Sentimental Imperialists.; The American Experience in East Asia

New York: Harper & Row, 1981. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good./Very good.. xiv, [10], 323, [3] pages. Endpaper maps. Maps. Index. DJ has slight wear and soiling and is price clipped. Bookplate on half-title page signed by Thomson. Foreword by John King Fairbank. Presents a comprehensive survey of the two-hundred-year relationship between the United States and East Asia. James Claude "Jim" Thomson Jr. (b. Princeton, New Jersey, September 14, 1931 d. August 11, 2002) was an American historian and journalist who served in the government, taught at Harvard and Boston Universities, served as curator of the Neiman Foundation for Journalism. He received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University in 1961 under the direction of John K. Fairbank. Thomson was China specialist on the staff of the National Security Council headed by McGeorge Bundy. Peter William Stanley[1] (born 1940) is an American historian and academic administrator who served as the eighth president of Pomona College. A scholar of Asian studies, his tenure at Pomona coincided with a substantial increase in the college's endowment and prestige. John Curtis Perry also known as John Perry (born 18 July 1930) is an East Asian and Oceanic studies professor and historian. He is the Henry Willard Denison Professor Emeritus of History at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. Perry has written several history books and articles on topics including Pacific Asia-US relations, the American occupation of Japan, and American expansionism toward the Pacific Ocean. His writing style has been characterized for artfully conveying history to the general reader with pith, wit, and clarity.. Derived from a Kirkus review: Three Harvard-trained scholars have pooled their expertise--on China, Japan, and the Philippines--in a spirited, probing appraisal of US-East Asian relations from the clipper ships to the Honda. They start with the initial American perception of East Asia--China's "lack of dynamism," to the merchant-traders; its "moral failings," in the eyes of the missionaries. And the reality: the stability and sense of superiority of the Confucian state. They pose the big questions: not only "Were the Americans imperialists?," but also, for one, why the radically different Chinese and Japanese responses to Western penetration? Their chapters are chapters in the ongoing give-and-take: the "Yellow Peril," and the violent, embittering reaction to it--followed by a "new mythology" of Chinese promise and Japanese threat; the roots of turn-of-the-century American expansionism-in a felt need for foreign markets to relieve overproduction and, perhaps, an equally strong need for "something constructive to do with the new capacities that were producing such ambivalent results in [US] factories and cities." Their analyses are clear, yet subtle and provocative; they eschew strange, however-familiar names for a few imaginative, often-unfamiliar examples. They also bring fresh thinking to US involvement in the Philippines: the undeveloped state of Filipino society when the Spaniards came; the American collaboration with the Filipino elite--whereby "the imperialism of suasion became a bulwark of class interest." And they review, concisely and incisively, the US role in Korea and Vietnam. It's a balanced assessment that doesn't wobble; a quick education for the untutored and a stimulus for the informed. And, quite simply, the single most cogent treatment of the subject--for anyone.