Examines the rivalry between the US and Britain over China between World War II and the Korean War, a link that has been neglected by scholars distracted by the dominant theme of the Cold War. Finds that the two governments did not collaborate in any significant manner, that the succession from one imperial power to another was not particularly friendly, that the British considered the US fetish for antagonizing Mao Tse Tung misguided and dangerous, that the US missed its chance to consolidate power in the region and began the slide to Viet Nam in 1950, and that Britain had no choice by then but to tie their wagon to the wayward US in order to salvage the remnants of British imperial spoil. Paper edition (unseen), $25. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Attempts to shed new light on the Anglo-American rivalry in China in the period between the defeat of Japan and the triumph of the Chinese Communists. This study contends that the USSR was not a major factor in the dispute.

The surrender of Hong Kong to the Japanese in December 1941 started the collapse of British power in the Far East. Disproportionate to its small size, the colony became critical in Britain's battle to retain her Empire. Ironically, the threat to British sovereignty came not from Japan, but her own allies, America and China. New light is shed on the multi-faceted Anglo-American relationship, the significance of Britain's 'imperial mentality', and China's claim to the colony.

As the cold war took shape during the late 1940s, policymakers in the United States and Great Britain displayed a marked tendency to regard international communism as a "monolithic" conspiratorial movement. The image of a "communist monolith" distilled the messy realities of international relations into a neat, comprehensible formula. Its lesson was that all communists, regardless of their native land or political program, were essentially tools of the Kremlin. Marc Selverstone recreates the manner in which the "monolith" emerged as a perpetual framework on both sides of the Atlantic. Though more pervasive and millennial in its American guise, this understanding also informed conceptions of international communism in its close ally Great Britain, casting the Kremlin's challenge as but one more in a long line of threats to freedom. This illuminating and important book not only explains the cold war mindset that determined global policy for much of the twentieth century, but reveals how the search to define a foreign threat can shape the ways in which that threat is actually met.