Inside Asia

by John Gunther

A virtual "Who is Who" in Asia, from Tel Aviv to Tokyo, on the eve of WW2. Gunther introduces the history and national characteristics of each nation, together with the biographies of their statesmen, politicians and war lords. Full of details and anecdotes, this is a superb accomplishment.

Genres: History, Asia, Travel, Nonfiction, China

637 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

John Gunther was one of the best known and most admired journalists of his day, and his series of "Inside" books, starting with Inside Europe in 1936, were immensely popular profiles of the major world powers. One critic noted that it was Gunther's special gift to "unite the best qualities of the newspaperman and the historian." It was a gift that readers responded to enthusiastically. The "Inside" books sold 3,500,000 copies over a period of thirty years.

While publicly a bon vivant and modest celebrity, Gunther in his private life suffered disappointment and tragedy. He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in 1927, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in 1929. The Gunthers divorced in 1944. In 1947, their beloved son Johnny died after a long, heartbreaking fight with brain cancer. Gunther wrote his classic memoir Death Be Not Proud, published in 1949, to commemorate the courage and spirit of this extraordinary boy. Gunther remarried in 1948, and he and his second wife, Jane Perry Vandercook, adopted a son.

Reviews

[Julio The Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Gunther stepped into Asia in the middle of a whirlwind. When he arrived in 1937 China was roaring back to life in the face of the Japanese invasion, Japan had conquered Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, India had exploded in independence fervor under Gandhi and Nehru, and the rest of the continent, from the Philippines to Palestine, was caught between the twin fires of imperialism and nationalism. This revised 1942 second edition of his classic text finds Gunther contemplating Asia after Pearl Harbor and the Japanese seizure of the Philippines, Malaya, Singapore, the Dutch East Indies and Burma. What was the secret of Japan's lightning success? Could China under Chiang Kai Check hold out? Would the British pull out of India? Was the white race finished on the continent? Gunther, the most famous journalist in the world at the start of the Forties, swears he visited every place he writes about except Tibet and Saudi Arabia. INSIDE ASIA bears reading today not only for its grim historical lessons on the rise and fall of empires but also because the key issues touched upon in this magnificent volume, the birth of modern China, Japan's swift industrialism turned imperialism, India's move away from religion and towards modernity, and the festering problem of conflicting Arab nationalism and Zionism in the Middle East are extant and explosive. Gunther begins his grand tour of a continent aflame in Japan. Japanese politics in the Thirties were fiery and tumultuous. This was the period the Japanese call "government by assassination". Half a dozen prime ministers had been murdered by army hawks, and the country barely survived an army coup in February of 1936 to restore full powers to the emperor, under military tutelage of course. Still, Japan did not fracture and industrialization allowed her to launch war on Manchuria in 1931. How could the nation be unsettled and stable all at once? Gunther finds the key in the unique combination of tradition and modernity manifest in Japan. The Emperor Hirohito was sacred and no one dared make political moves that might earn his displeasure. Cabinets and prime ministers came and went but the monarchy, and with it Japan's class system, endured. Shinto had terrific political uses in glorifying the royal house, nation, and Japan's military tradition without, however, stultifying society and blocking innovation, a curse Gunther bemoans in India. Japan's leading industrial firms, above them all the house of Mitsubishi, successfully transitioned from landowners to financial and technological giants, allowing Japan to skip the wars of feudalism that tore apart Europe while keeping economic power in the same hands. One jarring note Gunther finds is that the Japanese military, zealously pro-Emperor, was the same force that advocated state capitalism or national socialism for Japan. Army officers insisted on a redistribution of wealth away from the old magnates and towards workers and peasants to shore up patriotic support for war. What sort of future did the militarists envision for Japan in Asia? The war of conquest Japan launched in Manchuria in 1931 and extended into China proper in 1937 had all the earmarks of a racial conflict. Gunther quotes army pamphlets distributed to the Chinese featuring blazing attacks of European rule in Asia and white racism. Japan assumed the mantle of an avenging angel towards the European powers and the United States. In the puppet state of Manchukuo Gunther finds the embryo of the "East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"; Japanese political and military supremacy, capitalist investment of Japanese firms functioning in the occupied territories under Army protection, and local rule through Tokyo-appointed native ministers. In his chapter "Guinea Pigs of Manchukuo" Gunther draws a pathetic portrait of the most famous puppet of them all, "The Last Emperor", Hank Pu-Yi, "the most inconsequential monarch on earth", and his court of Japanese stooges. Gunther is honest enough to admit that this same pattern of imperialist conquest had been practiced in Asia by the British, French, Dutch and Americans. Japan was only imitating the European and U.S. Original Gangsters. Her crime was to come late to the game and covet the biggest prize of all, China. Gunther finds Chiang personally distasteful but also the only man who could hold China together. Chiang is stubborn, dictatorial and little interested in any world save his own. But, he is the heir of Sun Yat Sen and conqueror of the Chinese warlords. The family he married into, the Soongs, is another matter. The"Sing a Song of Soongs" chapter highlights Chiang's marriage to Mei Ling Soong, Madame Chiang, and her powerful brothers and sisters. "This remarkable family runs China". They are super rich, politically powerful and clueless regarding China's future. Intentionally or not, Gunther reveals two reasons for the fall of Chiang in the Revolution of 1949; nepotism and runaway corruption. The portrait of the Chinese Communists, "Reds Who Wear Blue" is suggestive of their future victory. Mao comes across as a Chinese George Washington, and a talk with Chou En Lai, an impressive young man, convinces Gunther he is a patriot first and a Communist second. We leave this tour of China convinced Chiang is playing a dangerous game; having the Communists fight the Japanese while he watches from afar, raking in U.S. aid and assuming himself indispensable. After a quick look at the fey Manuel Quezon of the Philippines, "the Beau Brummel of dictators", we are off to India with its colossal problems and two colossal men, Gandhi and Nehru. The Japanese rampage through the Pacific in 1941-42, overthrowing centuries of colonial rule by the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands, French Indochina had fallen in June of 1940 without a peep from Paris, turned the eyes of the world on the biggest prize of all, British India. Gunther is incredibly candid on why the Europeans in Asia had their backs to the wall, with the Japanese waiting to strike again from Burma---white racism. The colonial powers discriminated against and dared not arm their subjects, the Philippines was the exception, but still lost, and Japan took advantage of a racial "divide and rule" strategy. Would their success be echoed on the sub-continent? Gunther begins his survey by examining the life and politics of "the greatest Indian since Buddha", Mahatma Gandhi. Who ever wrote a better description of Gandhi than Gunther? "An incredible combination of Jesus Christ, Tammany Hall and your father". The balance of power in India in 1942 was between a colonial power that had bled the country dry since the days of Clive but nevertheless upheld the rule of law, and a pert little man in a loincloth who recognized that for both ethical and practical reason that power could only be challenged through non-violence based on self-discipline. Gandhi did not hate the British and the British, a few old India hands aside, did not hate him. He was "the best friend the British had in India", unyielding in his demand for independence but also a cork on more violent proponents of total separation from the empire, such as the fascist, pro-Japanese Bose. Gandhi's great fault, Gunther astutely surmises, is his "medievalism"; a wish to take India back to the village, home cotton production, and healthy food, not modern medicine. Pandit Nehru, second man in the Indian National Congress after Gandhiji, is another kettle of fish. He strikes a note of progress, industry, socialism, planning and turning India into a developed nation to rank with Britain and the U.S. Gunther gushes that he is "perhaps the finest public servant I have ever known". With men like these India was secure from foreign invasion or Hindu-Muslim civil war, the bugbear the British used to justify staying in India perpetually. INSIDE ASIA is much less charitable when it comes to the Muslims of India and their leader Mr. Jinnah. His demand for independence and partition, with the Muslims living in the dreamed-of Pakistan, Gunther sees as playing into the hands of the British. If Muslims are under-represented in employment, university slots and government service, Gunther reasons, it's not due to "discrimination, but because they have less brains than the Hindus". Huh? Gunther finds religion, all religions, to be the albatross of India, and agrees with Nehru, "organized religion---at least of what I have seen in this country and others---fills me with horror". Religion is behind the Hindu caste system, consigning the Untouchables to a position "lower than a Negro in the Jim Crow South or a Jew in Hitler's Germany". A caste system even Mr. Gandhi dares not touch, though he champions the harijina (Children of God) as he calls the the Untouchables. It keeps Hindu and Muslim women in purdah, or seclusion and envelopment in dress, for most of their lives, and assigns girls to loveless child marriages. Gunther's hope for India lies in Nehru and the young socialists of the Congress who pay no attention to such malicious nonsense and want caste abolished. Gunther is knowledgeable enough to inform the reader that India is more than the subcontinent. The British have turned the neighboring countries of Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and Afghanistan into puppet states with rulers subsidized by the Crown to protect their interests in India. Even faraway British protectorates such as Oman, the "Trucial States" (modern United Arab Emirates) and Kuwait answer to the India Office of the Colonial Ministry. Britain was taking no chances that either the locals or a foreign power might snatch "the jewel in the Crown". If India was lost the empire was over; a prophecy that came true in 1947. This insight into modern imperialism---the more lands you have, the more the must protect, and the more vulnerable you become---pushes Gunther into the last great journey of INSIDE ASIA, the Arab world and the troubled British Mandate of Palestine. A deep believer in the Great Man theory of history, Gunther starts his journey by praising the newly-crowned (1932) king of Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, "a terrific fellow who gave the country his own name, and now makes sons with his wives to people that country". Aside from his joie de vivre personality, what Gunther appreciates most about Ibn Saud is how he combines his Wahabbe faith, though Gunther flubs its main tenets, with a pro-Western outlook. Gunther reminds the reader that St. John Philby, the notorious British spy and father of Harold"Kim" Philby, subsidized Ibn Saud's march on Mecca and his ouster of the Sharif, al-Husseini. To state this in modern Saudi Arabia would cost a man his life. Also worth mentioning is that Ibn Saud, caretaker of the Two Holy Mosques, Mecca and Medina, refused to come to the aid of the Arabs in British Mandate Palestine. Gunther engages in his usual racism towards dark-skinned people he does not understand. The Prophet Mohammed is compared to Hitler, and if the Arabs lost their independence to the Turks in the Middle ages, it was because "they have little political, or practical, sense". The "Kings of the Middle East" chapter is filled with such brainless droppings. Feisel of Syria and Iraq, yes, he was king of both, though not simultaneously, friend of Lawrence of Arabia and son of al-Husseini, lost his throne for not collaborating with the French and British. His brother, Abdullah of Jordan, owes his job to Britain having created a buffer state, "which looks like a hatchet", between Iraq, the Arabian peninsula and Palestine, not natural ability or noble lineage. His grandson, Abdullah II, currently on the throne, would do well to take notes. Gunther visits the warlord turned emperor of Iran, Reza Pavlevi, the Shah-in-Shah, and finds a Kemal Ataturk wannabe. His program for modernization includes a brand new railroad, but not democracy, the rule of law or a through secularization a la' Kemal. If only his son, Reza Pavlevi II, installed by Russia and Britain when they thought the father too pro-Axis, had learned from dad's mistakes. Iraq, next door, was suffering from the rule of Feisel's son, a wastrel who ruined his father's legacy and opened the way for the pro-German Prime Minister Rashid Ali, overthrown by the British and replaced with a more pliable politician. This is the sum of monarchical politics in the Arab world and Persia, consisting of a bevy of corrupt and inept family dynasties made and broken by their British overseers. Moving on to Palestine, Gunther finds room for hope amidst the despair of Arab-Jewish clashes, if not out right civil war. Here are two intertwined peoples, both detesting British rule, who nevertheless hope to use the British to further their conflicting aims. But, wait, their leaderships are mirror images. The Jewish cause in Palestine is fronted by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, whom Gunther inducts into his gallery of outstanding public figures alongside Nehru. President of the World Zionist Congress while maintaining a home in Haifa, Dr. Weizmann presented his case for a Jewish home in Palestine to the British government during World War I and was rewarded with the Balfour Declaration. Gunther merits praise for his close reading of the historic and controversial document, which he obviously endorses. The Declaration promised a homeland for the Jews, not a nation within a nation, and only the Revisionist Zionists interpreted it as such. The Arabs and the Jews had their economic and civil rights protected under the Mandate, but not political rights. Neither could agitate for independence nor form a political party, and their newspapers and radio stations had to submit to British approval. Ironically, and tragically, the Thirties saw both sides resort to street violence to prevail over the other. Gunther, however, is sure the Jewish cause is in the right hands, white Europeans, while the Palestinian Arabs are led by the shifty Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who spent most of his time underground pressuring the British to limit Jewish immigration. This tinderbox was bound to go off, and its clear which side Gunther is guessing will win.
What has Gunther and the reader, learned after this odyssey through Asia? The forces of tradition, chiefly religion and family, are at war with the often violent winds of modernity, imperialism and nationalism. People everywhere on the continent want to rule themselves, yet independence had to await the outcome of the world war. Could the white man hold on in Asia? Most likely not after the Japanese offensive of 1941-42, which proved Europeans could be thrown off their thrones. The new Asia might live by the humanist values of Gandhi, Nehru, and Weizmann or succumb to the disease of fascism. Whatever the future for one half of mankind the times ahead should be stormy and interesting.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh my, this thing is epic. I kept in on the back burner for several months, but now I'm finally done. So many ironies in the rear-view. That's the problem with most topical works. Long treatments of the political situations in Japan, China, and India. Shorter but valuable excursions into Philipines, Indonesia, Indochina, Thailand, Persia, Arabia, & Israel. Yeah, it's dry in places, but if you care about the time and place, I'm gonna tell you to read it. I got an original in a hole-in-the-wall shop, but reprints exist.

[Ann Otto · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're interested in the state of the Asian world as it existed-geographically, politically, culturally-in 1939, John Gunther provides it all in minute detail. There's a lot to digest. It's not an easy read; but one can understand all that went on in the decades leading up to WWII. The world was different, but fascinating: the revolutions in China; modernization of Japan; the rise of Gandhi; premonitions of the end of imperialist holdings. For all modern history lovers.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

From Tokyo to Jersualem, what a journey this book takes you through.

There's two versions of this book. Both ought to be read to get the most out of it. As usual, Gunther finds himself in the middle of developing historical events and the first edition came out in 1939, already long after the Japanese invasion of mainland Asia had begun. The second edition in 1942 most likely came about because of Pearl Harbor, but it also covers the Fall of Singapore. It's very interesting to compare the chapters that were updated.

The biggest weakness of this book is its ambition. Inside Asia, and yet it appears to be one of the smaller Inside... books. He really does mean all of Asia, from Siberia to Indonesia, from Japan to Palestine, but at best this feels like three books: one on Japan, one on China, and one on India, the rest is frills, worthy of entries in a magazine. There's aren't many threads which bind the continent as a whole in the same sense that Europe can be thought of as a cultural and geographic unit. India fears invasion by Japan, there was a celebrated meeting between Chiang Kai Shek and Nehru, and who knew there were Japanese in Afghanistan buying bicycles and hiring spies.

If anything united most of Asia it was European imperialism, most conspicuously that of the British. From Chinese ports, to controlling the princes of Southeast Asia, to trying to keep the lid on Indian nationalism, to making kings in the Middle East, to playing the role of gatekeepers to Zionism, they're everywhere. In the India chapters one is definitely reminded of the comparison to an imaginary situation in which Japan manages to conquer and then have to administrate all of Europe! I was not expecting to find them even in Tibet trying to exert their influence.

This is still very personality driven history. In classic Gunther style the section on India has to have entire chapters on Nehru and Ghandi. The book has to begin with a chapter on the Japanese Emperor, and of course there must be long sections on Chiang Kai Shek, the Soong family, and the various Chinese warlords, the latter actually being kind of tiring: short miscellaneous blurbs that go on for way too long.

These books in historical perspective are always interesting. His coverage on China doesn't really seem to hint at the serious possibility of a Red victory. It seems that even Japan is more likely to be in charge of China by 1950. The Communists are covered, but they're a band or rogues on the sidelines, lead by two prominent men, "Mao Tse-tung" and "Chu Teh."

Fifty years of retrospect also draw one very strongly to the modest but well written section on the Middle East. "The basic problem of Iraq is national integration. The country is riven with minorities." It's hardly the only "Arabic" country to struggle with this, then and now. The book ends with Palestine in an astonishingly one sided coverage of the issue. The Arabs legal right to the land is questionable, and Jewish immigrants have nothing to offer but benefits to the land and the surrounding people. Gunther is always an optimist, and not just in this book.

As far as one volume treatments of the entire continent of Asia that don't require exorbitant amounts of time, it's going to be difficult to find anything like this. It's old of course, but still relevant because of how fortunate Gunther always is whenever he decided to write about a place.

[Nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd book: essentially a series of pen portraits of who’s who politically across Asia in 1939, on the Eve of world war. It’s mainly focused on personalities and characters of political leaders, with only glances as their policy agendas and very little analysis of the structural conditions of the countries in question. Neither the massively intense poverty nor demographic vastness of Asia come into clear focus, nor does the tenuousness of the imperial projects, almost all of which would come to a close across the region over the next decade.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published only two years before Pearl Harbor and is very much a western view of the current situation in the East in the 1930s, mostly focusing on China and Japan, but also touching on South East Asian countries like Siam (modern Thailand) and the Philippines. I thoroughly enjoyed it, even if it is a dense book, despite some rather stereotyped views of Asia (like all Japanese people are rather disagreeable and unpleasant, according to Gunther). It is more an interesting study of the western perspective of Asia on the eve of WWII.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars. No review as others have written relevant ones.

[Kenneth Fehl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this on a cruise to Asia. Extremely informative read even after 80 years. You do have to overlook some biases and un-PC comments.