law), so it was pulled back. The Turkish peoples were to become the new military force of the Caliphate, and took Constantinople just before Columbus "found" the "New World." When the United States declared independence, Abdul Hamid I was sultan, with even Baghdad under his rule (that article makes him sound friendlier than he actually was -- he was compelled to sign treaties after military defeats).
Barbary Slaves and Pirating
Before the United States had first elected Washington as President, the Congress found itself at odds with the Caliphate controlled lands. At this time, the Muslim world was taking Europeans and Americans as slaves, estimates are that as many as 1.25 million slaves were taken from the Western world (source: Robert Davis). John Adams, America's London ambassador, was sent to the Tripoli ambassador to discuss the matter, and was met with a demand of money for various levels of peace. Terms were set for the release of slaves, short term peace, and even a price for long term peace. The United States argued that it was a new nation. If their military had previously quarreled with Europe, that was of no concern to the United States. Could not peace with a new nation be had?
When Jefferson took the Presidency in 1801, he was immediately met with a demand of $4,000,000 (adjusted for inflation but not %GDP or federal budget) to be paid to the Muslim lands. Jefferson demanded repeatedly to know by what right these demands were made. By what right did they capture Americans as slaves, seize her ships, take her property, and demand payment in exchange?
> The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners.
Thomas Jefferson to Congress and the State Department
Barbary Wars to Usama bin Laden
President Jefferson found himself in the fortunate position of having a capable Navy that he, ironically enough, had fought against funding before being elected. With it, he began the first conflict between the United States and the Caliphate. The second line of the Marine Anthem (To the shores of Tripoli) celebrates the result even today. Congress authorized Jefferson to use the full might of the United States Navy to suppress the military aggression, with permission to seize and destroy property as the Navy was able. The language was quite strong and general.
The modern Islamic revival that began in the 1970s has seen a large surge in the total Muslim population, which we must admit is in some sense responsible for the recent surge of the lower jihad as well (this being the military jihad as opposed to the higher jihad meaning an inner struggle). Al Qaeda's number one demand was restoration of the Caliphate. The crime for which America has been subject to the violence from the radical Islamists was committed after approval by the Saudi royal family to use American troops to free Kuwait from Iraq rather than using their own, limited resources and relying heavily on the local mujahidin. In other words, Usama bin Laden was angry with America because he thought that local insurgents could fight Saddam the same way they had in Afghanistan against the Soviets rather than relying on smart bombs to do the same. (He forgot, or perhaps never knew, that Afghanistan was liberated only through American assistance. People who assert the unsophisticated non-distinction between Al Qaeda and the Taliban forget this. America gave aid to the Taliban, not The Base.)
Also central to crimes committed by the United States in Bin Laden's mind was our admission that we had begun to support the right of East Timor to self determination of government. Here is one of his first speeches after the 2001 attacks.. Ctrl+f "east timor" to see that his complaint is that the Caliphate's maximum extent is no longer in effect, with the world recognizing that the military devastation committed by Indonesia was invalid.
Specific Points: Iran in WWII, The Taliban, Gulf War vs. bin Laden, and Diplomacy
So, yes, the Barbary wars happened before the Iranian coup. Keep in mind also that 1953 is also after 1945 when Nazi Germany surrendered. At that time, Iran was already under the full control of Britain and Russia (mostly the British), essentially a colony like India was. This invasion was necessary because Reza Shah was attempting to play neutral while supplying the Nazi war machine with crude oil necessary for its logistical world domination. "Iran" in Persian means "The Land of the Aryans," which Persia abruptly changed its name to in 1935, just as it was becoming friendly toward the Germans. After the war was over, Britain had a number of privately owned fields, purchased legally from the owners of the land. When Iran elected Mosaddegh to nationalize the oilfields, they did so illegally. Their country or not, the heart of libertarianism is the right to free exchange and free markets. Unless you agree that the United States can simply seize the property of any foreign corporation who operates in any way through the United States, you cannot support the right of anyone, anywhere to loot by law. The course of action taken by the West was perhaps morally wrong. But it was in response to a moral wrong, not the initiation of one. I find that very few internet historians know the history of Iran before 1953. This has always seemed odd to me -- where are you all getting your similarly edited information?
The military bases in Islamic lands were widely supported at the time by both governments and peoples. They still celebrate it as a national day of pride. Again, bin Laden considers this the great evil of America because he wanted the local mujahidin to fight Saddam rather than bringing in any Western aid. You may freely be against the Gulf War, but you cannot rationalize that the intervention was innately immoral since the United States determined that losing control of the Kuwait and Saudi oilfields would have been damaging to her interests. In other words, the United States did not initiate force but responded to the initiation of force upon a friend.
The United States used the Taliban to fight the Soviet Empire. I fail to see this as a moral evil.
The United States necessarily has diplomatic relations with all countries who are willing, including bad guys. Egyptians and Tunisians far and away have more warm feelings for the United States than ill-feelings. Only with sources such as Russia Today can you attempt to support the notion that we stood between these leaders and their people. The West was crucial to their overthrow, including freezing of their foreign assets.
Recommended Reading
Islamic Radicalism and Global Jihad History of radical Islam and current resurgence. Takes a look at the old scholars and new.
The Looming Tower Everything leading up to 9/11
Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters Details the Barbary coast slave trade
The Trial of Henry Kissinger Outlines US war crimes
Qur'an My English translation.
Instructions for American Servicemen in Iran During World War II Self explanatory.
The Forever War Solidly good book.
The Rape of Kuwait Iraq war crimes in Kuwait
Edits
Definitely! It is one of the most important events of modern Chinese history. It really kicked off the "century of humiliation."
If you are interested in reading more about it, I'd highly recommend God's Chinese Son. It's very well researched but still really readable.
<Blind faith is un-Buddhist.
I don't disagree, but I'm an academic. The understanding of Buddhism I have is academic and my arguments are based in issues of history as I understand it.
<I quote scholars and you quote yourself, as if you are an authority. State your name and your credentials then.
This tells me that my arguments alone are insufficient to identify me as an authority to you- really I wouldn't claim to be on this topic. As I said, I study mostly American Buddhism today- no I will not provide my name because I like to preserve some anonymity on the internet. I have a M.A and am doing PhD coursework. The problem that you are having is that you are not taking an academic view of the discussion.
>Your faith is greater than your wisdom
This is an ad-hominem fallacy at its best. I'm not Buddhist at all. I have no faith because I study the topic. I respect the tradition but I certainly don't worship in it. This is a discussion about historical understanding- something that you have garnered from questionable scholars. Here is a brief reading list of real scholars you can take and read to see what actual authorities in the field are saying.
Don Lopez: Elaborations on Emptiness
Don Lopez: The Heart Sutra Explained this is a series of translated commentaries on the Heart Sutra. Though it uses the long version, which is problematic.
J.L Austin: How to Do Things With Words This will tell you a lot about the linguistic empiricists and how words function in religious settings.
If you want to read the theory that I do you might also read
Alfred North Whitehead: Process and Reality
Also:Whithead's Symbolism: It's meaning and Effect
And
Bruce Lincoln's Authority
For Buddhist histories that are not popularist:
Peter N. Gregory: Tsung-Mi and the Sinification of Buddhism
Gimello's Paths to Liberation
or his Studies in Ch'an and Hua-yen
For modern philosophical takes on Buddhism Nancy Frankenberry's Religion and Radical Empiricism though to understand her you need a wider knowledge base than you probably have. Here, let me suggest something for you to read first:
James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
James: The Will to Believe
James: Pragmatism
Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
Rorty: Consequences of Pragmatism
This one is particularly important for you:
Rorty: Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth
You want to know about the origins of Buddhism? How about Vajrayana?
Snellgrove: Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
Pollock (a great book): The Language of the Gods in the World of Men
For a modern take: Wedemeyer: Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism
Davidson: Indian Esoteric Buddhism
Bhattacharyya: An Introduction to Buddhist Esoterism These last few present conflicting views on the nature of Tantrism, particularly the last one that might fit your "fundamentalist" category.
TO understand American Buddhism better:
Merton: Zen and the Birds of Appetite
Eck: A New Religious America
Tweed (this is one of my favorite books ever) The American Encounter with Buddhism 1844-1912
Neusner (ed) World Religions in America
on individuals: Sterling: Zen Pioneer
Hotz: Holding the Lotus to the Rock Sokei-an was a traditionalist and a near mirror of Thich Nhat Hanh, yet his teachings never took off.
Since you Love Thich Nhat Hanh: Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962-1966 and the companion to that, Merton's journals
Another of Hanh's Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire This is before he was popular and so is much more interesting than some of his later works.
Also Mcmahan: The Making of Buddhist Modernism
This is a good historical survey:
http://www.amazon.com/China-New-History-Second-Enlarged/dp/0674018281/
I'm in the middle of the book Afghanistan: A Cultural and Political History by Thomas Barfield, and from what I can gather, the country is most valued for it's 'buffer zone' status. Sure, There are a few cities worth ruling (Herat, Kandahar, Kabul), but most of the rest of the country is not worth the cost of central administration.
While there may be a vast quantity of metals and other valuable commodities underground, is it profitable to extract and export (security for facility, security transporting to regional hub, building/maintaining roads, bribes at checkpoints, bribes to gov't officials, etc)?
ETA: Here's a fun Ethnic Groups Map of Afghanistan from the Gulf 2000 Project. More Maps Here
Booktopia's got a bunch of Aussie military history books here.
Regimental Books has military books in e-book format too.
I think if she likes military history and biographies she might, at a stretch, enjoy Nothing To Envy, which I thought was an amazing account of life in North Korea. Also a book called The Aquariums of Pyongyang.
Biographies, she might like Swimming to Antarctica, about an endurance swimmer who swam a mile in antarctic waters.
If she's at all interested in science fiction, Baen's Free E-book Library has a bunch of "starter" books for their series, which tend to be military-based sci-fi.
And Project Gutenberg has a ton of military history; they're the go-to free e-book supplier. Loads of good stuff. This is my favorite to recommend - A Lady's Captivity among Chinese Pirates in the Chinese Seas by Fanny Loviot. She's such a fun read! Combines pirates, history, and biography all in one.
Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History is amazing. You can find it at What the Book bookstore.
This book is what shaped my thinking on the Bangladeshi independence war: https://amazon.com/Blood-Telegram-Kissinger-Forgotten-Genocide/dp/0307744620. One of the things it points out is that the groups you mentioned were killing and raping in Bangladesh first. This does NOT excuse the Mukti Bahini for doing the same; it is inhuman and wrong, and they should have figured out another way to establish deterrence. There is blood on both sides. But, it /is/ on both sides -- it wasn't one side attacking the other unprovoked, as your comment might suggest at first glance.
It's not propaganda. The vast majority of the population is brainwashed and have little access to external news. Only a carefully vetted elite few can travel to China or anywhere out of the country. Having a satellite phone will land you in a labor camp. Underground printing presses? You must be kidding. The North Korean government is a truly tyrannical, oppressive regime with ever present mechanisms of control and suppression inherited from the Soviets and fine-tuned over decades of practice.
If you want to read a fascinating book about NK told through the eyes of an English teacher take a look at Without You There Is No Us. Also really good Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.
I'd also like to reccomend The Impossible State. It's a great primer on North Korea.
Interesting... it's a super complex question. Have you read The Making of Buddhist Modernism? Much of modern Buddhism, even in the East, has already intertwined with Christianity and modern science.
Also, depending on the vehicle - Hinayana, Mahayana, or Vajrayana, and specific methods of practice, the moral codes in Buddhism can drastically differ. For example, a Mahayana teacher might tell you to eat a bland vegetarian diet to stay on the Middle Way, while a Vajrayana teacher might tell you to eat bugs and drink blood to dissolve duality of holy vs profane.
My interpretation of Nietzsche is that he's almost a Vajrayana Buddhist, but without the understanding that the self is nebulous/illusory. Zen is weird in that it's technically Mahayana, but has many Vajrayana-like traits too. An excellent read on this topic is Nietzsche and Zen.
Nick Turse has written a book called Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805086919?*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0
It is based on archival records and makes the point that the My Lai massacre was not an aberration at all.
I don't remember where exactly I read that. Probably in either Nothing to Envy or The Impossible state.
I highly recommend both books (though I thought that Cha came off as a bit defensive at times) for general reading on the DPRK.
The Buddhist post of his I found memorable was this one, which was largely a summary of the book The Making of Buddhist Modernism by David McMahan. Does the meaningness guy add significant ideas of his own about "the orientation Buddhism has taken in North America" in other posts, or is it basically more publicizing of the thesis of McMahan's book?
http://www.amazon.com/India-A-History-Revised-Updated/dp/0802145582
I hate highlighting. I was reading a copy of God's Chinese Son I got off Amazon and I guess it was a textbook because some knob had highlighted half the book, including writing dumb notes in the margins. /r/mildlyinfuriating
This is a good book about the subject: The Rape of Nanking. Covers everything you are asking about.
To get an idea of how big of a raw nerve this book struck try reading some of the 1-star reviews. A mishmash of insane people, Japanese right wing revisionists and even a few people apparently posing as Chinese. Side note: the author committed suicide about 7 years after this was published.
I recommend the book Kill Anything That Moves. It documents the systematic way the US has covered up atrocities on civilians and portrayed any leaks as singular events (for example, My Lai massacre). Little's changed since Vietnam. The US doesn't focus on prosecuting or preventing war crimes, it focuses on covering them up. There's no policies in place to prevent soldiers from cracking down mentally or forming a shared revenge-mentality.
In Vietnam, the Vietnamese weren't considered human and the same attitude prevails in the Middle-Eastern conflicts. There's no empathy toward "snackbars", which leads to soldiers pissing on dead corpses etc. Everyone is presumed guilty (to be the enemy) by association, and thus there's care little for civilian life. Although /u/SerPuissance got downvoted, there are couple of well-publicized instances of a soldier going on a killing spree (e.g Robert Bales). And these are cases where civilians are intentionally targeted. There a lot more cases where soldiers / the commanding officers simply do not care whether civilians get killed or hurt as collateral damage. It's a gradient scale.
The above is obviously not meant to imply that inhuman behaviour during war is exclusively an American trait. See for exampe what the Japanese did in China.
You pretend Obama is sympathetic towards the South Koreans, but he really isn't. A republican - not a democrat - G.W.Bush is actually generally respected as the president in living memory who has done the most for US-Korean relations^1 . South Koreans advocate a Korea First mentality, North Korea has Juche. Frankly, these 3 countries would get along a lot better if the USA admitted to itself and eachother that they're OK with prioritizing themselves. It's natural; and nationalism doesn't preclude allies...
Also, the Kim regime is built upon the principle that they are the rightful protectors of the Korean peninsula. Their [completely insane] origin story has Kim Jong Il being born on a sacred mountaintop, while Kim Il Sung was the leader of the Korean independence movement (independence from Japan). Supposedly, even Kim Il Sung's grandfather was the mastermind behind the General Sherman Incident.
Kim Jong Un might be ridiculous, but pretty much his only mandate is to create a united, independent Korea.
^1 Cha, Victor. The Impossible State (2013).