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Hans van de Ven on World War II and the Making of Modern Asia

“The Asian theater was never just about defeating Japan – it was also about dismantling European imperialism and creating new national futures.”

Camouflaged and poorly equipped Chinese soldiers repel a charge of 50,000 Japanese along the Salween River near Burma in June 1943.

In “Blood Dawn: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia,” Hans van de Ven, a professor of modern Chinese history at Cambridge University, provides a much-needed Asia-centric focus on World War II.

While Western histories of the global conflict center the European theater, and typically mark the war’s beginning with with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, van de Ven starts with the reordering of Asia under European colonialism in the 19th century, the awakening of new political movements across the region in response, and Japan’s 1937 invasion of China. 

World War II remade Asia, and the consequences thereof linger to this day.

“Many of today’s flashpoints – capable of sparking global conflict – are unresolved hangovers from this war,” van de Ven told The Diplomat’s Managing Editor Catherine Putz. From Kashmir and the India-Pakistan rivalry, to the status of Taiwan and the division of the Korean Peninsula, Asia’s flashpoints have their roots in the legacies of World War II.

“Blood Dawn: World War II and the Making of Modern Asia” will be published on September 8, 2026.

What changes in our understanding of World War II when we shift focus from the European theater to the Pacific?

The Second World War in Asia marked the end of British, French, and Dutch imperial rule and birthed a new Asia structured around the modern nation-state. In that sense, the transformations wrought by the war in Asia were as profound as those caused by the First World War in Europe.

The Asian theater was never just about defeating Japan – it was also about dismantling European imperialism and creating new national futures. Regional independence movements exploited Japan’s attempt to build an empire that rivaled Britain’s. Some built large followings and armies – like the Chinese Communists – while others sought independence by collaborating with the Japanese, as Sukarno did in Indonesia. 

Another crucial shift was that the contest between Japan and the United States for control of the Pacific ended decisively in America’s favor. Following the Versailles Peace Treaty [that ended World War I], Japan gained control of the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands. During the war, the United States expended immense blood and treasure to conquer them. Today’s geopolitical contest between the U.S. and China is, in part, a continuation of this struggle for Pacific dominance. As an emerging superpower, China naturally wants to secure its vulnerable coastline – through which the British invaded in the 19th century and the Japanese in the 20th.

To what extent did the colonization of Asia by European powers set the stage for World War II in the region?

In three distinct ways.

First, prior to Europe’s colonization of Asia, the region was ruled by historic dynasties: the Mughals in India, the Manchus in China, the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan, the Joseon dynasty in Korea, and the Nguyễn dynasty in Vietnam. None survived the colonial regimes the Europeans built in the first part of the 19th century, and their collapses proved deeply destabilizing.

Second, Western military, technical, and scientific dominance created a severe crisis of confidence among Asian elites, who concluded that their own cultural and political traditions were backward. In the late 19th century, nationalist movements emerged that demanded radical political, cultural, and social change. Initially confined to elites, they gained mass followings in the 1920s after the Great Powers at Versailles rejected Asian demands for self-determination. Meanwhile, the 1917 October Revolution in Russia offered an inspiring new model of revolution. Communism provided an organizational framework for anti-imperialism and suggested that a backward country did not need decades of gradual development and industrialization but could through revolution jump to the forefront of history. In orthodox communism, feudalism is followed by capitalism before it finally reaches communism. 

Finally, there was Japan. Before World War I, Japanese elites hoped to gain Western acceptance by “leaving” Asia and adopting Western models. However, the Western powers’ refusal to include a racial equality clause in the League of Nations covenant, combined with naval restrictions imposed on Japan at the Washington Conference, convinced Japanese leaders that Japan had to free Asia from European imperialism to achieve equal footing.

Many peg the start of World War II in Asia as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937, two years before the war kicked off in Europe. What is most important to understand about that incident?

Chiang Kai-shek transformed a minor military clash near Beijing into an existential crisis involving the survival of China as a nation and civilization. Similar skirmishes had occurred before and were settled locally. However, Chiang insisted that any resolution be approved by China’s central government and demanded a full Japanese withdrawal from northern China.

When Japan refused, Chiang threw his elite troops against Japanese forces in Shanghai, stationed there by virtue of an earlier truce........

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