View All Book Series

Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia

About the Book Series

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Asia has undergone immense and far reaching changes: war, revolution, occupation, industrialization. This series includes in-depth research on aspects of economic, political and social history of individual countries as well as more broad-reaching analyses of regional issues.

170 Series Titles


The Dismantling of Japan's Empire in East Asia Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife

The Dismantling of Japan's Empire in East Asia: Deimperialization, Postwar Legitimation and Imperial Afterlife

1st Edition

Edited By Barak Kushner, Sherzod Muminov
February 06, 2018

The end of Japan’s empire appeared to happen very suddenly and cleanly – but, as this book shows, it was in fact very messy, with a long period of establishing or re-establishing the postwar order. Moreover, as the authors argue, empires have afterlives, which, in the case of Japan’s empire, is not...

Cultural Encounters and Homoeroticism in Sri Lanka Sex and Serendipity

Cultural Encounters and Homoeroticism in Sri Lanka: Sex and Serendipity

1st Edition

By Robert Aldrich
January 24, 2018

Ceylon, or Sri Lanka, was long known to travellers for its luxuriant landscapes, colourful temples and friendly inhabitants – the island once named Serendip. This book explores the sojourns of gay visitors from the late 1800s to the modern day, providing a history of homosexuality, travel and ...

Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1350-1800

Early Modern Southeast Asia, 1350-1800

1st Edition

Edited By Ooi Keat Gin, Hoang Anh Tuan
January 12, 2018

This book presents extensive new research findings on and new thinking about Southeast Asia in this interesting, richly diverse, but much understudied period. It examines the wide and well-developed trading networks, explores the different kinds of regimes and the nature of power and security, ...

International Competition in China, 1899-1991 The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Open Door Policy

International Competition in China, 1899-1991: The Rise, Fall, and Restoration of the Open Door Policy

1st Edition

By Bruce Elleman
January 12, 2018

China's recent economic reforms have opened its economy to the world. This policy, however, is not new: in the late nineteenth century, the United States put forward the Open Door Policy as a counter to European exclusive 'spheres of influence' in China. This book, based on extensive original ...

Managing Famine, Flood and Earthquake in China Tianjin, 1958-85

Managing Famine, Flood and Earthquake in China: Tianjin, 1958-85

1st Edition

By Lauri Paltemaa
January 12, 2018

China suffers frequently from many types of natural disasters, which have affected the lives of many millions of Chinese. The steps which the Chinese state has taken to prevent disasters, mitigate their consequences, and reconstruct in the aftermath of disasters are therefore key issues. This book ...

Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600-1900 The Beggar's Gift

Street Performers and Society in Urban Japan, 1600-1900: The Beggar's Gift

1st Edition

By Gerald Groemer
January 12, 2018

This book presents a thoroughly researched and meticulously documented study of the emergence, development, and demise of music, theatre, recitation, and dance witnessed by the populace on thoroughfares, plazas, and makeshift outdoor performance spaces in Edo/Tokyo. For some three hundred years ...

Thailand in the Cold War

Thailand in the Cold War

1st Edition

By Matthew Phillips
January 12, 2018

Thailand’s position during the Cold War was ambiguous: the country’s political leadership was very keen to maintain the country’s independence on the world stage, yet at the same time was anxious to establish the country’s credentials as staunchly anti-communist. However, as this book argues, ...

Treaty Ports in Modern China Law, Land and Power

Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power

1st Edition

Edited By Robert Bickers, Isabella Jackson
January 12, 2018

This book presents a wide range of new research on the Chinese treaty ports – the key strategic places on China’s coast where in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries various foreign powers controlled, through "unequal treaties", whole cities or parts of cities, outside the jurisdiction of ...

The Post-war Roots of Japanese Political Malaise

The Post-war Roots of Japanese Political Malaise

1st Edition

By Dagfinn Gatu
January 03, 2018

Writings on post-war Japanese politics have tended to take for granted the dominance of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) as inevitable, without questioning how this came about. This book analyses the nature of Japanese party politics over the first four decades following the Second World War, ...

Britain's Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905-1980

Britain's Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905-1980

1st Edition

Edited By Antony Best
December 22, 2017

The decline of British power in Asia, from a high point in 1905, when Britain’s ally Japan vanquished the Russian Empire, apparently reducing the perceived threat that Russia posed to its influence in India and China, to the end of the twentieth century, when British power had dwindled to virtually...

Health Policy and Disease in Colonial and Post-Colonial Hong Kong, 1841-2003

Health Policy and Disease in Colonial and Post-Colonial Hong Kong, 1841-2003

1st Edition

By Ka-che Yip, Yuen Sang Leung, Man Kong Timothy Wong
December 21, 2017

Besides looking at major outbreaks of diseases and how they were coped with, diseases such as malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis, plague, venereal disease, avian flu and SARS, this book also examines how the successive government regimes in Hong Kong took action to prevent diseases and control ...

Local History and War Memories in Hokkaido

Local History and War Memories in Hokkaido

1st Edition

Edited By Philip A. Seaton
November 22, 2017

Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, barely features in most histories of the Second World War. However, the combination of distinctive war experiences, a vibrant set of local historian groups, and powerful media organizations disseminating local war history, has generated an identifiable ...

61-72 of 170
AJAX loader