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April 24: The Tormented Alliance, A Lecture by Zach Fredman, Duke Kunshan University

Professor Zach Fredman, Duke Kunshan University, will present a lecture based on his book "The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941-1949" at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, April 24, 2023, in Haldeman 041.

  • Zach Fredman

    Professor Zach Fredman, Duke Kunshan University, will present a lecture based on his book The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941-1949 at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, April 24, 2023, in Haldeman 041. This event is sponsored by the Department of History and the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.

The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941-1949
Zach Fredman, Duke Kunshan University

Monday, April 24, 2023 | 4:30 p.m. | Haldeman 041
This lecture will also be livestreamed. Registration is required to access the livestream: register here.

This event is sponsored by the Department of History and the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding.

Zach Fredman is Assistant Professor of History and Associate Chair of the Division of Arts and Humanities at Duke Kunshan University, which he joined as part of the founding faculty cohort in 2018. Prior to joining DKU, he held postdoctoral fellowships at Nanyang Technological University and Dartmouth College. He earned his Ph.D. at Boston University in 2016.

Abstract:
Zach Fredman's The Tormented Alliance examines the formation, evolution, and undoing of the alliance between the United States and the Republic of China during World War II and the Chinese Civil War. Drawing on English and Chinese-language sources from all areas of China where US forces deployed during the 1940s, he shows how each side brought to the alliance expectations that the other side was simply unable to meet, resulting in a tormented relationship across all levels of Sino-American engagement. Entangled in larger struggles over race, gender, and nation, the U.S. military in China transformed itself into a widely loathed occupation force: an aggressive, resentful, emasculating source of physical danger and compromised sovereignty. After Japan's surrender and the spring 1946 withdrawal of Soviet forces from Manchuria, the U.S. occupation became the chief obstacle to consigning foreign imperialism in China irrevocably to the past. Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek lost his country in 1949, and the U.S. military presence contributed to his defeat. The occupation of China also cast a long shadow, establishing patterns that have followed the U.S. military elsewhere in Asia up to the present.