A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945–1955 Audiobook

The end of World War II led to the United States emerging as a global superpower and for Western Europe decades of cooperation and prosperity that one historian has labeled "the long peace." Yet in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Korea, and Malaya, the fighting never stopped, as these regions sought to completely sever the yoke of imperialism and colonialism with all-too-violent consequences.

East and Southeast Asia quickly became the most turbulent regions of the globe. Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri, civil war, communal clashes, and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians.

With A Continent Erupts, acclaimed military historian Ronald H. Spector draws on letters, diaries, and international archives to provide a comprehensive military history and analysis of these little-known but decisive events.

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“Vivid profiles of military and political leaders…keep the pages turning…This sweeping survey of the bloody wages of decolonization astounds."

— Publishers Weekly (starred review)