h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello,

Congratulations on an exceptional entry, making a complicated subject simple to understand.

Myriad.

Thanks!

I agree, it was an absolute pleasure to read, very well set out and argued.

very well put now i know why and how and who it ultimately led to 1939 war!

This response is specifically to the section on Japan which I would want to suggest needs to be reworked completely. For example, Japanese annual output of coal increased from 21 000 000 tonnes in 1913 to 40 000 000 tonnes in 1936. The problem was not that Japan had no resources, it was that their economic expansion demanded resources. Professor Conrad Totman, in his important work "A History of Japan" observes that Japan's economy GREW dramatically during the decades to 1940 (p. 381).

The analyis of Japan's intervention in China ignores the geo-politics of the time. Japan was seeking to be a world power. It saw its chance in the period of the First World War, and after, and complicated by the Japanese response to the Russian Revolution - all of which allowed Japan to take over Germany's territories in China and Micronesia, and Japan to attack Russia in Siberia. It ignores the even earlier Japano-Russian tensions which led, to the Portsmouth Treaty.

This response is by no means adequate to the whole question, but it does suggest that the section on Japan, at the very least, needs to be re-examined.

Binro, you're missing the point. The fact is that this article puts concisely and simply the reasons for the build up to the war. Your response is in just the style more generally associated with historical writings and is convoluted and difficult to read. In a word...boring. And there's the whole point.

No, this is an excellent article and maybe should be used in schools instead of the hellish rubbish so many of our history books contain.

Superb.