About this episode

Professor Hans van de Ven discusses the significant yet overlooked impact of World War II on the formation of modern Asia.

Is our history of World War II missing its most important chapter? For many in the West, the story of the Second World War is told through D-Day, the Blitz and the liberation of Europe. Yet some of the war's most consequential battles were fought in Asia, where the conflict claimed millions of lives, hastened the collapse of European empires and reshaped the modern world. Professor Hans van de Ven argues that the war in Asia was not a peripheral theatre, but central to the making of the post-war world. In this episode, he speaks to Hannah Lucinda Smith about reconstructing one of the most important yet neglected chapters of the twentieth century, challenging a Eurocentric understanding of the Second World War and showing how the conflict laid the foundations of Asia as we know it today. How did Japan's imperial ambitions transform the continent? Why did the war accelerate the end of European colonial rule? And how did leaders including Mao Zedong, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sukarno emerge from its aftermath to forge a new Asia? Hans van de Ven is a world-renowned historian of modern China, a Fellow of the British Academy and a Professor of Modern Chinese History at Cambridge and Peking…

People in this episode

Host: Hannah Lucinda Smith

Guest: Professor Hans van de Ven

Topics covered

• World War II
• Modern Asia
• Colonialism
• History
• Imperialism
• Eurocentrism

Keywords

• World War II
• Asia
• European empires
• colonial rule
• Mao Zedong
• Jawaharlal Nehru
• Sukarno
• history
• imperial ambitions

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: British Academy, Cambridge University, Peking University

Books & works: Blood Dawn: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia

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