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Michael H. Hunt: Frontier defense and the open door: Manchuria in Chinese-American relations, 1895-1911 . (Yale Historical Publications, Miscellany, 95.) xv, 281 pp., 4 plates. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973. $12.50, £4.95.

The reopening of Sino-American diplomatic relations continues to stimulate American scholars to dig into the past. The academic breast-beating over the history of American ' errors' and ' tragedies' resulting from involvement with the Kuomintang is, one hopes, beginning to die down. In its place there is ample room for really interesting pieces of historical analysis such as Mr. Hunt's history of the role of Manchuria in Sino-American relations. Manchuria was the most important area for settlement and economic development acessible to Chinese governments of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Population pressure in central China and the North China plain made its opening unavoidable but this opening, allied with modern agricultural and industrial capital, could turn the area into a remarkable centre of modern growth. These possibilities were visible to Russia, to Japan, and to the United States. As physical neighbours to Manchuria, Russia and Japan saw the region as a crucial factor in their domestic economic situation and as an obvious target for colonization. For Americans, on the other hand, Manchuria was a natural home for capital exports. The vast frontier area offered possibilities of railway construction and agricultural and industrial development providing American access could be secured and maintained. Manchuria was thus an important test case of the policy of maintaining the ' Open Door'. The Chinese policy towards the region was based on perception of the dangers and possibilities inherent in foreign rivalry and interest in the area and a number of shrewd senior officials, notably Chang Chih-tung and Hsiliang, attempted to play the foreigners against each other. In this play, alliance with the least dangerous partner, the United States, was the obvious strategy. Hunt's book explains how domestic Chinese and American developments and the problems of communication between a dying Oriental and a burgeoning Western culture frustrated this natural partnership and left a vacuum that was soon to be filled by Japan. Based on American and Chinese archives, this book will become a standard part of the history of diplomacy in the Far East.