Narrating China's modern history through the lens of warfare is not entirely new. In fact, there is no shortage of books with “China at War” either as the title or as the subject. Nevertheless, Hans van de Ven's latest book stands out in several ways.

To begin with, van de Ven abandons the conventional periodization of early twentieth-century Chinese history, including the one used in his own 2003 book, War and Nationalism in China, 1925–1945 (London: Routledge). Part one, “Staking a Nation,” examines nation-building endeavors by the Chinese Nationalists in the decades before the outbreak of full-scale war with Japan in 1937, and part two, “Momentous Times,” analyzes the first five years of that war. Part three, “Acid Test,” probes the international aspect of the war as it transited away from conventional warfare, while part four, “New China,” covers the ensuing civil war ending with Communist China's triumph and Beijing's participation in the Korean War. To give one example, in a chapter entitled “The Turning Point,” van de Ven convincingly demonstrates that the massive Ichigo campaign launched by the Japanese in China in 1944 inflicted serious damage to the Nationalists both militarily and politically at home and abroad, essentially “set[ting] the ball rolling” for the Communists’ ultimate victory (p. 181). In short, he considers China's wars between 1937 and 1953 to be “an interlocking series of events” (p. 10). Although the War of Resistance still occupies center stage (fully half of the book is devoted to it), van de Ven notes that “it was in Korea that the final act took place, an act that ended with the Communists firmly taking control of mainland China and the Nationalists ensconced on Taiwan” (p. 256). At the very least, this is a timely reminder that history should not be chopped up neatly for political convenience.

Moreover, the book not only emphasizes warfare as a central theme in China's twentieth-century history, but also places China's experience of warfare in world historical terms. The book's “narrative arc” traces the crucial transition from what van de Ven calls “a dialectical Clausewitzian approach to war” fought between internally cohesive societies to the “national liberation war,” characterized by rural mobilization, tight discipline coupled with a powerful ideology and politicization, and evasion of battle until assured victory (pp. 6–7). In the first phase of the War of Resistance, the modern armies of Imperial Japan and Nationalist China fought each other in Shanghai, Xuzhou, Wuhan, and elsewhere. Whereas such warfare greatly exhausted the Nationalist regime, the Chinese Communists were able to exploit the changing nature of warfare. In a fascinating episode, van de Ven reveals that Mao Zedong was reading newly translated writings of Clausewitz in remote Yan'an while adapting the Prussian military strategist's ideas into his own treatise on China's protracted war against Japan. Van de Ven pronounces the Clausewitzian model of war to have ended with World War II and considers the national liberation war as one of the new alternatives with a great impact on the postwar world. As he and others have noted, however, the final triumph of the Communists over the Nationalists was accomplished in essentially conventional warfare in three massive and often brutal campaigns, as is true with Beijing's costly military involvement in the Korean War. Therefore, “Clausewitzian war” continued to be hugely important for Beijing, even as it officially designated the civil war in 1946–49 as the “war of liberation” for ideological reasons.

Van de Ven sets an admirable example by combining larger currents of history with vicissitudes in individual lives in an effort to examine “how the war was digested culturally” (p. 9). Besides a focus on political figures like Chiang Kai-shek and to a lesser extent Wang Jingwei and Mao Zedong, he offers intimate glimpses into the lives of people like the government official Chen Kewen and Manchuria-born woman writer Chi Pang-yuan, making use of their diary and memoir respectively. Although van de Ven's attempt to shed more light on the experiences of the masses was constrained by the lack of similar primary sources, his book succeeds in humanizing his protagonists regardless of their ultimate fate or political reputation. Furthermore, drawing from his own family's encounters with Europe's wars in the twentieth century, he underscores the common human experience of war even as his book emphasizes its differences in separate theaters. He echoes an ancient Jewish and Christian adage when he states that “it takes at least three or four generations for the ramifications of such a traumatic event as the Second World War to work themselves through before they can be genuinely consigned to the past” (p. 13).

The author of several monographs and an editor of books including The Cambridge History of War, van de Ven is widely respected for his work on the history of warfare as well as modern China. China at War in turn reflects his respect for other historians, including those in China, whom he cites generously. This is no doubt a reflection of his view that local actors, historians in present-day China included, are not simply passive recipients of orders from above. His close involvement with the multi-year joint study of the Second World War in East Asia that brought together Chinese, Japanese, and Western historians is also evident in China at War. In this sense, the book embodies not just van de Ven's own research in archival sources such as British intelligence reports; it also serves as an example of a continuing dialogue on a highly contested subject such as armed conflict.

This highly erudite and readable book has a few minor factual errors. For instance, Muto Akira and Tanaka Shin'ichi, senior officers in the Japanese Army General Staff and War Ministry who clamored for war with China in 1937, were not cabinet members. Van de Ven's description of Liuqiu Kingdom (present-day Okinawa) on page 177 is somewhat incomplete since it was also under the de facto control of Japan's Satsuma domain starting in the early seventeenth century.

In short, van de Ven's China at War is clearly the authoritative book to turn to for an understanding of China's twentieth-century transformation through multi-angled lenses of warfare. A thought-provoking work on the general transformation of warfare during the twentieth century in which China played a pivotal part, the book also offers a clue as to why a senior Al-Qaeda strategist has found it useful to consult the writings of Mao Zedong.