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Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941–1945
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About Forgotten Armies: The Fall Of British
Product Description In the early stages of the Second World War, the vast crescent of British-ruled territories stretching from India to Singapore appeared as a massive Allied asset. It provided scores of soldiers and great quantities of raw materials and helped present a seemingly impregnable global defense against the Axis. Yet, within a few weeks in 1941-42, a Japanese invasion had destroyed all this, sweeping suddenly and decisively through south and southeast Asia to the Indian frontier, and provoking the extraordinary revolutionary struggles which would mark the beginning of the end of British dominion in the East and the rise of today's Asian world. More than a military history, this gripping account of groundbreaking battles and guerrilla campaigns creates a panoramic view of British Asia as it was ravaged by warfare, nationalist insurgency, disease, and famine. It breathes life into the armies of soldiers, civilians, laborers, businessmen, comfort women, doctors, and nurses who confronted the daily brutalities of a combat zone which extended from metropolitan cities to remote jungles, from tropical plantations to the Himalayas. Drawing upon a vast range of Indian, Burmese, Chinese, and Malay as well as British, American, and Japanese voices, the authors make vivid one of the central dramas of the twentieth century: the birth of modern south and southeast Asia and the death of British rule. Review “A work at once scholarly and panoramic, it is as precise in dissecting, say, the logistical problems the Japanese Army confronted during the 1944 campaign in northern Burma ('the worst defeat in Japan's military history') as it is arresting in examining such sweeping events as the 1942 trek of some 600,000 Indian, Burmese and Anglo-Indian refugees from Burma through the high passes of Assam into India, fleeing the advancing Japanese. Hundreds of monographs have examined aspects of this story, but Bayly and Harper's is the only history that matches the scope and nuance of novels like J. G. Farrell's Singapore Grip, Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, Anthony Burgess's Enemy in the Blanket, Orwell's Burmese Days, and Amitav Ghosh's Glass Palace. Their 70-page prologue is a triumph of scene setting...The ignominious British and Australian rout down the length of the Malay peninsula (the retreating soldiers sardonically adopted the theme from the Hope and Crosby movie The Road to Singapore as their marching song) and Singapore's subsequent fall have already been described, memorably, in Farrell's novel and in a host of military histories, most notably Alan Warner's Singapore 1942, but Bayly and Harper's account is both vivid and authoritative. One of their greatest contributions lies in their stinging appraisal of the debacle.” ― Benjamin Schwarz , New York Times Book Review “Bayly and Harper's often-overlooked topic is the fate of Southeast Asia--particularly India, Burma, Malaysia and Singapore--during the war. The authors focus on the experiences of the people of those countries, caught between the warring imperialists, callous British and brutal Japanese... Forgotten Armies is superb at evoking the wretchedness of this region, at conjuring the hardships its people suffered (including the deaths of some 3 million Indians in the terrible Bengal famine of 1943-44) and at demonstrating how Burmese, Indian, Malaysian and Singaporean nationalism were galvanized by these experiences. Bayly and Harper also deserve credit for presenting a complete history of the war in Southeast Asia: They are just as scrupulous--and just as good--at explaining the strategy of the British and Japanese commanders as they are at describing the lot of average soldiers and the misery of the civilian populations. In this important work, a reader will meet a vast range of characters whose stories are rarely heard in the United States, including Japan's brilliant Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, who overcame the supposedly impregnable British bastion at Singapore; the Indian
