Everyday Occupation

'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
'Compelling, affective, and marvellously delightful to read, Everyday Occupation ingeniously places the postwar US occupation of China under a microscope and reveals a rich texture of sociocultural reality in a volatile historical era. This is microhistory at its best.' Yunte Huang, University of California, Santa Barbara
'A remarkable study of the Chinese response to US soldiers who lingered too long in their country after 1945. With research both broad and deep, Chunmei Du demonstrates that the everyday sociologies of encounter - involving all the senses and including speeding Jeeps, American sexual misconduct, and 'halt or shoot' orders that resulted in the deaths of scores of Chinese - had direct, and devastating, impacts on China-US relations.' Andrew Rotter, Colgate University
'This well documented study of Sino-American encounters over women, food, and material objects foregrounds young American soldiers as accidental emissaries of a postwar global empire of liberal democracy. A multifaceted analysis made possible only by time, Du compellingly delineates the original dilemmas that structured the forgotten beginning of contemporary Chinese anti-Americanism.' Wen-hsin Yeh, University of California, Berkeley