Book contents
- Occupied
- Occupied
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Patriotisms under Occupation (the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Thailand)
- Part II Fractured Societies and Fractal Identities: Civil Wars under Occupation (Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, and China)
- Prologue to Part II
- 4 The Civil Wars in a Nutshell: Historical Overview
- 5 Continuities and Ruptures
- 6 From Parochial Interests to Internationalist Visions: The Fractal Structures of Political Identity in Civil Wars
- Conclusion to Part II
- Part III Conquest in the Guise of Liberation (the Philippines, Indonesia, and Ukraine)
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusion to Part II
from Part II - Fractured Societies and Fractal Identities: Civil Wars under Occupation (Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, and China)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2023
- Occupied
- Occupied
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I Patriotisms under Occupation (the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Thailand)
- Part II Fractured Societies and Fractal Identities: Civil Wars under Occupation (Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, and China)
- Prologue to Part II
- 4 The Civil Wars in a Nutshell: Historical Overview
- 5 Continuities and Ruptures
- 6 From Parochial Interests to Internationalist Visions: The Fractal Structures of Political Identity in Civil Wars
- Conclusion to Part II
- Part III Conquest in the Guise of Liberation (the Philippines, Indonesia, and Ukraine)
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
If one pans one’s camera back from the intricate details of this chapter’s cases, one common feature that comes into view – at least among China, Yugoslavia, and Greece – is that the relative weakness, brittleness, and/or instability of the pre-war states in each of these countries may have lent itself to the rise of strong resistance movements. Taking over these states was a greater challenge for the occupiers than seizing control of countries pre-equipped with relatively effective and socio-geographically pervasive political and civil-service institutions, such as the Netherlands or France. That is to say, the occupiers found themselves with less of a cooptable set of instruments at their disposal: the weaker the governing infrastructure of the defeated state, the more challenging the occupier’s task of assuming the reins of power.1 The relative isolation of broad swaths of countryside from the systematic reach of centralized power – most notably in China – was conducive to the emergence, survival, and growth over time of significant movements of armed opposition to the occupiers and their indigenous allies or collaborators. These very conditions also lent themselves to civil wars between those who resisted and those who opted to work under the aegis of the occupiers, as well as, in most of these cases, among rival currents of the resistance movements.
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- OccupiedEuropean and Asian Responses to Axis Conquest, 1937–1945, pp. 243 - 250Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023