Course syllabus "Political Power Grows From the Barrel of a Gun" - Military and State-building in East Asia 1839 to present day

Swedish name: "Politisk makt växer ur en gevärspipa" - Militär och statsbyggnad i Ostasien från 1839 till idag.

Course code:

1MH085

Valid from semester:

Autumn Term 2024

Education cycle:

First cycle

Scope:

7.5 credits

Progression:

G1F

Grading scale:

Three-grade scale

Main field of study:

History with specialisation in Military History

Department:

Department of War Studies and Military History

Subject:

History with Specialization in Military History

Language of instruction:

The teaching is conducted in English.

Decided by:

Forsknings- och utbildningsnämndens kursplaneutskott (KUS)

Decision date:

2023-12-12

Entry requirements

General entry requirements.

Course content and structure

This course focuses on the military history of East Asia from 1839 to the present day. It explores how different political entities in East Asia sought to preserve political integrity and independence in the international systems. The approach is global history and focuses on how East Asian states were influenced by the political, economic, cultural and ideological pull of great powers, and sought to use these foreign ”tools” to build strong, modern states.

The course is organized chronologically and broken down into four sections:

(1) 1839-1905 – The Age of Western Imperialism

(2) 1905-1949 – The Age of Wars

(3) 1949 -1990 – The Age of the Cold War

(4) 1990 - present day – The Age of the Asian Century?

The course combines lectures and seminars in each period. The purpose is that lectures presents the thematic framework and how each period can be analysed. The analysis is deepened through the seminars, also developing presentation skills. The course is examined through a written home exam in which the student analyses and presents chronological as well as thematic perspectives.

Type of Instruction:

Seminars
Lectures
Independent Literature Studies

Objectives

Upon completion of the course the student should be able to:

Knowledge and understanding

understand and summarize the geopolitics and military history of East Asia based on global historical reasoning
understand and explain how political, economic, cultural and ideological development relates to the great powers and military development

Competence and skills

in writing and orally analyse East Asia's military history and political development through global history
in writing and orally explain the relationship between structural and actor-driven factors in the region's military historical development

Judgement and approach

critically and source-critically relate to the relationship between Western historiography and Asian history, as well as the historical foundations of today's development.

Examination formats

The course is assessed through active and constructive participation in mandatory seminars and through an individual written home exam.

The examiner can determine what supplementary work can be completed in order to achieve a Pass mark. The student will have three working days to complete supplementary work once it has been agreed, in the absence of previously accepted exceptional circumstances. Exams which are submitted after the due date will not be marked unless the examiner has previously accepted exceptional circumstances.

Grading:
The student is graded on a three-point grading scale: Fail (U), Pass (G) and Pass with Distinction (VG). Grading criteria are reported at the latest at the start of the course.

For the grade Pass (G) on the course, the student must achieve the grade Pass (G) on the seminars, as well as Pass (G) on the home exam. For the grade Pass with Distinction (VG) on the course , the student must achieve the grade Pass with Distinction (VG) on more than half of the seminars, as well as the grade Pass with Distinction (VG) on the home exam.

There is no limit on the total number of examination opportunities.

Transitional provisions

When the course is no longer offered or when the course content has changed substantially, the student has the right to be examined once per semester during a three-term period in accordance with this syllabus.

Other regulations

The course cannot be included in a degree with another course whose content fully or partially corresponds to the content of this course.

If the Swedish Defence University has formally decided that the student is entitled to receive special educational support due to a disability, the examiner may decide on alternative forms of examination for the student. The course director will conduct an evaluation on the completion of the course, which will form the basis for any changes to the course.

This is an edited version of the syllabus, created to transfer the original to the education database Ladok education planning. For originals, refer to the archive.

Reading list valid from date 2024-09-02

Reading list decided date: 2024-05-08

Asada, S., From Mahan to Pearl Harbor : American Strategic Theory and the Rise of the Imperial Japanese Navy (Annopolis : Naval Institute Press, 2013) (100 pages)
Asselin, P., “The Indochinese Communist Party's Unfinished Revolution of 1945 and the Origins of Vietnam's 30-Year Civil War” in Journal of Cold War Studies, 2023-03, Vol.25 (1), p.4-45 (40 pages)
Chen, D., ”China's Leninist State and strategic relations with the United States: Chiang's KMT in Nanjing Decade and implications for the Chinese Communist Party after 1949” in Asian Politics & Policy 2023-10, Vol.15 (4), p.668-701 (33 pages)
Crawford, Timothy, “From the Anti-Comintern to the Nazi-Soviet and Japanese-Soviet Pacts, 1936-1941”, 246-278, in Jeffrey W.

Taliaferro, Norrin M. Ripsman, Steven E. Lobell (ed.), The Challenge of Grand Strategy (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2012) (32 pages)
Drea, E., Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853-1945 (University Press of Kansas) (200 pages).
Elman, B., ”Naval Warfare and the Refraction of China's Self-Strengthening Reforms into Scientific and Technological Failure, 1865-1895” in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 38, No. 2 (May, 2004), pp. 283-326; (44 pages)
Friedman, J., Shadow Cold War: The Sino-Soviet Competition for the Third World (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015) (120 pages)
Fung, A., ”Testing the Self-Strengthening: The Chinese Army in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895” Modern Asian Studies Vol. 30, No. 4, Special Issue: War in Modern China (Oct., 1996), pp. 1007-1031; (25 pages)
Gates, R., “Pan-Asianism in Prewar Japanese Foreign Affairs: The Curious Case of Uchida Yasuya” in The Journal of Japanese studies, 2011-12, Vol.37 (1), p.1-27 (26 pages)
Hane, M., Modern Japan: A Historical Survey (Oxford: Taylor and Francis Group, 2012) (100 pages)
Hazelton, J., “The client gets a vote: counterinsurgency warfare and the U.S. military advisory mission in South Vietnam, 1954-1965” in

Journal of strategic studies, 2020-01, Vol.43 (1), p.126-153 (27 pages)
Kaple, D., “Agents of Change: Soviet Advisers and High Stalinist Management in China, 1949–1960” in Journal of cold war studies, 2016-01, Vol.18 (1), p.5-30 (25 pages)
Kim, P., The Park Chung Hee era- the transformation of South Korea (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011) (80 pages)
Kim, Y., “Why Did Stalin Not Support a Quick Victory for the Korean People’s Army? Stalin’s Unspoken Global Security Strategy for the Korean War” in The Korean Journal of International Studies, 2019, 17(1), pp.79-102 (22 pages)
Li, X., The Cold War in East Asia (Florence: Routledge, 2018) (60 pages)
Paine, S., The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012) (300 pages)
Scott, D., China and the International System, 1840-1949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008) (140 pages)
Shiu, V., and Cheng, C., ”Modern War on an Ancient Battlefield: The Diffusion of American Military Technology and Ideas in the Chinese Civil War, 1946-1949” in Modern China, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Jan., 2009), pp. 38-64. (27 pages)
Smith, R., “Foreign-Training and China's Self-Strengthening: The Case of Feng-huang-shan, 1864–1873”, in Modern Asian studies, 1976-04, Vol.10 (2), p.195-223; (27 pages)
Sutton, D., “German Advice and Residual Warlordism in the Nanking Decade: Influences on Nationalist Military Training and Strategy” in The China Quarterly, No. 91 (Sep., 1982), pp. 386-410 (24 pages)
Taylor, F., Active Defense: China's Military Strategy since 1949
(United States: Princeton University Press, 2019) (178 pages)

Whiteman, P., “The Battle of Shanghai: How China Lost its Defense to Japan” in The Chinese historical review, 2022-01, Vol.29 (1), p.34-55 (19 pages)
Yang, Z., “The bingyun strategy: How subverting armed forces aided the Chinese Communist Party's rise to power” in Comparative strategy, 2023-01, Vol.42 (1), p.14-33 (20 pages)
Total: circa 1670 pages