Everyday Occupation

Chunmei Du is a historian of modern China at Lingnan University.

'This sophisticated book connects everyday offenses and geopolitics into a broad historical argument about the limits of ideology, policy, and propaganda to grasp popular outrage. The Jeep transitioned from a symbol of Allied victory to a representation of American imperialism in postwar China when the U.S. military occupation of North China let loose soldiers who bullied, raped, disregarded traffic signs and offended ordinary people. Reconstructing a complex history of the U.S. Marine III Amphibian Corps (IIIAC)'s fifty-thousand-man force sent to help end the Japanese occupation, Du creates a detailed account for another explanation for how the U.S. 'lost' the People's Republic of China. Deftly wrapping macro-politics (the rise of the U.S. Empire and Cold War) around a regional struggle to capture the Chinese state, this book clarifies how it is still possible to write about the people as a motive force. Beneath abstraction, Du argues, is the terrain of everyday experience where we decide to act or not.' Tani Barlow, Rice University

• Figures; Transliterations and citation practices; Acknowledgements; Introduction: everyday encounter; 1. Occupying China: mission impossible; 2. Sensory contact: life in the orient; 3. Embodied vehicles: Jeep and GIs; 4. Intimate relations: Jeep girls and gendered nationalism; 5. Entangled goods: American charms and harms; Epilogue: Revisiting the lost era; Notes; Bibliography; Index.