When I searched dissertation titles to find topics that relate to empire, I ran across a thesis entitled A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States and their policies for a postwar disposition of the Japanese Empire 1941-1945. When I contacted the author, Xiaoyuan Liu, I found that the thesis had been turned into a book.

On our website you will find a tantalizing (to me) excerpt from the book’s opening chapter and, below, an interview with Prof. Liu on the specifics and the legacy of that brief partnership. It is a fascinating moment in the recent past when the two nations worked closely together. One of the partnership’s false assumptions, according to the author, was the idea that a government can speak for an entire nation. As a result of this fiction, the two countries’ grand plans for the Pacific fell apart almost immediately. China itself fell into four years of civil war which changed everything about Asia; other revolutions drastically altered the entire Pacific region. America was left with an inflated plan on paper that bore little relevance to political realities. Download the resource to learn more!