Chinese Sojourners in Wartime Raj, 1942-45

Description

Since the outbreak of the Pacific War, British India had been taken as the main logistic base for China's war against the Japanese. Chinese soldiers, government officials, professionals, and merchants flocked into India for training, business opportunities, retreat, and rehabilitation. This book is about how the activities of the Chinese sojourners in wartime India caused great concerns to the British colonial regime and the Chinese Nationalist government alike and how these sojourners responded to the surveillance, discipline, and check imposed by the governments. This book provides a subaltern perspective on the history of modern India-China relations that has been dominated by accounts of elite cultural interaction and geopolitical machination.

About the author:

Yin Cao is Associate Professor and Cyrus Tang Scholar in the department of history at Tsinghua University. He works on modern Indian history, global history, and inter-Asian connections. He is the author of 'From Policemen to Revolutionaries: A Sikh Diaspora in Global Shanghai, 1885-1945'.

Reviews

''In this fast-paced narrative of Chinese sojourners who found themselves in British India during the turbulence of WWII and its aftermath, Yin Cao presents us with a vivid picture of many thousands of Chinese sailors, airmen, refugees, smugglers and deserters. Through them he also reveals how the complexities of the later decades were seeded during this one.' - Prasenjit Duara, Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies, Duke University'

''Chinese Soldiers in Wartime Raj recounts the previously hidden history of the tens of thousands of Chinese migrants who spent the war years in India. Cao Yin's protagonists are sailors and soldiers, smugglers and traders, pilots and mechanics. Their experiences represent a very different facet of the relationship between India and China, and between Indians and Chinese, at a moment when the shape of Asia's future was up for grabs. This is a brilliant social history, a work of prodigious archival research, and a landmark contribution to our understanding of the new Asia that emerged from the ruins of empire.' - Sunil Amrith, Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History, Yale University'

'"Cao Yin's study is a brilliant piece of research into one of the least well-known episodes of World War II, the Chinese military presence in British India. His work not only shows the cooperation as well as conflict during this crucial period, but also provides fascinating insights into the formation of Asian identity and the postcolonial world." - Rana Mitter, Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China, University of Oxford'

''This book is an extremely important contribution to the study of the complex and partly conflicted entanglements between China and India around the middle of the twentieth century. As a great authority in the field, the author discusses many surprising facets of this encounter.' - Dominic Sachsenmaier, Chair Professor of Chinese Studies, Gottingen University'

''Through a resourceful reconstruction of four fascinating and vivid wartime cases of Chinese sojourners-sailors, smugglers, deserters, and airmen-Cao Yin masterfully demonstrates the significance of subaltern perspectives in China-India history.' - Arunabh Ghosh, Associate Professor of History, Harvard University'

Table of contents

Chapter 1   Introduction: The Great Game Mentalities against the State-Building Ambitions by Yin Cao

Chapter 2   The Rise and Fall of the Chinese Seamen's Wartime Service Corps

Chapter 3   The Wartime India-China Smuggling

Chapter 4   Chinese Deserters in the British Raj

Chapter 5   The Evacuation of the Lahore Elementary Flying Training School

Chapter 6   Conclusion: Inheriting the Colonial Anxieties