Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century

In a work that synthesizes crucial developments in international relations at the close of the 10th century, Bruce Cumings - a leading historian of contemporary East Asia - provides a nuanced understanding of how the United States has loomed over the modern history and culture of East Asia. By offering correctives to widely-held, yet largely inaccurate, assessments of the affairs of this region, Parallax Visions show how relations among the United States, Japan, Vietnam, North and South Korea, China and Taiwan have been structured by their perceptions and misperceptions of each other. Using information based on 30 years of research, Cumings offers a new perspective on a wide range of issues that originated with the Cold War. The study ranges over much of the history of the 20th century in East Asian-American relations - Pearl Harbour, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Korean War, and more recent difficulties in US relations with China and Japan. Positing that the central defining experience of 20th century East Asia has been its entanglement first with British and Japanese imperialism, and then with the United States, Cumings ends with a discussion of how the situation could change over the next century as the economic and political global clout of the US declines. Illuminating the sometimes self-deluded ideology of Cold War America, Parallax Visions should engage historians, political scientists, and students and scholars of comparative politics and social theory, as well as readers interested in questions of modernity and the role of the United States in shaping the destinies of modernizing societies in Asia.