Forgotten Armies

The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945

Christopher Bayly

Tim Harper

    List of Illustrations

    Maps

    Some Key Characters

    Preface: The Many 'Forgotten Armies'

    Prologue, Part I: Escaping Colonialism

    Japan's Asian vision and the coming of war

    Aung San's Far Eastern odyssey

    'Signor Mazzotta' flees to Berlin

    Mr Tan Kah Kee visits Mao

    Prologue, Part II: Journeys through Empire

    The great crescent

    A Malayan pastorale

    The 'new world' of Singapore

    Malaise

    1. 1941: Last of the Indian and Burmese Days

    India on the brink

    Indian politics as usual?

    Burma unready

    The world of the hills and the 'tribes'

    Dorman-Smith reaches his 'backwater'

    Burmese and others

    Endgame: the governor and the politicians

    2. 1942: A Very British Disaster

    The fortress that never was

    The arrow leaves the bow

    The battle of Malaya

    'The modern Pompeiians'

    Flotsam and jetsam

    3. 1942: Debacle in Burma

    The road to Rangoon

    From scorched earth to green hell

    Burma's false dawn

    Death of the innocents

    Would India hold?

    Total defence in the hills: the Lushai levies

    The Nagas, the Kachins and the anthropologists

    The monsoon of 1942: an unnoticed turning point

    4. 1942: The Abyss and the Way Back

    The rape of Malaya

    The 'New Malai'

    Desperate journeys: Burma in late 1942

    India ablaze

    The forgotten armies mobilize

    5. 1943: Valleys of the Shadow of Death

    Uneasy allies

    Another fiasco in Arakan

    India in the doldrums

    The great starvation

    The slow fight back begins

    6. 1943: Personal Wars

    Ba Maw's apotheosis

    The 'Spirit of Asia' and the Malay nation

    The second coming of the Indian National Army

    Life in the time of tapioca

    'Life without salt'

    War by proxy

    High councils: Tokyo, Cairo and Tehran

    7. 1944: The Pivot of the Fighting

    Japan's final throw

    India on the offensive

    Battle commences: Imphal and Kohima

    The politics of war

    Japan's forgotten army

    8. 1944: The Nemesis of Greater East Asia

    Heroism and murder in the hills

    The crumbling of 'Free Burma'

    Roads to the death railway

    Silent armies

    The peninsular war

    New balls at Wimbledon

    9. 1945: Freedoms Won and Lost

    India mobilized

    Ba Maw's last stand

    Aung San's revolt

    Rangoon falls again

    The fading light of the new Asia

    10. August 1945: An End and a Beginning

    Final journeys down the crescent

    Forgotten armies, forgotten wars

    Notes

    Bibliography

    Index

  • Cover: Forgotten Armies

Christopher Bayly is Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of St. Catherine's College.

Tim Harper is a Senior Lecturer in History at University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Magdalene College.