- List of Illustrations*
- Maps
- Asia on the eve of World War II
- The Great Crescent
- British Malaya in 1941
- The fall of Singapore 13–15 February 1942
- North Burma and Assam
- The ‘neutral jungle’ of Perak, Malaya
- 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
- * List of Illustrations
- 1. ‘Great World’ amusement park, Singapore, 1930s (National Archives of Singapore)
- 2. Flower girls supporting the China Relief Fund, c. 1940 (National Archives of Singapore)
- 3. Reginald Dorman-Smith touring the Shan States, 1941 (Imperial War Museum)
- 4. U Saw and Leo Amery in London, 1941 (British Library)
- 5. Claire Chennault, Stilwell and the Flying Tigers (Corbis)
- 6. Special Branch portrait of Lai Teck (Imperial War Museum)
- 7. Chin Peng (Imperial War Museum)
- 8. Chiang Kai Shek, Madame Chiang and General Joseph Stilwell (Hulton)
- 9. Yamashita: ‘The Tiger of Malaya’ (National Archives of Singapore)
- 10. Percival in May 1941 (Imperial War Museum)
- 11. Straits Settlements Volunteers Force, c. May 1941 (Imperial War Museum)
- 12. The sinking of HMS Prince of Wales (Imperial War Museum)
- 13. Japanese war artist’s painting of the Singapore surrender (Cheong Yew Kee, National Archives of Singapore)
- 14. Sketch of sook ching massacres by Liu Kang (Liu Kang)
- 15. Japanese troops marching into Rangoon (Popperfoto)
- 16. A bombed-out Buddhist temple in Rangoon, 1942 (Imperial War Museum)
- 17. Refugee map of the route from Burma to India, 1942 (courtesy of the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge)
- 18, 19. Indian refugees fleeing Rangoon, 1942 (Imperial War Museum)
- 20. Two pictures from the Statesman’s coverage of the Bengal famine, 1943 (British Library, copyright © The Sunday Statesman Ltd)
- 21. Lord Wavell at a Rotary Club soup kitchen, Calcutta, 1943 (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)
- 22. Subhas Bose taking the salute with Field Marshal Tojo, Municipal Building, Singapore, 6 July 1943 (Netherlands Institute for War Documentation)
- 23. Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army propaganda leaflet (National Archives of Singapore)
- 24. ‘Comfort women’ from Malaya liberated in the Andaman Islands (Imperial War Museum)
- 25. Subhas Chandra Bose with Ba Maw in Rangoon, 1943 (courtesy of Netaji Research Bureau, Calcutta)
- 26. Louis Mountbatten with General Auchinleck, Air Chief Marshal Peirse and General Giffard (University of Southampton Library)
- 27. West African troops arriving in India for the Burma front, 1944 (Imperial War Museum)
- 28. General Slim addressing the troops (Imperial War Museum)
- 29, 30. Indian troops (Punjab Regiment) and British troops in Arakan, 1944 (Imperial War Museum)
- 31. A Sikh patrol charging a foxhole, 1945 (Imperial War Museum)
- 32. Surrendered Indian National Army troops at Mount Popa (Imperial War Museum)
- 33. Aung San delivering a speech in Rangoon, c. 1945 (International Institute of Social History, Amstersdam)
- 34. Chinese fighters of Force 136, 1945 (Chang Teh Cheok, National Archives of Singapore)
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
I Tatti Renaissance Library
Loeb Classical Library
Murty Classical Library of India