Beyond Glory: Civilians, Combatants, and Society During the Battle of Shanghai
Abstract The 1932 Sino-Japanese conflict in Shanghai was the first example of a modern war waged in a large city between two heavily equipped armies. It was also the first urban conflict during which massive destruction, especially aerial bombing, ensued with utmost disregard for the consequences to civilians. This paper looks at the damage and losses the two contending armies suffered. The group of Chinese armies involved in the conflict was not prepared either to handle the consequences of using highly lethal weapons or to provide the appropriate level of medical assistance to their soldiers involved. The result was a catastrophic level of casualties. The battle for Shanghai announced the frightening massive waves of destruction that World War II would unleash on European and Japanese cities.
Scars of War: The Impact of Warfare on Modern China
Throughout its modern history China has suffered from immense destruction and loss of life from warfare. In its worst periods of warfare, the eight years of the Anti-Japanese War (1937-45), millions of civilians lost their lives. For China, the story of modern war-related death and suffering has remained hidden. The Rape of Nanjing is beginning to be known, but hundreds of other massacres are still unrecognized by the outside world and even by China itself. The focus of this work is the social and psychological (not the economic) costs of war on the country. The book is illustrated with photographs by Capa and with Chinese woodblock prints. Each chapter is introduced by a traditional Chinese saying ("cheng-yu") on warfare.
Britain on the Couch: The Popularization of Psychoanalysis in Britain 1918—1940
The Argument Despite the enormous historical attention psychoanalysis has attracted, its popularization in Britain (as opposed to the United States) in the wake of the Great War has been largely overlooked. The present paper explores the sources and fate of the sudden “craze” for psychoanalysis after 1918, examining the content of the books through which the doctrine became widely known, along with the roles played by religious interests and the popular press. The percolation of Freudian and related language into everyday English was effectively complete by the 1930s. Crucially, it is argued that in Britain the character of psychoanalytic theory itself demonstrably converged with the psychological needs of the British population in the postwar period. The situation in Britain was clearly different in many respects from that in the United States. This episode bears on numerous questions about scientific popularization, the distinctiveness of British psychoanalysis, and though it is treated here only peripherally the epistemological status or nature of psychoanalysis. More generally the present paper may be read as an exercise in reflexive disciplinary historiography, in which the levels of discipline (“Psychology”) and subject matter (“psychology”) are viewed as interpenetrating and mutually constitutive.