Far Eastern History LA QUESTION D’EXTREME-ORIENT, 1840-1940. By Pierre Renouvin, Membre de

l’Institut. (Paris: Librairie Hachette. 1946. Pp. 435. 250 fr.)

IN this survey, M. Renouvin presents one of the clearest accounts that has yet appeared of the relations among the powers during the last century in the Far East and the Pacific. His narrative traces the European approach to the Far East and notes the early mid-century beginning of rivalry and suspicion between the Russians, advancing into Manchuria by land, and the trading powers—Britain and the United States—who led the way in the opening of China and Japan, respectively. The commercial motif is again evident in the early French expansion in Indo-China. After an analysis of Japan’s transformation and China’s stagnation, leading up to the Chinese crisis of 1894-1901, the book recounts Japan’s rise to great-power status, her expansion during World War I, its checking by the peace settlement and resumption again in China in the 1930’s, leading to eventual defeat in World War II.

Within this broad canvas M. Renouvin, with extreme lucidity and compactness, has been able to summarize the significant developments in Indo-China, Burma, and Siam, in the Pacific Islands, and within China and Japan, as a background for the drama of international relations down to 1946.

In the present state of scholarship no volume covering so much of the Far East could avoid weakness in some respect, and I suggest that this treatment of diplomatic relations suffers at some points from inadequate attention to the institutional and social traditions of the Far Eastern peoples. The main reason for this is doubtless that there are few good studies as yet available linking modern politics to their essential background in Asiatic institutions and history. Since Japan has been more fully studied, while areas like Indo-China have been, comparatively, passive under the Western impact, this weakness in interpretation shows up chiefly in some parts of M. Renouvin’s treatment of China. Though it is almost a counsel of perfection to point it out, his treatment of the Taiping rebellion neglects its fundamental social and economic background: he states that "Cette crise elle-même n’est sans doute qu’une conséquence indirecte de la défaite subie, en 1842, par la dynastie dans la guerre de l’opium,’’ and proceeds to describe the influence of secret societies and of the Taiping religion, without reference to the extensive work which has been done on the subject of Chinese peasant revolts, the dynastic cycle, and commercial penetration.

While this is a minor matter of a few pages, I mention it because the same disregard of the native Chinese tradition seems to me to detract from the author’s treatment of the Chinese Communist problem. In brief, he traces with superb clarity the Russian expansionist trend in the Far East—on the Amur and the Pacific, in Korea, in Manchuria in the 1900’s and again in the 1920’s—and recounts also the Comintern activity in the Chinese Nationalist revolution of the 1920’s. Coming down to Russia’s reaction to Japanese aggression in China, he then states “En février 1937, le Parti communiste chinois, à ¡'instigation de l'International Communiste, adresse un appel au Kuomintang; il lui offre une 'collaboration amicale’...’’ While I have never seen the evidence for strong Comintern influence in this decision, it may exist; my point is that this approach to Chinese Communist policy as a mere reflection of Russian interests leaves out of account an entirely separate line of development which stems from the revolutionary process within China—a process which in broad

terms began before communism and would have occurred even if communism had never been invented. Chiang Kai-shek’s detention in the Sian incident of December, 1936, in which the Chinese Communists mediated and which has generally been regarded as the prelude to the united front, was part of this native process, not part of Russian or Comintern activity in China. In other words, treatment of China’s revolutionary processes from the point of view primarily of great-power politics may lead us into disastrous misconceptions. China today, for example, in spite of strident American propaganda concerning Russian influence there, is not alone a Russo-American field of tension; it is also a peculiar Oriental society with a long and valid revolutionary tradition, remaking itself according to its own needs and conditions. In line with this suggestion, the useful bibliographical notes for each chapter could be improved by the addition of standard works like those of Sansom and E. H. Norman on Japan, or Latourette and MacNair (China in Revolution) on China, instead of some of the less thorough works cited. I raise these minor points only because M. Renouvin’s high standing in the field of diplomatic history makes it unnecessary to dilate upon his masterly grasp of the subject of this book and the great precision and finesse of his presentation of it.

Harvard University J. K. FAIRBANK