A Dark Page in History: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports

by Suping Lu

Publisher:

University Press of America

, 2012

On December 13, 1937, Japanese troops captured China’s former capital, Nanjing. The events that followed became known as the Rape of Nanking, or the Nanjing Massacre, which, with its magnitude and brutality, shocked the civilized world. Mass executions, rampant raping, wholesale looting, and widespread burning went on for weeks.

After the worst of the atrocities was over, three American diplomats were allowed to return to the fallen city on January 6, 1938. Three days later, British Consul Humphrey Ingelram Prideaux-Brune, Military Attaché William Alexander Lovat-Fraser, and Air Attaché J. S. Walser, along with German diplomats, arrived in Nanjing on the HMS Cricket to reopen the British Embassy.

The British diplomats continuously sent out dispatches reporting local conditions before and after their arrival. These documents form a consistent and reliable record of the massacre, its aftermath, and the general social conditions in the months that followed. This book contains a collection of British diplomatic documents, Royal Navy reports of proceedings, and US naval intelligence reports. A Dark Page in History examines these newly unearthed documents that enhance our knowledge and understanding of the scope and depth of the tragedy in Nanjing.

Contents

Preface
Introduction

1 The Fall of Nanjing
2 Reign of Terror
3 Conditions in the Fallen Capital
4 Violation of British Property and Interests
5 Royal Navy Reports of Proceedings
6 U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports

Notes
Index

Praise for A Dark Page in History

Lu’sprimary documents are a treasure trove for researchers. Furthermore, he is right to argue that the Japanese committed their worst massacres outside the walled city, beyond the view of Westerners.

Product Details

• Title : A Dark Page in History: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Recorded in British Diplomatic Dispatches, Admiralty Documents, and U.S. Naval Intelligence Reports
• Author: Lu, Suping
• Publisher: UPA
• Publication Date: 2012
• ISBN: 9780761858829

About Suping Lu

Suping Lu is a professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is the author of They Were in Nanjing: The Nanjing Massacre Witnessed by American and British Nationals (2004), and the editor of Terror in Minnie Vautrin’s Nanjing: Diaries and Correspondence, 1937-38 (2008), and A Mission under Duress: The Nanjing Massacre and Post-Massacre Social Conditions Documented by American Diplomats (2010).