Accidental State

"Accidental State explores the historical formation in the late 1940s and early 1950s of a de facto state on Taiwan separate from the de facto state ruling the Chinese mainland. The peculiar status of the Republic of China on Taiwan as an independent state but not quite a nation-state is important for our understanding of modern East Asia. Too often we have tended to view the existence of the two political entities across the Taiwan Strait as a logical and most likely consequence of the Chinese civil war fought bitterly after World War II between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong. This book…