Chinese Boycotts versus Japanese Bombs highlights economic competition as a key to understanding how China and Japan, leading trade partners, slipped toward war in the early 1930s. It describes and evaluates the Nationalist Chinese government's “Revolutionary Diplomacy” — its own brand of foreign policy toward Japan in 1931-32. This approach, which utilized popular boycotts, strikes, and demonstrations, was both innovative and a reflection of Chinas profound anger toward Japan, brought about by the desperation of Chinese industrialists in the face of the efficiency of Japanese producers. Although the anti-Japanese acts failed to break Japanese economic dominion and halt Japanese aggression in Manchuria, the sanctions enticed the United States and England to enter the Chinese market and led them into the role of codefenders against Japan. Battered by the Chinese boycott, Japanese businesses demanded military intervention. In addition, internal domestic strife in China tempted the Japanese military into seizing Manchuria and making an attack on Shanghai in 1932, thus dashing any hope for a peaceable relationship between Japan and China. These events set the stage for what was to become the Asian arena of World War Il.

Donald A. Jordan is Professor of History, and former Director of Southeast Asia Studies, Ohio University. He is the author of The Northern Expedition: China's National Revolution.