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Hans van de Ven

lines on the record: 23
first: 2026-07-14
most recent: 2026-07-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Dutch kingdom in which social democrats or democrats were in control in Indonesia and in the Netherlands. And they could have found a new future through some kind of constitutional framework in which, of course, there's a great deal of independence. There's still some connection between the two. And I think that actually is very interesting option that remained in play until quite late. I mean, he continued to stand for some kind of set of unities between Europe and Asia. Of course, they were raptured. So, yeah, I think these outcomes are just wonderfully interesting and we can write lots of different what-if versions, which might be an interesting exercise.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pakistan, but Inhiru wants a unified India. And it seems that in the end they exhausted themselves into negotiations to such an extent that they all gave up and said, okay, well, in that case, we can't think of anything better, but we will go for divided India. And I think that was not at all obvious until 1947 that that was the only possible outcome at all. So it's the contingency, the multiplicity of futures that remained in play until very late in the day that I found so striking of this history. So yes, you have powerful independence movements, and maybe they would have come empire and maybe Europeans would have turned against the empire themselves. But it's the precise outcomes that are interesting. There's one other one that I should mention, which is Sudan Shahriya's vision. With the articles.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Advanced forces of independence. So I think precisely what kind of Asia we were going to have is not obvious until very late in the day. It's not obvious at a time of the Japanese surrender. And it's not obvious really, I think, until we have the great battles between 1946 and 1949 when these decisions about what kind of future are we going to have were fought on the battlefield on the whole. The Civil War in China is one, the war between the Dutch and the various forces that we're fighting for Indonesian independence, ranging from the Muslims to the seculars to yet other possibilities. And of course in India it's ultimately it's a division between Jinnah and Nehru who wants separate”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was support for that, certainly in Indonesia, certainly in Vietnam, maybe not in India, or a much more Muslim-oriented Asia might have emerged. Indonesia could have become a Muslim country, and it was kind of Sukhai No being cleverly manipulated. The Muslims at the time of surrender, that meant that that option that he had agreed to did not happen. I think within China, he had lots of debates about communists, the liberal, do we want Confucian? What is it the kind of China we want to be? In India, you have, of course, the great debates between Muslims and Hindus themselves, but then you have people speaking up like Ambedkar for the Dalits. They wanted a much greater position within Levi's whole issue of the Sikhs have done so much both to protect the empire, but also to them became”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's in looking at India, Indonesia, and China. I think it's very interesting that each of them is a large unified country. And each of them struggled very hard in the context of the Second World War to achieve that. There was a real commitment to becoming big countries. And that I always thought is not necessarily the obvious choice for places like China or India or Indonesia. fragmented or a decentralized polities would have made enormous sense. That did not happen, as I say, because they decided that the dividing strategies of the European powers was not something they wanted. They believed that kept them subordinate and they wanted to recover their agency. But I think other possibilities in play at the time was one of an Asia that would have gone completely communist.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, that's a great sort of what if question and any what-if question, the answer is always, well, the future is hard enough to predict as it is. Now talk about it with some alternative futures. And I think these movements that took root in the 1920s, let me put it this way. I think the Asia with which we live today is the product of the Second World War. I hope to bring across in the book that these outcomes were contingent on so many different developments. We might well have a new kind of decolonized Asia, perhaps, or the empires might have endured.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the same time that his supplies vast amounts of weapons to detain his communists. I think he really wanted divided China. So I think from his perspective we still have divided very, very clever.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just symbolic support, but also helps them in other ways. And this calculation, and that support strengthens after 1941, 1942. And I think his calculation really is that it is in his best interest to end up with a divided China. And that creates this region of securities, these frontiers around the Soviet Union that ensure the Soviet Union's safety. He does this in Eastern Europe, of course, does this in Korea. That's one reason we end up with divided Korea. And he clearly tried to do so in 1945 after the Japanese surrender in China as well, when, yes, he has a treaty with Jang Kaishak. Yes, he says, the Janka-Shak government is the government of China.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dankashk's decision to take on the Japanese by supplying vast amounts of weapons, including 1,000 planes and pilots and so on, which enable the Chinese resistance to Japan. I think without that, Chanka Shak would have been swiped off the board much more quickly. It's also an interesting fact that this army that Janka-shek uses to fight the Japanese is trained and partly armed by the Germans, who also make certain calculations about this. It's Hitler who decides not to discontinue his support for Janga-shek and then comes to terms in the end with Stalin. Now for Stalin, I think he is strategically extremely clever. He does not abandon the Chinese communist. He continues to support them, to train people in Moscow. Malzatone.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And of course John Kai Shak's messages between John Kaek and Stalin are interesting because Stalin wants Janka-Shek to fight the Japanese. Janka Shekh wants Stalin to fight the Japanese because he's a much better army. And so that tug of war between the two is interesting. Stalin, in the end, he secures”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hero of nationalism that, you know, and he still is seen as a real war hero, but it's much more diverse. And so I think these complications are much more alive in the public memories of the war are very much more alive in Asia today than I think that they are for younger generations in Europe and the United States, for whom the Second World War is very much in the past. And I think the reason for that is that the Second World War in Asia really did lead to these or fueled the independence movements. And so the origins of the Asia that we have today really must be found in the Second World War. And that's just, you know, and I think for... Her own younger generations in Europe and the United States, there's probably much less the case. For them, the Second World War very much is the past, and they've moved on to new issues.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very much uppermost in the public memory in India. And there is this very interesting figure of Subhas Chandra Bose, who likes Sakharov, decided that if India was going to become independent, it had to fight for it. And he worked with the Japanese to raise an army among POWs in Singapore, Burma, Malaysia, so on. And he, in fact, fought with Japanese in 1944 in an attempt to invade India and to take it over. So he was tried by the British after 1945 as a traitor, of course. But that trial had to be abandoned, really, by the British because there was such popular support for this kind of”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was very effective, and I think the choice was understandable. So the remembering of the Japanese occupation is a bit more difficult. I think in India, remembering is very much of an army that did fighting a very large army, did fought a Japanese very successfully in Burma. There's also a feeling of India's contributions to the victories of the Allies, not being sufficiently recognized. And of course the Indian army fought with the Allies, not just in Burma, but also in the Middle East, in Italy, in North Africa, and so on. So their contribution was very, very significant. But it is the British Empire. The Bank of Famine in which 3 million people died that continues to”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Communist Revolution, of which the war against Japan was one part. One reason it's public in Chinese public, difficult in Chinese public memory is because during the Second World War, the communists fought guerrilla war behind Japanese lines, which was not that significant. It was the nationalists of Jang Kaishak who really did most of the fighting. So it's a bit problematic. And I think just what did come out of that is the horror of the Japanese occupation of China, the famines that happened and so on. I think that those themes run quite in a big way through it. In Indonesia, as far as I know, which is limited, the Second World War was a bit more problematic because Sukarno made the decision to seek independence by working with the Japanese. So that's, you know.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You say, I can, and as you say, it's a very broad question. There's a lot of diversity. But with that caveat, I think in China, until the 1980s, the Second World War didn't figure in public memory. It was the revolution that was the main communist revolution, mao's revolution, that was the main narrative line. Then after the Cultural Revolution, communism became sort of problematic. And so there was a switch towards a much more nationalistic, a nationalist remembering of the Second World War. The Second World War was used at the narrative to sort of reunify the Chinese public, and that worked very well. More recently in China under Xi Jinping, the revolutionary story is being reactivated and the Second World War is giving less attention. So the story of China today is the story of”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Divided within themselves. And so that too would have an enormous impact on the world in which Asia now lives today. And the Taiwan-China issue is there, the Pakistan issue is there. I think that we really ought to chase back to these improvisations of organizing mass movements and deriving serious political power from them. I think it's interesting that in the 30s this kind of died down and empires re-establish their authority. But then when the war breaks out, there's sort of a new opportunity for these mass movements that leaders of independence movements grab with enthusiasm and often with real insight and ability.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A dim goal really onto the streets. And then suddenly you have the power of mass movement becoming obvious. And I think that had a real impact on the way the independence movements that came out of the Second World War developed themselves because yes, people could see political organizers could see that you have this power of mass movement. Then the question is, how do you organize that? What kinds of institutions do you develop? What party organizations? How do you develop? What kinds of slogans are you going to use? And so as they developed improvised, almost I think, improvised these mass movements, these mass political parties, there are also serious splits emerging within them in the Chinese case. It's the splits between the nationalists and communists. In India, you have the splits between more Muslim-oriented, more Hindu oriented. These mass movements also become”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“led to mass outbreaks of protests in Korea, China, in India, in Egypt, and so on. And then people began to realize well, actually, we can mobilize power from these protests on the streets. In that, in the wake of the First World War, that you get the founding of all kinds of new parties, political parties, mass political parties. You have the emergence of mass politics, the realization you get power from organizing the masses. And that, of course, before the First World War, yes, you have movements for independence, but these were elites movements for independence. These were debating societies.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A great question, and I think you're absolutely right. There's a huge difference in how people in Asia dealt with the First World War. It was an economic opportunity for Indians who joined the Indian Army. One million people did so. It was a job, some money. For Japan, it was an opportunity to begin to expand its empire by taking bits of China and, of course, occupying the Pacific Islands. For China too, for some people in China too, there was a job opportunity. There was 150 to 200,000 Chinese laborers in France. And so again, but for them, it's still thought in terms of empire. Now, what changed, I think, in the aftermath of the First World War is these protests that suddenly appeared in 1919 in the aftermath of Versailles, sort of when Wilson's Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric about self-”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Thinking about it in certain ways. To open up that discussion, open up that debate to think about Asia more generally and to take seriously that Japan was trying to build an empire and was actually, you know, it was not stupid in doing so. It was often very clever in doing so. So it's from that background to sort of the politics in Europe itself. It's the transformation in the world we are facing today with the riot re-emergence of Asia generally and then the sort of the more historiographical point of, well, all these wars were actually really interconnected. And the makers of that war, the leaders at the time thought globally. They didn't think nationally. They also thought nationally, but they had a global perspective.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And more and more I tend to realise that to understand that particular theme, which is a very much a very big theme in China now with rising nationalism and so on, actually you can't really exclude the rest of Asia. You can't exclude, you have to rethink what Japan was trying to do its builds, its empire. And so all these things are interconnected. And I think we still, it's not just British and American, the Victor countries, so to speak, but also European countries, the Dutch, the French, the Germans, who still think we're right about the Second World War, sort of national wars. It is France and. It's the Dutch and I think, well, actually, it is a global war. It was a global war. And we need to have a global perspective on this war. It understands its significance and to sort of get us out of thinking about the Second World When you solidified ways, where we sort of tracked.”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The direction that the world is taking with Asia becoming a hugely important part of the world meant, let me put it this way, I think in the afternoon of the Second World War, for decades, it was quite reasonable for Europeans and Americans to sort of ignore Asia. It was populist, but it was largely agricultural and very poor, and it didn't matter geopolitically. We now live in a very, very different world. Asia is developing very quickly has developed very quickly China's become a superpower Japan in many ways is a big power India is moving in that direction Indonesia is moving in that direction and unless we deal with that re-emergence in some ways of Asia I don't think we're going to understand our own times very much so that was one reason the other reason is as I said I've been working on the Second World War in China for a long time”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Started thinking about this book some time ago really during Brexit when the Second World War was a major sort of it was a lens through which so much was seen that had to do with Britain's position and the world, Europe's position in the world and so on, where all the Churchill movies and so on and I've been working on China's war with Japan for many decades and of course I kept thinking well actually the Second World War is a much more Is much broader theme, and we need to know the Asian perspective on the Second World War, really in order to understand”
2026-07-14 · Intelligence Squared · How Did World War II Create Modern Asia? With Professor Hans van de Ven · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT