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Asia in the Old and
New Cold Wars
Ideologies, Narratives,
and Lived Experiences
Edited by
Kenneth Paul Tan
Asia in the Old and New Cold Wars
Kenneth Paul Tan
Editor
Asia in the Old

and New Cold Wars
Ideologies, Narratives, and Lived Experiences
Editor
Kenneth Paul Tan
School of Communication
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon, Hong Kong
ISBN 978-981-19-7680-3 ISBN 978-981-19-7681-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7681-0
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
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tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
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and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore
189721, Singapore
Preface
While there certainly had been people who imagined the fall of the Soviet
Union, hardly anyone among them can be said to have predicted its
dissolution and the peaceful end of the Cold War to any level of detail
matching the dramatic events leading up to them in 1991, more than 30
years ago. That celebratory world-historic spectacle called for a master-
narrative that could make sense of the often-bewildering events of the
past decades.
The most prominent among these was American political scien-
tist Francis Fukuyama’s “end of History” thesis, which triumphantly
announced the victory of capitalist liberal democracy over competing
ideologies, including fascism and communism. Historiographical debates,
which flourished and were fuelled by the events of the Cold War, came full
circle as orthodox accounts that had blamed Soviet political and ideolog-
ical expansionism for the Cold War and its worst excesses started to prevail
again over revisionist and New Left efforts to shift the object of blame
onto the hegemonic project of U.S. imperialism and its pre-eminent role
in global capitalism. The end of History, it seemed, had finally arrived.
And the victors were eager to claim its definitive authorship.
But the political and historical impetus to unify a narrative for the
Cold War at its conclusion also triggered divergent new lines of enquiry
that shifted attention away from politically charged questions of respon-
sibility and blame, and the centrality of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R, to a
more interdisciplinary, theoretically informed, methodologically eclectic,
v
vi PREFACE
contextually sensitive, and self-reflexive enquiry, directed at multiple scales

of human and social experience, whose modes of analysis range from the
technical to the moral and to the aesthetic.
Over the last 30 years, much of this more diverse scholarship
surrounding the Cold War has sought to dislodge it from the preoc-
cupations of national security interests, geo-strategic power play, grand
ideological conflict, political leadership, political regime typology, and
military technology at the heart of more conventional approaches in the
fields of history, international relations, and political science, giving more
space to questions of psychology, beliefs, sentiments, (popular) culture,
the arts, media, communications, new technology, and domestic politics
including the politics of race, gender, sexuality, and class. This was an
acknowledgement of the sheer complexity of the Cold War and the gross
inadequacy of linear causal thinking for making sense of it.
The chapters in this book, individually and as a whole, show respect
for this complexity. They were selected from over 70 papers presented
at a three-day international and interdisciplinary conference held on 11
to 13 November 2021, titled “Narrating Cold Wars”. Marking the 30th
anniversary of the end of the Cold War, the conference—and subsequently
this book—aimed firstly to enrich the textures of Cold-War studies by
exploring the extension of the historic Cold War—that is said to have
ended in 1991—into the present time. Today, we are witnessing rapidly
growing and intensifying concerns over a “New Cold War”, driven in
many respects by the emergence of a potentially new superpower rivalry
between the United States and China, the former apparently in decline
and the latter on the rise. Meanwhile, Russia—a shadow of the original
Cold-War superpower that it used to be—continues to flex its geopolitical
muscles, launching in 2022 a full-scale invasion of neighbouring Ukraine
that could escalate into a larger war.
Secondly, the book aims to provide “ground-up” perspectives to
supplement, enrich, and perhaps even de-centre the persistent grand
narratives and grand strategies of the Cold War that have tended to
project the world abstractly in black-and-white terms—good vs. evil, us
vs. them, heroes protecting victims against villains—terms that constrain
the collective powers of imagination, collaboration, progress, and tran-
scendence. Cold-War ideological struggles have not abated, continuing
to filter down into—and be modulated by—the lives and livelihoods of
ordinary people. While high-level events and the Cold-War narratives
and strategies that continue to frame and control their significance are
PREFACE vii
certainly important for critical analysis, this book descends from the lofty
considerations of geopolitics, foreign policy, and international relations to
focus, at the level of lived experience, on how people and their communi-
ties, especially the marginalized, have been affected by Cold-War legacies,
including its modes and styles of reasoning and feeling. In this respect,
the book focuses on people and communities in Asia who have moved or
been dislocated and resettled, sometimes brutally, and how their identi-
ties have subsequently been formed, suppressed, or contested. The book
also focuses on how people and their communities have responded to a
more confident and assertive China, particularly in the context of its soft
power campaigns like the Belt-and-Road Initiative, showcasing Chinese
government investments in massive global infrastructure development
projects.
The book aims to provide rich and diverse insight into the complex
relationship between the Cold War and its legacies on the one hand and,
on the other, their impact on Asia, its plural histories and peoples, and
their shifting identities, their ideological beliefs, their lived experiences,
and the stories that they tell about themselves and that others tell about
them.
The Narrating Cold Wars conference was organized by Hong Kong
Baptist University’s School of Communication (and Film), in collabora-
tion with the Academy of Visual Arts and the Department of Government
and International Studies. As the conference curator, I would like to
place on record my thanks to members of its organizing committee:
Noit Banai, Jean-Pierre Cabestan, Alistair Cole, Cherian George, Mateja
Kovacic, Daya Thussu, and Ying Zhu. I also want to thank the School
of Communication (and Film) led by its then-Dean, Huang Yu, and
the university’s Research Office, headed by the then-Vice-President for
Research and Development, Guo Yike, for their generous support. Videos
viii PREFACE
of all conference sessions can be viewed at https://www.hkbu.online/nar

ratingcoldwars/.
Kowloon, Hong Kong Kenneth Paul Tan

September 2022
Contents
1 Interpreting the Cold War and the New Cold War

in Asia 1
Kenneth Paul Tan
2 Curating Memory: Cold-War Narratives in Museums
and Memorials in Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea,
and Cambodia 25
Giacomo Bagarella
3 Ecology as a Cold-War Scale: Lau Kek Huat’s Absent
Without Leave and Ha Jin’s War Trash 55
Zhou Hau Liew
4 Where Is My Homeland? Mainland Chinese Refugees
and Hong Kong Tenement Films During the Cold-War
Era 79
Linda Huixian Ou
5 Grand Strategies and Everyday Struggles Under
the New Cold War and COVID-19: A Sociological
Political Economy 103
John Wei
ix
x CONTENTS
6 The Cold-War Structure of Feeling: Revisiting

the Discourse of “Dalumei” (Mainland Little Sister)
in Taiwan 127
I-ting Chen
7 China’s Health Diplomacy in the “New-Cold-War”
Era: Contrasting the Battle of Narratives in Europe
and the Middle East and North Africa 157
Emilie Tran and Yahia H. Zoubir
8 Hungary and the New-Cold-War Narrative on China 189
Ágota Révész
9 Haunted History: Exorcising the Cold War 221
Kenneth Paul Tan
Index 233
Notes on Contributors
Giacomo Bagarella is a consultant and writer based in New York City.

He is a Director at HR&A Advisors, where he advises clients on urban
and economic development. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Government
from Harvard University and a joint master’s in public policy from the
London School of Economics and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of
Public Policy. His passion for cities, places, and their histories informs
projects such as this one. His work has been published in magazines such
as Foreign Policy, TechCrunch, and Gizmodo, as well as in peer-reviewed
journals in Asia and Europe.
I-ting Chen received her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at Lingnan Univer-
sity, Hong Kong. She is currently a lecturer at HKU SPACE Community
College. Her research interests include Cold-War politics, sexual labour,
gender and sexuality, migration and mobility, and cross-strait intimacy
between Taiwan and mainland China. Her articles are published and
accepted by academic journals, including Cultural Studies, Inter-Asia
Cultural Studies, and Forum in Women’s and Gender Studies.
Zhou Hau Liew is Assistant Professor at National Chung Hsing
University (NCHU). His current project, Land, Sea and Globe: Mate-
riality and World-making in Chinese-Malaysian Literature, is a study of
twentieth-century Chinese-Malaysian writing which critiques state-driven
resource extraction and rethinks globality from the resource frontier.
His academic and non-fiction writings have appeared in Critical Asian
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Studies, PR&TA, Mekong Review, and The Margins by Asian American

Writers’ Workshop.
Linda Huixian Ou is a Ph.D. candidate in the Academy of Film at
Hong Kong Baptist University. She holds a B.A. degree in English from
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and a M.A. degree in Human-
ities from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She is
currently working on a dissertation on the history and politics of Hong
Kong tenement films in the 1940s to the 1970s, aiming to open up a new
avenue via tenement drama to understand Chinese history and culture,
the Shanghai-Hong Kong-Guangdong film connections, and Hong Kong
society in its social, political, and cultural aspects in the twentieth century.
Ágota Révész sinologist, worked in China for six years as a diplomat
representing her native Hungary. Her most recent research project at
Freie Universität Berlin focused on Chinese cultural diplomacy. She
is now leading an interdisciplinary project aiming at “China compe-
tence” at the Center for Cultural Studies on Science and Technology
in China at Technische Universität Berlin. Her current research focus is
EU-China relations, Chinese soft power, and perceptions of China (narra-
tives and framing in the European media). She is also coordinator for
the Working Group “Public diplomacy and knowledge production” of
CHERN (China-in-Europe Research Network).
Kenneth Paul Tan is a tenured Professor of Politics, Film, and Cultural
Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU). His recent books
include Movies to Save Our World: Imagining Poverty, Inequality and
Environmental Destruction in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2022), Singa-
pore’s First Year of COVID-19: Public Health, Immigration, the Neoliberal
State, and Authoritarian Populism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Singa-
pore: Identity, Brand, Power (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and
Governing Global-City Singapore: Legacies and Futures After Lee Kuan
Yew (Routledge, 2017)
Emilie Tran is Assistant Professor, Division of Social Sciences, School
of Arts and Social Sciences, Hong Kong Metropolitan University. She
obtained her Ph.D. from the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales,
Paris, France. She has been living and working in Greater China since
2000. Driven by international and multidisciplinary collaborations, her
scholarship investigates global China and her research themes are framed
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
in terms of global public health; digital and public diplomacy; compar-

ative public policy and governance. She has published in the Journal of
Contemporary China, Mediterranean Politics, China Perspectives, China:
An International Journal, and International Migration.
John Wei is a lecturer in Sociology and Gender Studies at the Univer-
sity of Otago. He is the author of Queer Chinese Cultures and Mobilities:
Kinship, Migration, and Middle Classes (2020, Hong Kong University
Press).
Yahia H. Zoubir (Ph.D.) is Professor of International Studies and
Director of Research in Geopolitics at KEDGE Business School, France.
He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Council on
Global Affairs in Doha, Qatar. He has taught at multiple universities in
the United States, China, Europe, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and
the Middle East and North Africa. He is the author/editor of several
books. He is the author of dozens of articles in leading academic jour-
nals, such as the Journal of Contemporary China, Foreign Affairs, Third
World Quarterly, Mediterranean Politics, International Affairs, Democ-
ratization, Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, etc. His forthcoming
edited volume is The Routledge Companion to China and the Middle East
and North Africa.
List of Images
Image 2.1 Chenggong beach and fortifications, which are typical

of much of Kinmen’s coastline (© Giacomo Bagarella) 31
Image 2.2 Chinese artillery shells on display among knives on sale
at the Maestro Wu shop (© Giacomo Bagarella) 33
Image 2.3 American soldiers falling into Communist traps,
as depicted in Cu Chi’s dioramas (© Giacomo Bagarella) 35
Image 2.4 Display on U.S. air bombing campaigns at the War
Remnants Museum (© Giacomo Bagarella) 38
Image 2.5 A display on the contributions of each country
that participated in the United Nations’ operation
in Korea (Note the U.N. logo mosaic. © Giacomo
Bagarella) 41
Image 2.6 The defused landmine and explosives display
at the Cambodia Landmine Museum (© Giacomo
Bagarella) 44
Image 2.7 A former school building converted to an interrogation
and torture centre at S-21 (Note audio guide item 6,
“school equipment used for torture”, at the bottom left.
© Giacomo Bagarella) 48
Image 3.1 United Nations Memorial Cemetery, Busan, South
Korea (© Zhou Hau Liew) 59
Image 3.2 Movement of Malayan Communist Party members
(© Zhou Hau Liew) 61
Image 3.3 Movement of Chinese People’s Volunteer Army
(© Zhou Hau Liew) 68
xv
List of Tables
Table 8.1 List of online news media outlets included in the research 200
Table 8.2 Summary of frames 202
xvii
CHAPTER 1
Interpreting the Cold War and the New

Cold War in Asia
Kenneth Paul Tan
The Cold War dominated the twentieth century and its effects have been
felt in almost every part of the world, even until today. Current issues
and debates in global affairs are, for instance, often explained by notable
personalities in foreign policy, academia, journalism, and the arts in terms
of a “New Cold War”, though not without some scepticism. The New
Cold War, it might seem to many, follows the same basic narrative of the
original Cold War’s script, but is performed to different audiences, by
different actors, on different stage sets, and dressed in different costumes.
Given how destructive—even traumatic—the original Cold War has been,
if we wish to break out of this potentially endless cycle of historical
repetition, we will need to find new ways of interpreting the Cold War
and consider how the different interpretive approaches can be brought
together for more critical and transformative insights. This book aims to
K. P. Tan (B)
School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon, Hong
Kong
e-mail: kennethptan@hkbu.edu.hk
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
K. P. Tan (ed.), Asia in the Old and New Cold Wars,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7681-0_1
2 K. P. TAN
contribute to ongoing work that integrates new and different approaches

to understanding the Cold War.
For many, the Cold War is principally a historical phenomenon,
pertaining to a very large, complicated, and influential set, sequence, or
causal chain of events that occurred mostly within a timeframe that starts
in 1945 (the end of World War II) and ends in 1991 (the collapse of the
Soviet Union). Understanding this historical Cold War demands intel-
lectual rigour aimed at discovering the objective truth about what really
happened, why, and therefore what it all means for us today. With greater
access to an expanding pool of structured and unstructured data, espe-
cially from archives around the world in this internet and social media
age, the task of ascertaining their authenticity and significance as historical
facts and evidence—through logical reasoning, meaningful interpretation,
and attention to context—becomes even more important. The objective
truth about the historical Cold War is, however, elusive and subjected to
continuous and sometimes unresolvable debate. This is not only because
so much of the past is still simply unknowable and therefore neces-
sarily reconstructed through imagination, speculation, and even wishful
thinking, but also because important political and geopolitical interests
are at stake. Today, we still ask whether the historical Cold War really
concluded in 1991, or whether it has continued in essence to the present
day, or whether a New Cold War is emerging and, if so, in what forms.
Is the Cold-War superpower rivalry between the United States and the
Soviet Union re-emerging today as a New Cold War between the United
States (again) and China, a fast-rising superpower?
For others, the Cold War is about ideological struggle. The world was
divided, according to this view, into those countries in the “Western Bloc”
led by the United States that were aligned with capitalism and liberal
democracy, those in the “Eastern Bloc” led by the Soviet Union that
were aligned with communism and authoritarian forms of democracy, and
those that claimed to be non-aligned, offering the possibility of a third
way in a basically ideologically bipolar world. According to this view also,
which is understood to be the victor’s account of history, the end of the
Cold War marked the victory of capitalist liberal democracy over commu-
nist totalitarianism. Today, though it would seem a much less ideologically
driven time, concerns about a New Cold War are often also couched in
ideological terms. It is, however, difficult to argue conclusively that the
United States, whose democratic institutions have been severely strained
by a Donald Trump presidency, is a purely capitalist liberal democracy
1 INTERPRETING THE COLD WAR AND THE NEW COLD WAR … 3
or that China, whose own elite have described its ideological identity as
“socialism with Chinese characteristics”, is a purely communist autocracy.
Nevertheless, ideological allegiance and alignment, in many cases a cover
for more basic material and political interests, serve to mobilize support
and motivate actions in the United States, China, and many countries that
are drawn to engagement with either or both.
For some others, the Cold War is interesting for the way it is indi-
vidually and collectively narrated—that is to say, the stories that bring
the historical facts and ideological beliefs to life through vivid story-
telling techniques and formats. In this sense, the Cold War is not—and
cannot possibly aim to be—an absolutely objective truth about our past.
Its reality is based, instead, on the way stories give it meaning—from the
loftiest grand narratives about global history to the smallest stories of
everyday life. These stories about the Cold War are insinuated in the films
and television programmes we watch, the books we read, the news we rely
on to keep abreast of current affairs, the museums and public monuments
that we visit, and the often barely noticeable propaganda messages that
seep into every crevice of our popular consciousness and imagination.
And finally, for some, the Cold War is a lived experience even today,
several decades after its historical conclusion. The facts, ideologies, and
narratives of the Cold War have shaped institutions, norms, and prac-
tices in the contemporary world in such ways as to tether everyday life
inescapably to the logic and structure of the Cold War. For some, this
opens productive possibilities and opportunities for human flourishing,
while locking down others in hardship, exploitation, and oppression.
Those interested in the Cold War as lived experience often study the lives
of ordinary and marginalized peoples to gain clarity on the insidious ways
that Cold-War histories, ideologies, and narratives have infused into the
daily experience especially of the disadvantaged, shaping their prospects
and choices in life.
Centring on Asia and China in particular, this book is a collection of
essays that focuses on the Cold War as lived experience and as storytelling,
exploring how they intersect with the Cold War as ideological struggle
and historical accounting. The book analyses museums, monuments,
films, television serials, novels, non-fiction writing, news reports, polit-
ical speeches, and marginalized peoples, using multidisciplinary methods
that range from textual analysis, to critical discourse analysis, to ethnog-
raphy, and to (micro-)sociological approaches to international relations
and international political economy.
4 K. P. TAN
Cold-War Histories
The Cold War is a major topic of study in several disciplines, including
history, international relations, international economics, political science,
and various multidisciplinary combinations of these.
American sociologist Craig Calhoun (2002) describes three approaches
to Cold-War history: “traditionalist”, “revisionist”, and “post-revisionist”.
The first of these—also often referred to as the “orthodox” approach—
constitutes the “official” United States’ version of the Cold War. Unsur-
prisingly, it places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union,
viewing its expansion into Eastern Europe as acts of aggression motivated
by a worldwide call to communist revolution. These acts, traditionalists
argue, forced the United States to give up its isolationism to counter
communist insurgencies around the world (in accordance with its Truman
Doctrine) and to provide foreign aid to its Western European allies to
rebuild their post-war economies (through the Marshall Plan).
The revisionist approach, Calhoun explains, views the United States as
being more responsible than the Soviet Union for the Cold War, a claim
supported with examples of how the United States had tried to isolate
and confront the Soviet Union even before World War II had ended. The
Soviet Union’s actions, therefore, are viewed as reactive and defensive
in nature. This more critical view of the United States emerged during
the Vietnam War (also known as the American War in Vietnam), when
American public scepticism of its role in world affairs was at a high point.
Calhoun briefly mentions a third, more balanced and nuanced,
approach. This emerging post-revisionist scholarship is much less
concerned with assigning blame, than it is with carefully contextualizing
the actions and perspectives of all parties during the period. It is this
approach that the chapters of this book will broadly adopt.
Cold-War Conflicts in Asia

The “coldness” of the Cold War is understood to mean the absence
of direct large-scale military conflict between the United States and the
Soviet Union from the end of World War II to the dissolution of the
Soviet Union. Superpower conflict, however, did play out in non-military
fields such as the space race to put a man on the moon, international
sporting tournaments, trade wars, and propaganda campaigns that used
the visual and performing arts, literature, films, television, popular culture
in general, and news media to conduct psychological warfare and boost

their own soft power in what has been described as a “cultural Cold War”.
While both superpowers did not fight each other directly, they were very
certainly behind proxy wars in the Third World, some major ones fought
in the decolonizing or newly decolonized nations-states in Asia.
The Korean War

The Korean War was an example of this. After 35 years under the rule
of Imperial Japan, which surrendered at the end of World War II in
1945, Korea was divided along the 38th parallel to create a northern
zone administered by the Soviet Union and a southern zone adminis-
tered by the United States. The Korean War broke out in June 1950 when
the North Korean People’s Army invaded South Korea. Socialist North
Korea was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while its capitalist
South Korean adversary was backed by the United States and the United
Nations more broadly. In October 1950, U.S. and U.N. forces jointly
invaded North Korea and advanced to the Yalu River at the border of
North Korea and China, a move that provoked China to send its forces
across the Yalu and successfully repel the U.S. and U.N. forces back to
the 38th parallel. Towards the end of the war, there was sharp disagree-
ment over repatriation policy for Chinese prisoners of war held on Koje
Island: China wanted immediate repatriation to their country of origin,
but the United States wanted to give them the right to choose, which
would mean allowing those who did not want to return to communist
China to go to Taiwan and elsewhere. Although an armistice agreement
was reached in 1953, without a peace treaty, the two Koreas continue
until today to be in a frozen conflict.
The Vietnam War

In the case of the Vietnam War, which started in 1955 shortly after
the military defeat and departure of the French colonial government,
North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while
South Vietnam was supported (eventually with substantial direct mili-
tary involvement) by the United States. This proxy war in Asia spilled
over to neighbouring Cambodia and Laos, as American troops bombed
supply routes to North Vietnam. Civil wars being fought there escalated.
6 K. P. TAN
Following a policy of “Vietnamization” in 1968, the United States with-

drew from Vietnam and Cambodia, and—as its material support for the
strengthening of military and civilian capacity in South Vietnam weak-
ened—North Vietnam was able to take over the south. The end of the
war in 1975 saw Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos all become communist
regimes.
In Cambodia, the totalitarian and genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, led
by the Communist Party of Kampuchea and supported by the Chinese
Communist Party (C.C.P.), took hold of power in 1975 and was ousted
in 1979 after an invasion by a now-unified communist Vietnam, surren-
dering only in 1999 after decades in exile. Under the Khmer Rouge’s rule
of terror, there was death by starvation and disease, as well as torture and
execution of political opponents and ethnic minority people, amounting
to the death of about a quarter of the Cambodian population.
All in all, the Vietnam War—as a battleground for Cold-War conflicts—
has caused significant damage and loss in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos,
from lives to infrastructure to the natural environment. Up to today,
Cambodia struggles with its problem of landmines, millions of them that
had been laid by various factions during its civil war and whose loca-
tions are now dangerously forgotten and difficult to trace. As for the
United States, the war led to public scepticism, economic damage, and a
decline in its international prestige. A subsequent period of détente with
the Soviet Union and China was very likely a result of these developments.
The Chinese Civil War

Although most of the Chinese Civil War, which started in 1927, took
place before the Cold War, its final stages from 1945 to 1949 present
aspects of a proxy war. In those years, the nationalist Kuomintang
(K.M.T.) government of the Republic of China was backed by the United
States, while its opponent the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) had the
support of the Soviet Union. Once it gained control of the mainland in
1949, the C.C.P. established the People’s Republic of China (P.R.C.) as a
communist state. The K.M.T. fled mainland China for several small islands
(including Kinmen Island) and the island of Taiwan, where it continued
to assert its legitimacy as government of all China. While armed conflict
across the Taiwan Strait ceased in the late 1970s, cross-Strait relations
have been very tense and are today one of the most sensitive issues in
relations between China and the United States.
The Malayan Emergency

The Malayan Emergency, in fact a guerrilla war, was declared in 1948 and
lasted until 1960. The Malayan National Liberation Army (M.N.L.A.),
the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party, fought against the
military forces of the British Empire, mainly from jungle bases, for
independence and a socialist Malaya. Attacking tin mines and rubber
plantations, the M.N.L.A. aimed to destroy the economy of the British
Empire in colonial Malaya to achieve their larger goal. In response, the
British used chemical weapons against the M.N.L.A. and tried to starve
them by cutting off their food supplies, which also meant imprisoning
and even killing unarmed people suspected of supporting the communists.
An estimate of about a million rural people, mostly ethnic Chinese, were
forcibly resettled to more than 400 “new villages”, where the inhabitants,
bound by curfew hours, were prevented from escaping by the installation
of barbed-wire fences and search lights, as well as the stationing of armed
guards in watchtowers (Chin, 2003: 268; Newsinger, 2015: 50; Sandhu,
1964). These measures contravened the Geneva Conventions, which are
treaties that establish the international legal standards for the humane
war-time treatment of civilians, prisoners of war, and soldiers who are
incapable of fighting.
There is an orthodox view of the Malayan Emergency as a proxy
war, where the heightened violence of the Malayan Communist Party
(M.C.P.) in the months leading to the Emergency declaration in 1948
resulted from an order issued by the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union (C.P.S.U.). This view has been challenged by revisionist schol-
arship that identifies the coalescence of local factors as the main reason,
including M.C.P. leadership changes, new laws to restrict the number of
Chinese granted Malayan citizenship, repressive labour laws, and British
efforts to remove illegal rural squatters, many of whom were communist
supporters. However, a more recent post-revisionist or “neo-orthodox”
position argues that the “Asian Cold War”, beginning with the Malayan
Emergency, must take the C.P.S.U.’s role more seriously than revisionists
would allow, but “within nuanced, multi-causal models” (Hack, 2009).
These proxy wars in Asia—the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the
Chinese Civil War, and the Malayan Emergency—are all discussed in this
book. But a common thread that ties all chapters together is China—
a major power in the Cold War and a potential superpower in a possible
8 K. P. TAN
New Cold War—as well as the ethnic Chinese diaspora who have migrated
and settled in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.
China in the Cold War and the New Cold War

The original Cold War, despite all its historical complexity, is primarily
understood as a bipolar and binarizing geopolitical relationship between
two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—from the end
of World War II to the collapse of the Soviet Union. A third power, the
People’s Republic of China, had a substantial and very significant role
to play right from its establishment in 1949, especially when it came to
China’s direct and indirect involvement in the proxy conflicts of the Cold
War in Asia.
In this bipolar world, a Sino-Soviet alliance against the United States
would seem completely natural given the Marxist-Leninist ideology that
both countries shared. However, tensions between the two right from
the mid-1950s would cause a breakdown of this alliance in the following
years as their respective leaders—Mao Zedong and Nikita Khrushchev—
could not hide their mutual disdain and animosity for one another. Both
vied for leadership of the global communist movement and thus thor-
oughly polarized it. In 1979, China invaded the now-unified communist
Vietnam, a formal ally of the Soviet Union. China did this in response
to Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia the year before, through which the
government of the China-backed Communist Party of Kampuchea that
ruled the Khmer Rouge regime was ousted.
The United States had already found in this split an opportunity to
further divide and weaken the communist bloc. And so, in one of the
most iconic moments in world history, the pragmatic U.S. President
Richard Nixon travelled to Beijing in February 1972 to meet with Mao
and Premier Zhou Enlai, and was thus able to establish cordial relations
between the two countries.
Today, geopolitical and geo-economic discourses are dominated by
concerns about U.S.-China rivalry. The rise of China is premised on
continuously impressive economic growth since the late 1970s when
major economic reforms were put in place. The popular prediction that
China’s economy will overtake that of the United States to become
the world’s largest this century is not without criticism. Some have
argued that China has already passed or will soon pass its peak and
decline will follow. Others have suggested that the growing success of
China’s economy is illusory and limited by its problematic social and

political underpinnings. And yet others have noted the risky nature of
a crisis-prone economy.
Nevertheless, China is often presented as an emerging power that
increasingly threatens the United States’ global hegemony. While Amer-
ican President Joe Biden is determined to prevent this (“Joe Biden is
determined”, 2021), the United States has, in fact, been struggling to
retain its pre-eminent status in the world, hobbled by domestic politics
and the rise of right-wing populism, economic stagnation, and military
commitments around the world that it can no longer afford. Political
commentator Ross Douthat (2020) argues that America has become a
victim of its own success and its decadence underpinned by economic
stagnation, cultural-intellectual exhaustion, and institutional decay. The
provocative and much-cited “Thucydides trap”, coined by Harvard polit-
ical scientist Graham Alison (2017), predicts that rising power China
threatening to displace the United States as ruling power will create inter-
national structural stress and thus increase the likelihood of war. Out of
the 16 historically similar case studies Alison investigated, 12 had led to
war. Alison’s analysis, particularly its methodology, has been criticized.
But there are indeed significant points of tension that could heighten the
chance of war, such as cyber-espionage, territorial disputes in the South
China Sea, human rights issues in Tibet and Xinjiang, and tensions with
North Korea, Hong Kong, and—perhaps most pressing of all—Taiwan.
So even if claims of China’s rise are exaggerated and the prospect of
a “Chinese century” (Brands, 2018; Rees-Mogg, 2005) doubtful, a very
tense new superpower rivalry between a declining United States and an
emerging China is a probable scenario, one that summons the ghost of
the historic Cold War to appear as a New Cold War. The question of
whether it is appropriate or advisable to describe these current tensions
as a New Cold War often comes up in discussions within academic, jour-
nalistic, and foreign policy circles. Those who say that it is not will often
criticize the use of the term as overly simplistic, pointing to differences
in details (that the powers, their elites, the battlegrounds, the technology
and weaponry, etc., are not the same as those of the original Cold War), or
differences in ideological division (that the powers involved are no longer
as ideologically pure or ideologically distinguishable or even ideologically
motivated as before), or differences in the global system (that global-
ization and global production chains have made the powers so integrated
10 K. P. TAN
and inextricably linked to one another that geopolitical and geo-economic

divisions are nearly impossible in practice).
Those who say the New Cold War term is appropriate will often take
the historical Cold War as an illustrative analogy to help focus on the
formal or structural aspects of today’s Sino-American rivalry, stripped of
its historical, political, sociological, and cultural specificities to reveal a
helpfully parsimonious model with the fewest variables and the greatest
explanatory power. For instance, a “Cold-War model” might help analysts
identify binarized, polarized, and either/or ways of thinking of the world,
mobilizing for “us” and against “them”, and the othering and even demo-
nization that are required to produce an “enemy-other”. This book will
extend this Cold-War model from a structure of thinking to a structure
of feeling, enabling us to explore in a more textured way how the Cold
War has been experienced in daily life.
Those who approve of the term New Cold War may apply it to what
they consider to be a re-emergence today of the historic Cold-War global
power architecture after an interval of unipolar U.S. hegemony. Or they
may regard it to be quite simply the latest manifestation of a continuous
Cold War that never really ended. Either way, there are at least two prongs
of this still-predominantly traditionalist account of the New Cold War.
The first views a Russia re-emerging from the ashes of the Soviet Union
and posing a renewed threat to the unipolar post-Cold-War world policed
by a declining United States hegemon. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
on 24 February 2022 sparked global outrage. Through the lens of
orthodox Cold-War history, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared
as an aggressor and expansionist with aspirations for a greater Russia
through the absorption first of Ukraine and then possibly of others in the
region. But through the lens of revisionist and post-revisionist Cold-War
histories, the blame for this war must (at least also) lie with the United
States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.). American
international relations scholar John Mearsheimer (2022) questions the
orthodox view about Putin’s imperial ambitions and argues that the war
was mainly a result of an American-led effort to integrate Ukraine into
the European Union (E.U.), to transform Ukraine into a pro-West liberal
democracy, and to incorporate Ukraine into N.A.T.O. In this highly
provocative way, Ukraine would become “a Western bulwark on Russia’s
borders”. Indeed, according to Mearsheimer, Putin viewed this as a decla-
ration of war and an existential threat. The New York Times columnist
Thomas Freidman (2022) similarly argues that the United States and its
allies need to take responsibility for their efforts since the 1990s to expand
N.A.T.O. into the former Soviet Union’s sphere of influence, but he also
argues that Putin has taken advantage of this expansion “to rally Russians
to his side to cover for his huge failure of leadership” at least with regard
to Russia’s economic failures.
The second prong of this New Cold War account, which this book
principally deals with, views China as currently the greatest threat posed to
the United States. Those who argue that this New Cold War has already
started often attribute heightened Sino-American tensions to U.S. Presi-
dent Donald Trump’s focus, right from the beginning of his presidential
campaign in 2015, on China as the number one threat.
In July 2022, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian,
warned the United States’ and the United Kingdom’s security and
intelligence leaders not to “hype up the China threat theory” with
“irresponsible” remarks to “smear and attack China”, advising them to
“cast away imagined demons” and their “Cold War mentality” (Corera,
2022). Zhao was responding to Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.)
director Christopher Wray’s description of China as the “biggest long-
term threat to our economic and national security”. In a joint appearance
in London, Wray and MI5 head Ken McCallum had cited examples that
included massive-scale cyber-espionage, technology theft, and interfer-
ence in domestic politics and elections. Wray warned that China had learnt
lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and—since it knows how to
better insulate itself from sanctions than Russia has been able to—China
would be emboldened to invade Taiwan, the economic consequences of
which would be much more severe than the Russia-Ukraine War. Wray
warned that “China has for far too long counted on being everybody’s
second-highest priority” and declared that “[t]hey are not flying under
the radar anymore”. A few months earlier, British historian Niall Ferguson
explained that “Cold War II” had already started some time ago, though
in this New Cold War, “China’s the senior partner, and Russia’s the junior
partner”, and Ukraine is the battlefield (Swaminathan & Kelley, 2022).
The term “deglobalization” broadly describes “a movement towards a
less connected world, characterized by powerful nation states, local solu-
tions, and border controls rather than global institutions, treaties, and
free movement” (Kornprobst & Wallace, 2021). Whether it is in fact
“deglobalization” that we have been witnessing since the early 2010s is
debatable. But there has certainly been a rise of populism in both demo-
cratic and autocratic states worldwide, amounting to the empowerment
12 K. P. TAN
of local opposition to globalized economies, international organizations,

and international cooperation on global problems such as climate change
and pandemics (Tan, 2022).
In the United States, foreign policy seems to be increasingly driven by
the concerns of domestic policy. For instance, to rebuild its middle class—
ravaged by rising inequality, unemployment, and the impact of the Global
Financial Crisis of 2007–2008—its approach has been to shift manufac-
turing and supply chains away from Asia and back to the United States.
The U.S.-China trade war, provoked by a 25% tariff imposed on Chinese
imports by the Trump administration in 2018, epitomizes this approach
in the context of U.S.-China rivalry. This was shortly followed by a tech
war over global leadership in core technologies like AI, semiconductors,
and 5G, with the United States accusing China of adopting unfair means.
European countries have also pursued some form of strategic autonomy,
aiming to become self-sufficient by reducing their economic reliance on
the global supply chain and on countries like China. Beijing has also
taken steps to “de-Americanize” its supply chain (“U.S.-China tech war”,
2021). John Wei in Chapter 5 and Emilie Tran and Yahia Zoubir in
Chapter 7 discuss these New-Cold-War geo-economic and geopolitical
shifts. Wei critically assesses their impact on Asia, particularly on ordinary
people, migrant workers, and marginalized populations who live, work,
and travel in the region.
Along with China’s rise—and the heightened anxiety that this has
provoked in recent years—has been the rise of Sinophobia, nourished
by age-old orientalist fantasies and more overtly racist notions about the
“yellow peril”. The COVID-19 pandemic has sharply augmented these
perceptions in the general publics of the West, where people of Chinese
and Asian ethnicities—the mask-wearing and disease-bearing spectacles of
moral panic—have encountered racism, abuse, and violence (Gover et al.,
2020). Meanwhile, China has been attempting to improve its interna-
tional image and power, not only by going on the charm offensive to
boost its artistic, cultural, diplomatic, and soft power appeal (Kurlantzick,
2006), but also by making substantial material contributions to inter-
national development. The Belt-and-Road Initiative (B.R.I.), involving
massive Chinese investments in global infrastructural development since
2013, is a stunning example of this.
Chapters 7 and 8 discuss evolving European perceptions of China in
the New Cold War as it assumes its role as global leader in interna-
tional development. In Chapter 7, Tran and Zoubir focus on China’s
health diplomacy and its “national role conception” as global health

leader. In their comparative analysis of news data, particularly during
the COVID-19 pandemic, Tran and Zoubir conclude that countries in
the Middle East and North Africa (M.E.N.A.) appear to view China’s
actions favourably, while European countries—concerned about China’s
promotion of a rival non-liberal-democratic system of governance—view
these efforts unfavourably and with deep scepticism. In Chapter 8, Ágota
Révész critically dissects reactions to China’s investment in Hungary’s
higher education through a China-Hungary collaboration to set up a
Fudan University campus in Budapest. She explores how contrasting
images of China (and the “East” in general) intersect with Hungary’s
domestic politics to produce a range of discursive formations and political
outcomes.
Cold-War Ideological Struggle

Closely related to the view of the Cold War as a history of political and
economic struggle on a global scale with effects that last until today is the
approach that foregrounds and focuses on the ideological underpinnings
of this history. Such an approach not only treats ideology as a central
object of analysis in studying the Cold War, but also considers ideological
struggles as crucial to understanding the interplay between progress and
regress in human history.
At the historically momentous end of the Cold War, American polit-
ical scientist Francis Fukuyama (1992) wrote The End of History and the
Last Man. In it, he argued that, since capitalist liberal democracy had
triumphed over fascism and communism, History (with a big “H”) was
coming to an end. Although the events of history (with a small “h”)
would of course continue indefinitely, the historical battle of ideologies
would approach an end point as all political communities in this diverse
world choose their own path and pace towards becoming capitalist liberal
democracies. This, Fukuyama argued using Platonic and Hegelian philo-
sophical foundations, is the logic of History that drives human progress
towards the universal stage of capitalist liberal democracy, when human
rationality is collectively able to satisfy all human needs, and everyone is
mutually recognized and treated as equals. Although Fukuyama’s theory
reverberated with the exuberance of the Cold War’s dramatic conclusion,
it also retrieved and reactivated key aspects of modernization theory that
was dominant in the 1950s and 1960s (e.g. Lipset [1960]), though highly
14 K. P. TAN
contested since then (e.g. Acemoglu and Robinson [2022]). Versions of

this theory had linked economic growth and development, urbanization,
industrialization, and mass education with the emergence of a middle
class and a socio-political transition from “traditional” authoritarian to
“modern” democratic systems.
Fukuyama’s thesis appears to be hyperbolic and even mistaken today as
we witness established liberal democracies upended by the persistence of
poverty, the deepening of different kinds of inequality, and the dominance
of corporate capital as capitalism itself grows unfettered; the rise of right-
wing populism in both authoritarian and democratic countries (Brexit
and Trumpism are usually held up as evidence of this); the trend towards
autocratization around the world (V-Dem Institute, 2021); and China’s
rise in stature, signalling the possible future replacement of Pax Ameri-
cana with a new Pax Sinica, whose characteristics may not be capitalist,
liberal, or democratic as we know it (Tan, 2022). The Cold War very
certainly has not brought History to a pragmatic, contradiction-less end.
Ideological differences have not resolved dialectically. In some ways, they
have become even more pronounced on several fronts. They have become
compelling as both resources for and critiques of the extremisms of the
present: neoliberal globalization, right-wing and left-wing populisms, and
so on.
In the New Cold War, therefore, we should not expect the basic ideo-
logical contradictions and conflicts of the original Cold War to have
abated, though they may certainly have shifted and multiplied. Indeed,
Niall Ferguson wrote of “Cold War II” that
the roles [between China and the original Soviet Union] have been
reversed. China is now the giant, Russia the mean little sidekick. China
under Xi remains strikingly faithful to the doctrine of Marx and Lenin.
Russia under Putin has reverted to Tsarism. (Ferguson, 2020: 53)
Others have argued that the ideological divisions in New-Cold-War

times are much less stark than in old Cold-War times. “Socialism with
Chinese characteristics”, a doctrine of the C.C.P. that originates in
paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms of the late 1970s,
envisions a socialist (non-capitalist) market economy to promote limited
private ownership, investment, productivity, and growth as a necessary
basis on which China could progress towards a more purely commu-
nist society. Today, in practice, China’s socialist market economy looks
remarkably like those of their Western capitalist counterparts, even as

the C.C.P. continues to hold a monopoly on political power. In the
United States, even with the decisive neoliberal turn since the Ronald
Reagan presidency in the 1980s, Americans still benefit from state welfare
programmes and the political system is sufficiently pluralistic to include
influential politicians on the left, even the far left, of the ideological spec-
trum. As for the West, there is not just one version of capitalism, but
“varieties of capitalism” ranging along a spectrum, at one end of which
are liberal market economies and at the other end coordinated market
economies (Hall & Soskice, 2001). So even if the pluralistically neolib-
eral world of the present were ideologically coherent, it would not be
recognizable through the lens of a starkly binary division between capi-
talism and communism, which is how the old Cold War continues to be
characterized.
But to characterize even the old Cold War in this way is problematic.
The world was not simply divided into two opposing sets of ideas about
how society, economy, and politics should be organized and what values
they should uphold. These two opposing sets of ideas were not neatly
championed by two sets of countries, one led by the United States and the
other by the Soviet Union. The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), a very
large grouping of mostly developing countries of the Third World, was
formed during the Cold War to resist its rapid bipolarization. Membership
of this movement signalled the desire for independence and neutrality.
The refusal to form alliances with the United States or the Soviet Union
at a formal level also signalled an anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-
imperialist stance. Even the two superpowers were not always faithful to
their ideological positions. The Soviet Union and China, though both in
the Marxist-Leninist camp, allowed their power-political rivalry to weaken
their otherwise natural alliance. The United States, under the realist Pres-
ident Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, was quick to
embrace the opportunity to weaken the Soviet Union further by estab-
lishing cordial diplomatic ties with China. While ideology and idealism
dominated the public rhetoric and official speeches of the old Cold War,
what really drove decisions most of the time were considerations based
on realism, pragmatism, and material and power-political interests.
In this post-Cold-War era of neoliberal globalization, the United States
and China are so entrenched in the global economy that even stated
efforts to “de-globalize” amidst heated trade and tech wars cannot sepa-
rate them into meaningfully distinguishable ideological camps. Economic
16 K. P. TAN
and national interests—and not ideological ones—are what matter at the

end of the day. Today, China tries to expand its sphere of influence not by
enticing potential allies with its ideology. Instead, it offers them substan-
tial assistance and infrastructure investment resources and opportunities,
without necessarily expecting any adoption of its ideology, values, and
institutions. The United States, in contrast, often demands that others
around the world comply with its ideology and values, to some extent
almost weaponizing “capitalist liberal democracy”. “Neo-conservative”
hawks in the American political establishment, particularly during the
George W. Bush administration, have advocated strong U.S. interven-
tionism in international affairs to promote democracy and to defeat
communism and domestic left-wing radicalism (Vaïsse, 2010). Ironically,
during the Cold-War years, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.)
covertly backed coups to oust and even kill foreign leaders deemed hostile
to U.S. interests. In some cases, they had been democratically elected, and
the pro-American leaders installed to replace them were dictators with a
record of human rights abuse (Stuster, 2013).
So how should we understand “ideology” in the context of the Cold
War / New Cold War? Political philosopher Raymond Geuss (1981)
suggested three meanings of ideology. A “descriptive” sense of ideology
points to the neutral facts about the “socio-cultural features of a group”.
A “positive” sense of ideology refers to the worldview that a society
constructs or even invents to fully satisfy its members wants, needs, and
interests. A “pejorative” sense refers to delusions that members of a
society have about themselves and their interests, which often cause them
and others to suffer. A critical theory would aim to expose this “false
consciousness” and, through enlightenment, to emancipate people from
exploitation, domination, suffering, and social injustice.
This book, in so far as it is a critical analysis of the Cold War and New
Cold War, will generally adopt the pejorative meaning of ideology. Capi-
talist liberal democracy as espouse by the United States and its allies and
communist authoritarianism propagated by the Soviet Union, China, and
their allies were not simply descriptions of the socio-cultural systems of
two large and opposing groups of countries in the world. Neither were
they necessarily constructed worldviews that were able to satisfy the wants,
needs, and interests of the countries in each bloc. They were, instead,
examples of false consciousness that not only deluded the members of
each bloc, but also caused them suffering in different ways and for
different reasons. This book will also analyse the active generation of
these ideological delusions, which often disguise the interests of power

and wealth, through propaganda in news, art, and popular culture, among
others.
For instance, in Chapter 8, Ágota Révész notes how politicians in
Hungary, especially in the months leading to national elections in 2022,
have projected a range of images of China in the public sphere, possibly
to discredit their opponents and mobilize support by capitalizing on
fear. These included a highly ideological enemy-image of China as a
menacing, un-Western, Cold-War communist power threatening to turn
Hungary back into a communist state through the Trojan horse of a major
investment in Hungary’s higher education.
Cold-War Narratives
The Cold War can be seen as a set of histories of how superpower rivalry
between the United States and the Soviet Union and the actions of China
as a major power have extensively and deeply shaped global affairs and the
domestic politics of nearly every country in the world from 1945 to 1991,
and of how the effects of this rivalry have on many levels persisted in an
ongoing New Cold War in which the declining U.S. superpower is being
challenged by China, a rising superpower. The original ideologies that
marked their differences during the Cold War—capitalist liberal democ-
racy and Marxist-Leninism—are much less pronounced in the New Cold
War and perhaps have little more than rhetorical value in a thoroughly
globalized world driven by economic interests and geopolitical power.
A third way to think about the Cold War is to focus on the narra-
tives that it has generated, partly as instances of ideology but also as
elaborations of ideology that make it more accessible, vivid, compelling,
and appealing through storytelling methods that draw individuals into a
shared narrative of community, meaning, struggle, and destiny. Stories,
much more than abstract and often arid ideological theorizing, have
greater power to address their audiences, offering them a particular
identity that they are encouraged and not forced to accept. When “inter-
pellation” of this kind is successful, a person internalizes the values that
they encounter in these narratives and willingly accepts the roles assigned
to them through such an identification (Althusser, 1970).
18 K. P. TAN
Many chapters in this book pay attention to the affective appeal of

stories and storytelling. For instance, in the Cold War, narratives of us-
them, friend-enemy, teamwork-rivalry, cooperation-competition, loyalty-
treachery, heroism-villainy, freedom-oppression, and so on have greater
emotional appeal than narratives of getting along with one another,
win–win solutions, or rational and technical problem-solving. Such narra-
tives are often expressed in mass media and—in the case of the New
Cold War—in social media too, where gaining eyeballs usually trans-
lates to commercial gain. Thus, throughout the Cold War and now the
New Cold War, we have seen volatile eruptions of moral panic, dispro-
portionately heightening public attention and concern around a person
or group, whose behaviour is viewed as a threat to mainstream soci-
ety’s values, interests, and way of life. Public hostility and even violence
towards them are amplified through public statements by politicians,
religious leaders, experts, opinion leaders, and civil society activists, as
well as through the production and circulation of negative stereotypes
in the mass media, including news, political and policy speeches, films,
and television programmes (Goode & Ben-Yahuda, 1994). Hate crimes
against Asians, Sinophobia, xenophobia towards migrants and refugees,
and stigmatization of people with infections—all discussed in various
chapters of this book—are examples of moral panic in pandemic-stricken
New-Cold-War times.
Museums and Monuments

In Chapter 2, Giacomo Bagarella discusses the stories that are told to visi-
tors by and through contemporary museums and monuments commemo-
rating Cold-War conflicts. These include the Beishan Broadcasting Station
and Maestro Wu knife store on Kinmen Island, Taiwan; Cu Chi Tunnels,
ĳ
War Remnant Museum, and Hoa Lò Prison in Vietnam; Cambodia
Landmine Museum, Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, and Choeung Ek
Genocidal Center in Cambodia; and the War Memorial in Seoul, South
Korea. Bagarella notices, for instance, how this South Korean War Memo-
rial, which opened in 1994 with the aim of highlighting lessons from the
Korean War and inspiring Korean reunification, seems nevertheless to be
preoccupied with showing gratitude to the United States and the United
Nations for their support, which has enabled post-war South Korea to
rise out of abject poverty and become one of the wealthiest and most
successful countries in the world today.
In Chapter 3, Zhou Hau Liew discusses another South Korean

monument, the United Nations Memorial Cemetery in Busan. Liew
notices how the space of commemoration has been “internationalized”
by sectionalizing the area with wreaths and national flags from nations
that had contributed to the United Nations Command during the Korean
War. Excluded from all of this was any representation of the Chinese
soldiers who had crossed the Yalu River and fought back the advancing
U.S.-U.N. forces. Liew—and Bagarella, for different reasons—observes
the predominance of the logic of nationhood in the construction of these
memorials, conveying a friend-enemy narrative that defines the legacies of
national participants in the Cold War, long after their deaths.
Films and Television Serials

Films, especially feature films, are powerful and—unlike site-specific
spaces of memory—wide-reaching media of storytelling. They range from
narratives that invite audiences to accept the status quo and their role
in it to those that challenge conventional wisdom and the powerful and
wealthy, whose interests these conventional wisdoms serve, inviting audi-
ences to question the status quo and their role in it. In other words,
narrative films can range from having a conservative to a revolutionary
effect.
In Chapter 4, Linda Ou explores how films made in 1950s Hong
Kong reflected the ideological divisions and struggles of the Cold War.
She focuses on films about mainland Chinese migrants in Hong Kong
enduring the hardship of tenement life. The films that were produced
by pro-communist studios—Home, Sweet Home (1950), The Show Must
Go On (1952), and The Dividing Wall (1952)—presented narratives
that portrayed Hong Kong society and the capitalism that it stood
for in very negative light. Chinese migrants—confronted with cruelty,
deceit, sexual abuse, exploitation, social injustice, and minimal oppor-
tunities for human flourishing—often opted to return to their mainland
Chinese homeland, where communism offered a better life. The films that
were produced by pro-capitalist Hong Kong studios supportive of U.S.-
backed nationalists in Taiwan—Halfway Down (1955) and Mandarin’s
Bowls (1956)—presented narratives that ended with Chinese migrants
preferring to stay in the harsh conditions of Hong Kong rather than
returning to mainland China, where the communist regime was viewed
as intolerable.
20 K. P. TAN
In Chapter 6, Chen I-ting discusses a pair of Taiwanese films, the short

film The Great Buddha (2014) and a feature film version of it The Great
Buddha+ (2017). Though the films were produced in the period of the
New Cold War, like the pro-capitalist Hong Kong tenement films in the
1950s, their narratives reflected the disdain of capitalist America-loving
Taiwanese for mainland Chinese migrants in their midst and their anxiety
surrounding the relentless threat of communist China’s return.
In the same chapter, Chen also analyses a popular television serial
Formosan Lady (1995), which features a Taiwanese businessman (who
yearns for a life in the United States), his conservative Taiwanese wife,
his loyal Chinese mistress who lives in the United States, and his greedy
and conniving mainland Chinese mistress. The narrative connecting these
characters to one another and to their fates resonates strongly with Cold-
War geopolitical relationships among Taiwan, the United States, and the
People’s Republic of China.
Documentary films also tell stories that can be just as powerful as
fictional accounts rendered by feature films. In Chapter 3, Liew provides
a detailed analysis of Malaysian filmmaker Lau Kek Huat’s documentary,
Absent Without Leave (2016). The film is about the Malayan Emer-
gency and tells the stories of three generations of Chinese men in
Malay(si)a, focusing on the themes of exile, corporeal displacement, and
the ecological depictions that provide a “scale” for a critical transnational
understanding of the Cold War that runs against the grain of the victor’s
history that is enshrined in Malaysia’s official national narrative.
Novels and Non-Fiction Books

Also in Chapter 3, Liew critically analyses Ha Jin’s War Trash, a 2004
historical fiction novel about the Korean War, which describes the Chinese
People’s Volunteer Army’s crossing of the Yalu, eventual imprisonment on
Koje Island in the south, and subsequent repatriation after 1952, mainly
from the point of view of the soldiers themselves. The novel’s narrative
points to the complex intersections linking the Korean War, the Chinese
Civil War, and American and Chinese interests and values.
Chen, in Chapter 6, analyses two non-fiction publications, Main-
land China as a Tender Strange Land and a moralistic guidebook titled
Taiwanese Businessmen’s Extramarital Affairs in China, which offers
sexually oriented advice directed mainly at Taiwanese men. The two
books’ narratives are filled with negative and highly evocative stereotypes
of mainland Chinese women. They are examples of how narratives of

cross-Strait emotions have been sexualized and eroticized in ways that
perpetuate hostility.
News
While the news can often reflect public opinion, it also relies on story-
telling approaches to recruit audiences into the intended roles and identi-
ties that ideology requires. In Chapter 7, Tran and Zoubir comparatively
analyse news data to characterize public opinion about China’s health
diplomacy and role as global health leader in countries in the Middle East
and North Africa and countries in Europe. They find that, in the New
Cold War, M.E.N.A. views China positively while Europe views the rising
superpower with deep scepticism and anxiety. In Chapter 8, Ágota Révész
closely analyses news data—as well as political and policy speeches—to
critically illuminate the ways in which narratives of New-Cold-War China
intersect with Hungarian narratives about “East–West” and “rural–urban”
to produce shifting and malleable conditions of possibility for domestic
politics.
Cold-War Lived Experience

Several of the chapters in this book critically analyse (New-) Cold-
War narratives that appear in films, television serials, novels, non-fiction
writing, news reporting, and museums and monuments. In doing so,
they are able to critique the underlying (New-) Cold-War ideologies and
how these ideologies operate as false consciousness, deluding people who
accept the roles that they are invited into in ways that can perpetuate
hardship, exploitation, and injustice. Other narratives invite audiences to
question the status quo and their role in it, thus challenging the Cold-
War ideologies that undergird them. Critically analysing stories and their
ideological anchors demystifies the Cold War and the New Cold War as
histories of powerful elites running powerful countries and conducting
international affairs to secure their own interests, under the legitimizing
and ennobling cover of ideology.
A fourth way of thinking about the Cold War and New Cold War is
to focus on lived experience, to try to understand the meaning of what
knowledge individuals and communities affected by the Cold War or New
Cold War directly gain through first-hand involvement in everyday events
22 K. P. TAN
and the choices and options that confront them. Micro-socioeconomic

analysis and ethnographic methods are highly suitable for understanding
lived experience, shifting attention from grand theory and grand strategy
down to the objective and subjective details of everyday life as experience
by individuals and communities.
In Chapter 5, John Wei discusses the impact of the New Cold War
and the COVID-19 pandemic on the lives and livelihoods of ordinary
and marginalized peoples, such as people with HIV infections in Wuhan,
China; service and factory workers in Hong Kong; and factory workers
in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. He does this to understand more
deeply the vulnerability and limited choices of people confronted by the
lack of access to essential medication, the requirement to work from
home, and the threat of job loss and displacement, resulting from drastic
changes in the manufacturing industry provoked by geopolitical tensions
and the profound impact of the pandemic on so many aspects of our lives.
In Chapter 6, Chen delves into the lived experience of migrant main-
land Chinese women working in erotic teahouses in Taiwan. These
women face discrimination from male Taiwanese clients who, through
Cold-War lenses, view them simultaneously as objects of desire and of
fear. Through her own ethnographic research, Chen explains the choices
available to these women and the strategies they have developed individu-
ally and collectively to survive and even prosper as a “sisterhood”. Chen’s
study of the lives and livelihoods of this community of migrant women
is triangulated with her analysis of films and television serials that feature
wives, mistresses, female caregivers, and migrant women from mainland
China, as well as guidebooks advising Taiwanese men (and their wives)
on how to deal with mainland Chinese women.
In Chapter 3, Liew discusses Lau Kek Huat’s documentary Absent
Without Leave. It begins with Lau, the director and the protagonist,
trying to connect with his estranged father to find out about his grandfa-
ther, whose story had been hidden from him because his grandfather was
a member of the Malayan Communist Party. As he widens and deepens his
enquiry through the documentary format, Lau gains greater knowledge
about his lived experience, his past, and others like him. By employing
“ecology as a scale”, Liew observes, Lau the filmmaker helps us to under-
stand “the true impact of war on the human, as the legacy of such conflicts
stretches beyond the fighters to the land, people, and generations after”.
In the next chapter, Giacomo Bagarella “re-visits” the museums

and monuments—what he calls “places of memory”—in four Cold-
War conflict locations that he had visited in 2015 to 2016: Taiwan,
South Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. As he wrote the chapter, he self-
consciously reflected on the meanings of the memory of his experience of
these commemorative sites, trying to make as much sense as possible of
his notes, photographs, and various resources on the internet, including
maps. Bagarella explores the shifting intersection of personal, shared,
and universal memories, noting the importance of humility in doing so
and acknowledging how his own experience of war in Europe—mostly
through family stories and artefacts as he was growing up—has shaped his
self-conscious encounter with war and violence in Asia. From his chapter,
we learn to appreciate how commemorating the Cold War has “secular”,
“religious”, and “experiential” dimensions—relating to analysis, collec-
tive remembrance, and interaction—all bundled up in political as well as
commercial interests.
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CHAPTER 2
Curating Memory: Cold-War Narratives

in Museums and Memorials in Taiwan,
Vietnam, South Korea, and Cambodia
Giacomo Bagarella
The dirt tunnel I was crawling through was claustrophobic. And I had
it good. I shuffled forward, half-kneeling in a space maybe half a metre
wide and one metre tall, towards the exit shaft. I could visualize the hole
collapsing, leaving me buried in Vietnam.
Early that morning in early 2016, I had boarded a minibus in Ho Chi
Minh City with a gaggle of tourists for a day trip to Cu Chi Tunnels. Half
a century earlier, during the Vietnam War, the Communist Viet Cong had
burrowed underground to escape American air power. Over time, they
created a complicated network of tunnels that allowed vast numbers of
fighters to live and move underground. For each time that the guerrillas
emerged out of nowhere to strike at U.S. and South Vietnamese forces,
there were days spent in near darkness, in quarters tight with people and
G. Bagarella (B)
Independent Scholar and Writer, Brooklyn, NY, USA
e-mail: giacomo.bagarella@gmail.com
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
K. P. Tan (ed.), Asia in the Old and New Cold Wars,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-7681-0_2
26 G. BAGARELLA
pests and with little food and supplies. The short tunnel I experienced
had been conveniently enlarged for tourists. It still felt oppressive. I made
it out in awe of its previous occupants.
Above ground, a canopy of trees shaded the hard, tan earth beneath,
which was dusted with a smattering of fallen leaves and the occasional
shrub. All the vegetation had grown after the end of the war in 1975.
American bombing and defoliants—industrial-strength weed killers that
made plants’ leaves fall off—had gardened swathes of the Vietnamese
jungle into a desert. Open-air dioramas displayed the traps that the Viet
Cong had set for American patrols. They featured terrified white soldiers
falling into spike-filled pits, being impaled by devices out of the devilish
imagination of Wile E. Coyote’s guerrilla cousin.1 I wouldn’t have liked
to have been a G.I. then, either.
I can’t pinpoint when I became aware of it, but war has been a motif
that has accompanied me since my childhood, like lunch-break football
in the schoolyard. It was not a wrenching or all-encompassing presence—
I have been fortunate to live mostly in countries at peace—but it wasn’t
ever distant. I owe this both to family and to geography. War first suffused
my consciousness through my relatives’ personal stories. My grandparents
were born in Italy between 1911 and 1925. They endured, participated
in, and opposed Fascist imperialism and World War II as soldiers, forced
labourers, partisans, and civilians, each taking on different identities at
different times. At my paternal grandmother’s home, I saw pictures of my
grandfather in Africa, where he was a driver for Italy’s colonial forces in
the 1930s and early 1940s—unwillingly, I was told. He survived the war
but not a workplace accident soon thereafter, leaving my young father
with little memory of his wartime experience, of which my grandfather
was anyway reluctant to speak. When I spent time with my maternal
grandmother, I often heard her retell the story of how she had hidden
a Jew from deportation during World War II. It was often a dinnertime
tale, though it was eventually also recorded by historians, documentarists,
and even a journalist in a New York Times article that managed to misspell
both her first and last names (Kilgannon, 2000; Zuccotti, 2007).
1 Wile E. Coyote is one of the characters of Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes cartoon series,
in which Coyote uses convoluted traps, explosives, and other devices to attempt to catch
and eat the Road Runner. The Road Runner always outwits the Coyote and escapes the
traps in the cartoons; in reality, the Viet Cong’s traps may have been more effective—at
least according to Cu Chi’s curators.
2 CURATING MEMORY: COLD-WAR NARRATIVES … 27
These narratives are inseparable from where I’ve lived. My parents’

careers in international development also drew them—and sometimes
us—into conflict and its aftermath in such places as Latin America, the
Balkans, and the Middle East. When I was growing up, my parents and I
would go to the mountains near Vicenza, my hometown. On the Asiago
plateau, we went hiking on terrain that still bore scars from World War
I. Shell craters pockmarked verdant fields, collapsing trenches wound
through woods, and empty concrete forts sat on peaks and crests. On
a good day, I would come home with my pockets weighed down by the
lead from exploded bombs that I avidly gathered, my mind full of stories
of heroic assaults or defences of this or that ridge.
When we lived abroad, I learned about other countries’ experiences.
One year, my father went to work in Bosnia, after the war there in the
mid-1990s. When my mom and I went to visit, he told us about the
minefields that had been sown and how Sarajevo had been shelled into
destruction as its inhabitants scurried through makeshift shelters to avoid
sniper fire.
Later, in the twilight of the 1990s, we moved to Hanoi. In Southeast
Asia, the present and the past continued to envelop me. I attended a
French school, a colonial legacy, which sent us first and second graders on
ĳ
field trips to Hoa Lò Prison, which American prisoners of war nicknamed
the “Hanoi Hilton”. Outside of school, my father told me about the
demise of France’s colonialism in Indochina at the Battle of Dien Bien
Phu and took me on our motorbike to visit the crash sites of shot-down
American bombers. When we travelled to Cambodia and Laos in ageing
planes that may not have been fit to fly, my parents warned me against
picking up strange objects. Unexploded cluster bombs and mines from
more than two decades before were then—and still are—a threat to all.
After some years in Vietnam, we moved to Skopje, the capital of the
landlocked Balkan country now called North Macedonia. The hills above
our Skopje house provided a similar experience to Asiago, yielding frag-
ments of exploded bombs that delighted the young boy that I was. My
father told me that the lead from these fragments was from the combat
between Yugoslav partisans and German soldiers. When a short, ethni-
cally driven civil war broke out in Macedonia in 2001, a classmate’s father
brought us bullet casings that had been fired days, not decades, before.
I was envious of his son, who got the largest one. For a while, the front
approached Skopje and the rebels threatened the capital. Then, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.) brokered a peace agreement.
28 G. BAGARELLA
The real soldiers went home, but we children continued to play with BB
guns in the streets, unaware of (or ignoring) the greater symbolism of
what we were emulating.
All these narratives and images textured my upbringing, weaving my
emerging place in the world with the fabric of memory and connection
to the past. As I aged, I developed agency in my interests. As a teenager,
I stacked my bookshelf with both young-adult fiction and thick history
books. In high school, I lobbied my father to take me to Normandy.
There, I learned all I could about D-Day, but also about the German
War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge), an
organization that maintains German military cemeteries from World War
I while pursuing a pacifist educational mission. The following summer, I
volunteered with it for a two-week summer camp in northern France, the
only non-German in the group. It was peak post-war Europe: I scrubbed
graves and repainted names, attended lessons against neo-Nazism, and
taunted my peers because Italy had just won the World Cup after beating
both Germany and France.
Almost a decade later and nearly twenty years after beginning first
grade in Hanoi, I was back in Southeast Asia. My studies had led me
to work in urban policy, a more peaceful profession than my initial inter-
ests and aspirations might have suggested. I was enrolled in a master’s
in public policy degree programme and, after completing my first year in
London, had chosen to complete the programme at a partner university
in Singapore. Drawn by its distinct urbanism, I also wanted to be at the
confluence of the world’s main geopolitical trends: the rise of China and
India, the dynamism of Southeast Asia, and the triangular dance between
South Korea, Japan, and the United States. From my base in the city-
state, I could trace these patterns for myself—including the historical
paths that had led to the present. Over the course of a year, I pursued
the past wherever I could find it, bound only by the limits of my school
vacation and student stipend.
From Singapore, I travelled to Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, and
Cambodia as a student and as a tourist between late 2015 and mid-2016.2
These countries’ histories make clear that the “Cold War” was actually
2 The dates matter because, as Viet Thanh Nguyen notes in Nothing Ever Dies, “I
must specify the time, for the museums and memorials of Southeast Asia change over the
years, much as memory and forgetting themselves do. Museums, memorials, and memories
change because their countries change” (Nguyen, 2017: 254).
2 CURATING MEMORY: COLD-WAR NARRATIVES … 29
quite hot in Asia: between them, these conflicts caused many millions of
civilian and military casualties and wounded and displaced many more. In
some ways, they demonstrate that the Cold War persists, as in the sepa-
ration between the Koreas and Chinas, and the ongoing Khmer Rouge
Tribunal in Cambodia. This essay offers my reflections on several places of
memory I visited in each country: Kinmen Island in Taiwan, with its war
museums and memorials and Cold-War souvenir industry; Cu Chi and
various museums in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam; the War Memorial of
Korea in South Korea; and the Landmine Museum, Tuol Sleng Genocide
Museum, and the Choeung Ek Killing Fields in Cambodia.
These sites are personally and historically meaningful and evocative.
As relatively well-known places internationally, they enable me to make at
least three arguments. First, to use Viet Thanh Nguyen’s (2017) concept,
these sites are industries of memory: destinations that are also on the
global tourist itinerary and thus provide a critical way through which
foreigners can experience and learn about local history without interme-
diation by external entities. Second, they provide narrative stances: while
every site might claim to be “objective”, in reality, these places convey
historical narratives that range across the scholarly, personal, and offi-
cial (which some might call propaganda), stances that might shift across
exhibits based on audience’s perspectives. Third, they extend beyond
what Ian Buruma (2015) calls the religious (facilitating collective remem-
brance) and secular (facilitating analysis and understanding) to what can
be seen as experiential (facilitating interaction and consumption).
I must add an important caveat as well, which is the need to seek
memory with humility. This means acknowledging three factors inherent
in any exercise like this one. First, visiting any museum or memorial is a
subjective experience informed by the viewer’s identities. One can simul-
taneously be a tourist, a scholar, and an individual informed by their
personal experiences, knowledge, and perspective. Second, it is impossible
to do justice to a country’s history—and its population’s histories—
through a single place of memory. Likewise, any analysis of those places
will be partial. Lastly, what I struggle with the most is the tension inherent
in witnessing places of memory that represent human suffering and loss
while also being drawn to grand narratives of national heroism, a place’s
aesthetic appeal, or the artefacts exhibited there. Nearly every place I
visited displayed instruments of war, whose symbolism or craftsmanship—
think an iconic tank or a sleek aircraft—can embody horror, admiration,
and awe. They can build on or challenge the greater narrative of the place.
30 G. BAGARELLA
In my travels, I found many stories, some contradictory and some

controversial. All felt familiar: there was suffering, hope for peace and
prosperity, memory of fear and atrocity, and resurgent pride and self-
belief. I recorded my experiences in my journal with the intent to write
about them one day. As I did so, I couldn’t tell if I was emerging from
my tunnel or entering further into it.
Kinmen, Taiwan: The Island

as an Open-Air Museum (December 2015)
The Beishan Broadcasting Station is a dull, rectangular concrete tower
that sits on the north-western corner of the bow-tie-shaped Kinmen
Island. Its façade, with 48 cylindrical cavities each housing a loudspeaker,
points north-northeast. When I visited this wind-swept possession of
Taiwan, the grey December day hid their former target just a few kilo-
metres away. Kinmen is an oddity born out of the Chinese Civil War
and the Cold War. The conflict between the Communists and Nation-
alists began in the late 1920s as the two sought to gain control of
China under their respective ideology. Interrupted by Japan’s invasion
of China in 1937, the Civil War resumed apace in 1945. Mao Zedong’s
Communists gradually defeated Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists, eventu-
ally ejecting the latter from mainland China to the island of Taiwan—and
to a handful of small islands much closer to the continent—in 1949. This
established the 180-kilometre-wide Taiwan Strait as the focal point for
the confrontation between the two regimes as the Nationalists continued
to claim the mantle of being the legitimate government of China. One
of the Nationalist-held islands was Kinmen, which became for decades an
outpost in the battle between China’s two warring regimes (Image 2.1).
Beishan, like many other sites across East and Southeast Asia, stands as a
legacy of the twentieth century’s unresolved conflicts.
The station, which for decades hurled propaganda towards enemy
communities across a narrow waterway, is now an anachronism. In late
1949, thousands of Communist soldiers, whose objective was to seize
the island, arrived on landing craft at the nearby Guningtou cliffs. They
were repelled by forts that would feel at home on the Normandy beaches
I visited, such as the infamous Omaha. Today, a peaceful ferry shut-
tles tourists between Xiamen (China, People’s Republic of) and Kinmen
(China, Republic of). I don’t know what these visitors, unlike their armed
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that many persons, under the spell of her beauty, thought that she
was an unwilling witness, and pitied her youth and inexperience.
But it was hanging testimony she gave, and well she knew it.
After the examination of the postboys and other witnesses for the
prosecution, I was called as the first witness for Giles. I told the
circumstances of our agreement to run away with the two charmers
of our hearts; and the fact that I had been so readily forgiven, not
only by Daphne herself, but by Sir Peter and Lady Hawkshaw, I saw
produced a good effect. But when I was asked by the other side if I
had ever seen, or if Giles had ever claimed, any willingness on Lady
Arabella’s part to go off with him, I broke down miserably. My
testimony did Giles but little good, I fear.
Sir Peter Hawkshaw was the next witness. It was plain from the
start that he desired to help Giles, and likewise that he knew very
little of the affair until it was all over. But he proved a most
entertaining, if discursive witness.
Sir Peter evidently thought the witness-box was his own quarter-
deck, and he proceeded to harangue the court in his best manner as
a flag officer. He talked of everything except the case; he gave a
most animated description of the fight between the Ajax on our side
and the Indomptable and Xantippe on the other, praising Giles
Vernon’s gallantry at every turn. He also aired his views on the
subject of the flannel shirts furnished to the navy, alleging that some
rascally contractors ought to be hanged at the yard-arm for the
quality supplied; and wound up by declaring, with great gusto, that if
an officer in his Majesty’s service desired to marry a young lady, it
was an act of spirit to carry her off, and for his part, fellows of that
sort were the kind he should select to lead a boarding party, while
the sneaking, law-abiding fellows should be under the hatches when
the ship was cleared for action.
Sir Peter’s rambling but vigorous talk was not without its effect,
upon which I think he had shrewdly calculated. In vain counsel for
the crown tried to check him; Sir Peter bawled at them to pipe down,
and remarked aloud of the senior counsel who had been most active
in trying to suppress him,—
“That lawyer fellow is three sheets in the wind!” Page 201
“That lawyer fellow is three sheets in the wind, with the other one
a-flapping!”
The judges, out of respect to him, made no great effort to subdue
him, and he had the satisfaction of telling his story his own way.
When the prosecution took him in hand, they found, though, that he
could very well keep to the subject-matter, and they did not succeed
in getting anything of the slightest consequence out of him. When he
stepped down, I saw that he had in reality done much more good to
Giles’ cause than I had, although he knew little about the facts, and I
knew all.
Then came Lady Hawkshaw’s testimony. Sir Peter’s was not a
patch on it. Like him, she really had no material evidence to give,
but, with a shrewdness equal to his, she made a very good plea for
the prisoner. She began with a circumstantial account of her own
marriage to Sir Peter, in which the opposition of her family was
painted in lurid hues. In vain was she again and again checked; she
managed to tell her tale against the vigorous objections of the
prosecutors, and the somewhat feeble and perfunctory rebukes from
the bench. The jury, however, were plainly so interested in it, that no
serious attempt was made to stop her—not that it would have
availed anything, for Lady Hawkshaw was not used to stopping for
any one.
“No doubt my family could have hounded Sir Peter for marrying
me,” she announced in the beginning, “but my family, your honors, is
an honorable one, and would not condescend to nasty tricks like—”
Here she fixed her great black eyes on Sir Thomas Vernon, who
smiled blandly and took snuff.
“And as for a man expecting opposition in a girl he is willing to
marry, I ask your honors, does a man exist who can believe, until it is
proved to him beyond cavil, that there is a woman alive who would
not jump for joy to marry him?”
This produced so much laughter that the bailiffs had to enforce
order in the hall.
Lady Hawkshaw then, with great ingenuity, referred to Sir
Thomas Vernon, “who, in those days, forty years ago, was not called
‘Wicked Sir Thomas,’ but plain ‘Lying Tom Vernon’!”
This produced a regular uproar, during which Lady Hawkshaw,
with great complacency, fanned herself. After a warning from the
presiding justice to keep to the matter in hand, she curtsied deeply to
him, and immediately resumed her account of Sir Thomas Vernon, in
which she told of a certain occasion, in the time of the American war,
when, as the royal family was passing to chapel at Windsor, hisses
were heard, which were directly traced to Sir Thomas Vernon, the
king having declined to receive him at the levee on account of his
notoriously bad character. And Sir Thomas, being thrust out, was
taken by some of the inhabitants of Windsor, and ducked in a
neighboring horse-pond. At this point, the judge himself courteously
but firmly interrupted Lady Hawkshaw, and informed her that she
could not be permitted to go on in that strain.
“I shall observe your lordship’s caution,” she replied politely, and
straightway launched into a description of Sir Thomas’ appearance
when he emerged from the horse-pond, which brought a smile to
every face in court—including even the judge’s—except the victim
himself, who bit his lip, and scowled in fury.
The judges afterward said that Lady Hawkshaw proved to be the
most unmanageable witness any and all of them had ever
encountered; for in spite of them, she gave a circumstantial account
of every misdeed Sir Thomas Vernon had ever been guilty of in his
life, as far as she knew.
The crown lawyers, very wisely, declined to cross-examine this
witness. When she stepped down out of the witness-box and took Sir
Peter’s arm, she passed close to the presiding justice, who
happened to have his snuff-box open in his hand. My lady
deliberately stopped and took a pinch out of the judge’s box,
remarking suavely,—
“Your lordship shows excellent taste in preferring the Spanish!”
I thought his lordship would drop out of his chair.
The evidence being all in, and the arguments made, a recess
was taken. We were not the only ones who paid our respects
immediately to Giles Vernon. Many persons went forward and shook
his hand, while I think Sir Thomas did not receive a cordial greeting
from a single man or woman in the hall, although he was known to
every one present.
We got a hurried dinner at the tavern, and returned at once to the
hall. It was about half-past four in the winter afternoon, and the day
being dark and lowering, candles were required. The lord justice’s
instructions to the jury were then read, and my heart sank, as, in a
dreadful monotone, he expounded the law to them. Alas! As long as
the statute against the abduction of an heiress remained, Giles
Vernon was guilty of a capital crime; and not one word uttered by
any one of us who testified in his behalf did aught but prove the more
strongly that he had carried Lady Arabella off against her will.
The jury retired, and, the day having been fatiguing, the lords
justices determined to wait in their retiring-room for an hour, where
they could be called, if the jury promptly reached a verdict. This
troubled me—this expectation of a quick decision.
The judges having retired and suspended the sitting of the court,
we at once went over and sat with Giles, who maintained perfectly
his manly composure. He laughed with Sir Peter over some of the
events of the fight between the Ajax and her two enemies,
complimented Lady Hawkshaw upon her triumph over the laws of
the land relating to evidence, and said many kind things to Daphne.
While we were in the midst of a cheerful conversation, and not
observant of what was going on in the other part of the hall, we
suddenly heard the crier proclaiming the entrance of their lordships,
and at the same moment Sir Thomas Vernon entered by another
door. Hanging on his arm was Lady Arabella Stormont. And then the
jury filed in with solemn faces, and what followed all seemed to me
like some horrid dream.
Although several persons were moving about, there seemed to
me a dreadful silence; and although the candles burned, and a great
hobgoblin of a moon peered in at the windows, there seemed an
awful darkness. And after a time, in which I was oppressed by this
ghostly silence and darkness, I saw the senior lord justice put on a
black cap, and sentence Giles Vernon to be hanged by the neck until
he was dead, that day fortnight.
My eyes roved aimlessly around, and fell at that moment on Lady
Arabella Stormont. A faint smile flickered on her lovely mouth.
X
In that hour of horror, I became weaker and more helpless than
the weakest and most helpless woman. Sir Peter and Lady
Hawkshaw were too stunned to think. I remember, now, the look of
despair on Sir Peter’s countenance, where I had never before seen
anything but sturdy courage,—and it was an added terror. And the
one who retained her senses, who suggested a forlorn hope, was
Daphne,—the youngest, the least experienced of us all.
“To London!” she said. “To the king, for pardon! I myself will go
upon my knees to him. He shall—he shall pardon Giles!”
We were all huddled together, then, in our parlor at the inn,
having just returned from the assize hall.
“Richard and I will go,” said Sir Peter.
“And Daphne and I will stay and comfort Giles,” spoke Lady
Hawkshaw.
A week to London, and a week to return, was easy traveling—but
how long would it take us to reach the king? And what ministers
would be in town? And what would be the earliest moment we could
leave London? All these things were in our minds to torment us.
Nevertheless, within half an hour, we were on our way.
While we were demanding the best horses, and having them put
to, an insolent groom came in the stable-yard, and asked for horses
for Sir Thomas Vernon and Lady Arabella Stormont and Lady
Arabella’s companion, Mrs. Whitall, and two servants, for London.
The head hostler replied roughly that they had no time to attend him
then, as they were starting Sir Peter Hawkshaw and Mr. Glyn off for
London, too, to beg Mr. Giles Vernon’s life. The man, at this, grew
saucy, and offered a handsome bonus for the horses which were
then being put to for us. I caught him by the collar, and threw him out
of the stable-yard, where the hostlers drubbed him soundly, thank
God!
One hurried kiss to Daphne, a brief farewell between Sir Peter
and Lady Hawkshaw, and we were off for London. Our race into
Scotland was nothing to it.
The roads were much cut up, and although we traveled day and
night, we were more than four days on the way. We reached London
early in the day; and, without stopping for food, or to change our
linen, we went to the Admiralty. There we got the information that the
First Lord was visiting in the country, in Kent. Within the hour, I was
on my way to Kent. When I reached the place, the First Lord had left,
not more than two hours before, for London. I had passed him on the
road, without knowing him. I returned to London. Sir Peter had seen
several members of the government, meanwhile, and had been
privately informed that the king was suffering mentally; and although
hopes were entertained that the spell would pass away, without the
necessity of informing the country or Parliament, still, access to him
was refused to all by his physicians, except the members of his
family and immediate household, and they were charged not to
mention business to him; it would be impossible to approach him.
When Sir Peter told me this, I became so weak I was forced to sit
down. After a few minutes of agony, a desperate resolve came to
me. I rose, and said,—
“I have a scheme—desperate, but not impossible. Go with me to
the Prince of Wales. He is at Carlton House, but goes back and forth
to Windsor.”
Sir Peter jumped at this poor chance, and we agreed to go
immediately.
We had left York on a Friday, and had reached London on the
Monday. Two days had been lost in the journey to Kent; and it was
now late in the evening of Wednesday. We had, luckily, brought our
uniforms along; and, dressing ourselves in them,—Sir Peter with all
his orders sewn on his coat,—we called a hackney-coach, and drove
to Carlton House.
When we got there, it was about ten o’clock in the evening. The
windows were brilliantly lighted up, and it was about the hour that the
Prince of Wales was known to be in his best humor—but the hour
when he most hated to be disturbed.
We descended, and the sentries passed us through, on account
of our uniforms and Sir Peter’s decorations on his breast. We
reached the door, and knocked. The porter opened the door gingerly,
when Sir Peter, giving it a kick, walked in, followed by me. The man
attempted to arrest our progress, but Sir Peter said to him fiercely,—
“Do you think, you damned lackey, that you can be insolent to an
admiral in his Majesty’s service?” The man apologized humbly and
ushered us into a large reception-room on the first floor, saying he
would call the gentleman of the chambers.
We seated ourselves. Even in that time of agony, I noticed the
beauty of the room—indeed, my senses seemed preternaturally
acute, and every incident of that dreadful time is deeply fixed in my
mind. The ceiling was of gilt, while around the walls were paintings of
Flora. A gilt chandelier diffused light through the apartment, and at
one side was a pair of large folding doors.
After a long wait, a gentleman, Mr. Digby, appeared. He received
us politely, but said it was impossible to disturb the Prince then, as
he was just sitting down to piquet. Sir Peter remained silent; he was
used to giving orders, and the words, “It is impossible to see His
Royal Highness,” were peculiarly disagreeable to him.
I then made my plea. I told Mr. Digby that the life of a gallant
officer and gentleman was in jeopardy, and that we begged to see
his Royal Highness, in the hope that the king might be approached.
“That, too, is impossible,” coldly replied Mr. Digby. “The king is far
from well.”
Just then, some one on the other side of the folding doors
opened one of them the least bit in the world, and then closed it—but
not before we had seen streams of light pouring from it, a long table
brilliant with plate and ornaments, and a company of about twenty
gentlemen sitting around it, and at one end sat a personage whom
we at once recognized as the Prince of Wales.
Without a word, Sir Peter arose, and, darting toward the door,—
for he was ever an agile man,—threw it open, and walked into the
presence of his Royal Highness.
“Sir,” said he, marching up to the Prince, “I am Admiral Sir Peter
Hawkshaw, and I have boarded you, so to speak, sir, in order to save
the life of one of the gallantest officers in the service of his Majesty.”
I had always heard that his Royal Highness was a gentleman,
and I saw then such an exhibition of readiness and good taste as I
never saw before, and never expect to see again. Every one at the
table, except the Prince, seemed astounded at the sudden entrance
and startling address of a short active little man in an admiral’s
uniform. But the Prince offered Sir Peter his hand in the coolest
manner in the world, saying,—
“Most happy to meet you, Sir Peter. I recollect well that you
carried the Indomptable by boarding very successfully. But how did
you get past the watch-dogs at the door, my dear sir?”
“By carrying sail hard, your Royal Highness,” responded Sir
Peter, “and seeing this door open, faith, said I, to myself, having
risked my skin these forty years for the king and his successors,
sure, I can risk it once more by walking in on my Prince, and here I
am, sir, ready to state my case. That bloody popinjay, Digby” (Digby
was right behind him), “wanted me to let you alone because you
were about to go to piquet, but I think no prince of England would
sacrifice a man’s life to a game of piquet.”
“Certainly not I, Sir Peter,” answered his Royal Highness, rising,
“and now I have an hour entirely at your service.”
“Sir,” said Sir Peter, “I ask the honor of shaking hands with you,
not as a royal prince, but as an honest man and good fellow.”
I think the Prince was ever susceptible to honest praise, for he
was no fool, and he was undoubtedly pleased when Sir Peter wrung
his hand. He then led the way into another room, and the door was
closed.
The rest of the party behaved very civilly to me, and I accepted
thankfully an invitation to have something to eat and drink. They
were merciful to me, seeing my distress of mind, and did not plague
me with questions, but resumed their conversation with one another.
Presently the Prince and Sir Peter appeared, and his Royal
Highness said, with that charm of manner which seduced some men
and many women,—
“Hark’ee, Sir Peter; I do not promise that the affair will be
complete before Sunday night; I go to Windsor early in the morning,
and two days is a brief time in which to arrange so important a
matter. But if you will be at Windsor on Sunday morning, I pledge
you my word as a gentleman the paper shall be ready, signed,
sealed, and delivered.”
At that Sir Peter fairly broke down, and could only say, “God
bless you, sir, God bless you!” and the Prince, turning the old man’s
emotion off gently, smiled and said,—
“’Tis for the preservation of the gallantry of our sex, Sir Peter, that
this young officer must not hang.”
He warmly invited us to remain and finish up the wine, and then
one of the gentlemen at the table, whether of design or not,
mentioned the extraordinary reports which had just reached London
concerning the trial at York, and I, encouraged thereto by a subtle
look and a question of his Royal Highness, told the whole story,
assisted by Sir Peter. It was listened to with the deepest interest.
Lady Arabella Stormont was known to every person there, and
the Prince remarked that he had danced with her at the last
birthnight ball. Her infatuation for Overton was well known and freely
commented on, and the strange measures that women will
sometimes venture upon in the interest, as they think, of the man
they love, was exemplified in her testifying against Giles Vernon. Sir
Thomas Vernon’s hatred of his heir was also well known,—and as
the web was unfolded to the Prince he listened with an air of the
profoundest thought, and his comment was significant,—
“The king can pardon.”
He had pity on us and did not press us to remain to cards, so we
left Carlton House about an hour after entering it, and with hearts
immeasurably lighter. Our first thought was to hasten back to our
lodgings to send off our good news to Lady Hawkshaw and Daphne
by the northern mail.
Sir Peter told me then that the Prince had directed him to go to
Windsor in the morning and remain, and that he himself would bring
him back on the Sunday morning, if the counter signatures to his
Majesty’s could not be had before. The Prince was quite familiar with
the procedure, and engaged to get the pardon from the king without
difficulty.
Early next morning Sir Peter left me. It was agreed that I should
proceed on the Sunday morning to the Bear and Churn, a tavern and
posting station near London, on the northern road, to arrange in
advance for the best cattle, in order that not a moment might be lost
in returning to York. So, after two miserable days alone in London,
while Sir Peter was at Windsor, I was glad on Sunday morning to be
on the northern road, preparing for our rapid return to York. The Bear
and Churn was directly on the highway, and was well out of London,
being surrounded by green fields and orchards.
It was a beautiful morning, more like April than February. The
greenness of the earth, the blueness of the heavens, the quiet of the
country, after the rattle and roar and dun skies of London, were balm
to my soul.
I reached the inn by ten o’clock; and, having arranged for their
best horses, and sent word two stations ahead, I sat down to pass
the day as best I might. I wrote a long letter to Daphne, and then, it
being about twelve o’clock, I went out for a walk.
There was a pretty pathway, through a little grove, toward a
rolling field, next the highway. I took this path, and presently came
face to face, at a turn in the path, with Overton. He was singularly
dressed for a man of his quality and profession.
He wore black clothes, with plain silver buckles at the knees, and
black silk stockings and shoes. His hair, unpowdered, was tied with a
black ribbon; but he wore no crape or vestige of mourning. I had ever
thought him the handsomest man in England; but in this garb, so
different from the brilliant uniform or other exquisite dress in which I
had heretofore seen him, he looked like an Apollo. He greeted me
gravely, but not impolitely; and we walked along together. He had
heard of my marriage, and felicitated me on it.
My heart was so full of Giles Vernon that I burst out with the story.
It seemed quite new to him; and he listened to it with breathless
attention, occasionally ejaculating his horror at the conduct of Sir
Thomas Vernon and of Lady Arabella Stormont. It gave me a savage
pleasure to tell him every dreadful particular concerning Arabella;
and by the look of consciousness which came into his expressive
face, and by the way in which he avoided my eye, I saw that he
knew he was a factor in the case against his will. At last, quite
transported by my rage against these two, I cried out,—
“And it is for the purpose of securing the estate to you that
Arabella Stormont thus swore away the life of Giles Vernon; but God
will confound her and Sir Thomas Vernon yet!”
“Truly,” said he, in a thrilling voice, “God will confound all the
wicked. He will bring this horrid scheme to naught in every way; for
know you, if Lady Arabella Stormont were to throw herself on her
knees before me—”
He stopped, and colored violently; he had not meant to admit
what the whole world knew,—that Arabella Stormont had adored him
for seven years past. He hurriedly changed the subject, saying,—
“Perhaps you do not know that I am no longer in the army.”
I said I did not.
“Although I have recovered the use of my limbs, and look to be in
health, I am not fit for service; and I was retired on half-pay only a
few days ago. My life is not likely to be long; but released as I am, by
God’s hand, from the profession of arms, I shall devote the remnant
of my life to the service of the Lord God Almighty. His message came
to me years ago, but I was deaf to it. I was in love with the world, and
possessed by the flesh and the devil. I committed murders under the
name of war. I dishonored my Maker by my dissipations. I spent in
gambling and vice the money wrung from the poor that were bond-
slaves to labor and poverty. I blasphemed, and yet I was not counted
evil by the world.”
I listened and wondered to myself, should this be true, where
stood we all?
Overton’s face had flushed, his eyes were full of rapture; he
seemed to dwell in the glory of the Lord.
“But now I am free from the body of that death, and subject only
to the yoke of the Nazarene,—the Jesus who labored with His hands
to show that work was honorable; the Carpenter who called about
Him those as poor as Himself, and preached to them the love of God
and one’s neighbor; who received the Magdalen as a sister and the
leper as a brother.”
I was silent. I had heard many sermons from deans and
dignitaries,—all well-fed men, and every man jack of them after
promotion from the Whigs,—and these sermons had left my heart as
untouched as that of the wild Indian of North America. But this was
different. After a while, Overton continued,—
“As this Jesus called all manner of men to follow Him,—the
greedy tax-gatherer, as well as Peter the poor fisherman, and John
the gentle and studious youth,—so He called me; and, like the tax-
gatherer, whose stony heart was melted by the voice of Jesus, I say
with tears, ‘My God! I follow Thee!’”
We had now approached the corner of the field, and involuntarily
stopped. I said to him blunderingly,—
“Shall you take orders?”
“No,” he replied. “I do not aspire to open my mouth as a teacher
—I am not worthy; but a few of the humblest people about here—I
have been in this place for some time—come to me on Sundays, in
the forenoon, to ask me to speak to them. They are day-laborers,
hostlers—the kind of people I once fancied to be without souls. I
speak to them, not as a preacher and teacher, but as a brother and a
friend. It is now time for them to assemble.”
I saw, sure enough, a number of poorly-dressed rustics coming
toward the field. They came by twos and threes, the women mostly
with children in arms, or hanging to their skirts. When all had arrived,
there were about thirty men and women. They seated themselves on
the grass, and I along with them, and, in some mysterious way, I felt,
for the first time in my life, that the plowman was my brother, and the
kitchen wench my sister.
When they were all seated, Overton took from his pocket a small
Bible, and read the Sermon on the Mount. The people listened
reverently. He gave them a short discourse, suited to their
understanding, and then read to them a simple hymn, which they
sang with fervor.
I listened with a strange feeling, half pain, half pleasure, half
satisfaction, half dissatisfaction. I wished for Daphne’s sweet spirit to
be near me. It came to my mind how like was this meeting of the
poor and unlearned to those held by the Carpenter of Nazareth on
the shores of the Sea of Galilee. The hymn echoed sweetly over the
green fields; it was a part of that great antiphon with which Nature
replies to the harmonics of the Most High. The quiet scene, the
woods, the fields, the kine in the pasture near by, all seemed one in
this act of worship. But presently my soul was distracted by what I
saw on the highway close by us. A handsome traveling chariot,
followed by a plain post-chaise going Londonward, stopped. Out of
the chariot stepped Lady Arabella Stormont, and, through an
opening in the hedge, she entered the field. After a considerable
interval, Mrs. Whitall followed her; and, after a still longer one, Sir
Thomas Vernon.
“Will you speak to me?” Page 225
Lady Arabella walked noiselessly over the grass, and, when she
reached the edge of the group, stopped. Her eyes were full of
laughing contempt at first, but, when Overton turned his glance full
upon her, she suddenly assumed a look of seriousness, and folded
her hands as if in silent prayer. Behind her, Mrs. Whitall’s foolish face
was all fear, while Sir Thomas Vernon grinned unpleasantly over her
shoulder. Overton, without taking the slightest notice of them, at the
conclusion of the hymn announced that he would make a prayer, and
asked his hearers to join with him in a petition that the life might be
spared of a certain young man, Giles Vernon, now under sentence of
death in York jail. We all stood up, then, the men removing their hats.
I held mine before my face to conceal my tears, while Overton made
a brief but earnest prayer for Giles, and I could not refrain from
crying, “Amen! Amen!” when he concluded.
The people then trooped off, and we, the gentlefolks, were left
together.
Overton surveyed Lady Arabella and Sir Thomas with much
contempt. Lady Arabella was the first to speak. She held up her
head timidly, and said,—
“Will you not speak to me?”
“No,” replied Overton sternly. “Giles Vernon’s life may be spared;
but upon you is blood-guiltiness.”
Arabella turned pale, and replied,—
“I was summoned as a witness. I was obliged to testify.”
Overton said nothing. Then Sir Thomas, taking snuff with his
usual grace, remarked,—
“I listened with attention to one lawbreaker praying for another
lawbreaker. Of course, you know, this meeting of yours is seditious—
and many a man has been stood in the pillory for it.”
“And one Man,” replied Overton, “Jesus Christ, was crucified for
it.”
He turned, and with me, took the path back to the tavern. I heard,
as we went on, an altercation behind me, and involuntarily, after we
had gone some distance, I looked back. Lady Arabella was
struggling in the grasp of Sir Thomas Vernon, while Mrs. Whitall
looked on, and wrung her hands. Sir Thomas, however, was no
match for Arabella’s young strength. She broke away from him, and,
running after us, caught up, panting and breathless, with us, as we
entered the little grove. And then I saw an almost exact
representation of the scene when Giles Vernon had insanely and
with unmanly groveling and violence pleaded with Arabella for her
love,—so she pleaded with Philip Overton. She held him by the
arms, when he would have thrown her off.
“Philip! Philip!” she cried. “I did it for you! I determined to make
you rich, great, even if you refused my fortune. Sir Thomas can not
live long. Surely, you can not reproach me, if all the world does. The
stupid, stupid world thinks I did it under the influence of Sir Thomas
Vernon; but no, it was not hate for Giles Vernon, it was my love for
you, Philip Overton, that made me appear at the York Assizes.”
“Remember yourself,” said Overton to her sternly. “Others,
besides myself, see your degradation!”
“It is no degradation to love truly, to love as I do. Speak but one
word to me, and I will become a Methodist like yourself. I, too, will go
among the poor, and serve and love them; and I will even love God
for your sake!”
The awful grotesqueness of this, the blasphemy of it, was
altogether unknown to her. She continued wildly,—
“Does not my soul need saving as much as those clods you have
been praying with?”
“You blaspheme!” replied Overton, casting her off.
And, to make the resemblance between her own unwomanly
conduct and the unmanly conduct of Giles Vernon the more singular,
she recovered herself, as he had done, in a single moment of time.
She laid her hand on Overton’s arm, and looked keenly into his eyes.
Her glance seemed to enchain him, and to set her free. She
breathed a long sigh, and, turning, gazed about her, like a person
awaking from a nightmare. Then, with perfect self-possession, she
dropped a curtsey to us both, and said, in her natural, playful
manner,—
“Mr. Overton, I see I have been mistaken. I should have tried to
cheat the law by not appearing when I was summoned; or, I should
have testified falsely. And for my indiscreet conduct just now, let me
tell you, for seven years I have been under a spell. It is now broken
for ever. Titania once loved Bottom the weaver; but not always. I bid
you good day, Captain Philip Overton, and you, Mr. Richard Glyn.
And I trust Giles Vernon’s life may be saved, if only to keep you,
Captain Overton, as poor as you deserve to be. For myself, I shall
shortly marry,—perhaps, Sir Thomas Vernon,—then, neither of you
will get the estates. Good morning!”
And she was gone, flying along the field, with a white mantle
streaming after her, and her flight as rapid as the swallows in spring.
XI
At twelve o’clock that night Sir Peter arrived at the tavern, and
with the pardon.
The expectation of his coming, and the greater matter upon
which we were engaged, prevented my mind from dwelling longer
upon the strange scene I had witnessed between Overton and Lady
Arabella. Overton did not speak her name to me, and showed much
sympathy for us. When Sir Peter’s chaise drove up to the door of the
Bear and Churn, another chaise with four horses was waiting, and
into it we huddled, bidding Overton a hurried farewell; and in another
moment we were off for York, the horses doing their best.
Sir Peter then told me the circumstances of his visit to Windsor.
The Prince, who was always most powerful when the king was on
the verge of madness, saw his father and found him comparatively
rational. The story being broached to him, he appeared interested,
and even grew more collected as his attention was chained. He
recalled at once Sir Peter Hawkshaw and the capture of the
Indomptable and Xantippe, and corrected the Prince when he spoke
of Sir Peter as Vice-Admiral of the White. It was a very easy matter
to get his signature to the pardon, and the necessary seals and
formalities took some little time but no trouble, and when Sir Peter
presented himself at the Castle on Sunday, all was prepared for him.
We felt now comparatively safe. There was little doubt that we
could reach York at least twenty-four hours in advance of the date
set for the execution; our letters would precede us, giving positive
assurances of hope; and we looked for no accidents, having a new
and strong chaise.
After Sir Peter had told me his story, I told him mine about Lady
Arabella and Overton. He was not much imbued with the kind of
religion that Overton preached, although he swore roundly by
Church and State, and was always a great churchman when he was
slightly in liquor, which did not happen often. He therefore
condemned Overton’s sermon, which I tried to repeat to him, as a
damned, beastly low sort of religion, unfit for a gentleman to practise;
but he admitted that Overton lacked neither brains nor courage. For
Lady Arabella, though, he had the stern disapproval of an honest
heart, and in his excitement swore both long and loud because of the
short-sightedness of Providence in permitting such women to exist
for the undoing of his Majesty’s officers of both services.
We made good progress that night and the next day, which was
Monday, and began to have strong hopes of reaching York
Wednesday night. But on Monday, in the afternoon, the weather
suddenly changed, a violent snow-storm set in, and our postboys
wilfully, I think, drove us ten miles out of the way, near a tavern
where they hoped, no doubt, we would agree to stop until the storm
should be over. But Sir Peter, putting one of his great horse-pistols to
the postboy’s head, forced him to turn back to the high-road. We lost
three hours by this; and when we got to our next posting stage, our
horses, engaged two days ahead, had been taken. We got others,
after a frantic effort, but at the end of that day’s journey we saw our
margin of time diminished exactly one-half.
I shall not attempt to describe the fierce and gnawing impatience
which consumed us, nor the awful and unspoken dread which began
to overshadow us. Sir Peter was a man of stout heart, and had no
more notion of giving up at this stage of the affair than he dreamed
of surrendering when he saw the Indomptable to windward and the
Xantippe to leeward.
The weather, however, grew worse instead of better, and even
four horses could scarcely drag us through the mire made by the
snow and rain. In spite of all we could do our progress diminished,
although at no time did it seem hopeless, until—O God! twenty miles
from York, at midnight on the Thursday, Sir Peter himself suddenly
gave out; the strain had proved too much for his brave heart and
sturdy frame. It came as the horses were wallowing along the road in
the darkness, and I, holding my watch in my hand, was glancing at it
every ten minutes, by the feeble light of the traveling lamp. I spoke to
Sir Peter as he lay back in the chaise wrapped in his boat-cloak, and
got no answer. He was unconscious. Without stopping the chaise, I
got some brandy, which I tried to pour down his throat, but could not.
I grew much alarmed,—it was not like Sir Peter to refuse good
brandy, and as we were passing a farmstead, I stopped the chaise,
knocked the people up, and had Sir Peter carried into the house. I
met with kindness, and I repaid it with coin of the realm. Sir Peter
soon revived, and his first words were,—
“Push on, my lad. Don’t wait to repair damages.”
I found that his seizure was really trifling, and he assured me he
would be able to resume the journey by daylight, the farmer agreeing
to furnish him horses; so, in half an hour I had again taken the road.
And ten miles from York, the chaise broke down!
I had the horses taken out, and, mounting the best beast, made
for York at the top of his speed, which was poor,—the creature was
already spent with traveling.
It was just daylight, and streaks of golden glory were lighting up
the pallid dawn; I urged the poor beast onward. Seven miles he
went, then he dropped dead, just as the sun was gilding the spires of
York Cathedral. Before me, along the road, jogged an itinerant tinker
on a rather good-looking horse, the tools of a tinker’s trade hanging
from a moth-eaten saddle. I was young and strong,—he was middle-
aged and ill-fed and feeble. I ran up to him, holding five guineas in
my hand.
“Lend me this horse to ride to York!” I cried.
The man, astonished at my abrupt address, stopped, but gave
me no answer. I made my own answer, though, by dragging him off
the beast, dashing the five guineas on the ground, and clattering off,
throwing away the tools and kettles as I galloped along.
Already there were great crowds in the streets, and as I made my
way madly toward the jail, I was often impeded. I shrieked, I
screamed at the people, and waved aloft my precious paper,
shouting, “Pardon! Pardon!” The cry was taken up, and swelled in a
great roar that came from a thousand friendly throats. As I galloped
along on the tinker’s horse, in a frenzy, through the crowded streets,

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Asia in the Old and New Cold Wars:

Ideologies, Narratives, and Lived

New Media in the Margins: Lived Realities and

Navigating Educational Change in China: Contemporary

Lived Nation as the History of Experiences and Emotions

New Challenges and Solutions for Renewable Energy :

New Speakers of Minority Languages: Linguistic

Understanding the New Proxy Wars 1st Edition Peter

Suharto's Cold War: Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and the

GCC Hydrocarbon Economies and COVID Old Trends, New

Asia in the Old

ISBN 978-981-19-7680-3 ISBN 978-981-19-7681-0 (eBook)

contextually sensitive, and self-reflexive enquiry, directed at multiple scales

of all conference sessions can be viewed at https://www.hkbu.online/nar

Kowloon, Hong Kong Kenneth Paul Tan

1 Interpreting the Cold War and the New Cold War

6 The Cold-War Structure of Feeling: Revisiting

Giacomo Bagarella is a consultant and writer based in New York City.

Studies, PR&TA, Mekong Review, and The Margins by Asian American

in terms of global public health; digital and public diplomacy; compar-

Image 2.1 Chenggong beach and fortifications, which are typical

Interpreting the Cold War and the New

Kenneth Paul Tan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

contribute to ongoing work that integrates new and different approaches

Cold-War Conflicts in Asia

in general, and news media to conduct psychological warfare and boost

The Korean War

The Vietnam War

Following a policy of “Vietnamization” in 1968, the United States with-

The Chinese Civil War

The Malayan Emergency

China in the Cold War and the New Cold War

China’s economy is illusory and limited by its problematic social and

and inextricably linked to one another that geopolitical and geo-economic

of local opposition to globalized economies, international organizations,

health diplomacy and its “national role conception” as global health

Cold-War Ideological Struggle

contested since then (e.g. Acemoglu and Robinson [2022]). Versions of

Others have argued that the ideological divisions in New-Cold-War

remarkably like those of their Western capitalist counterparts, even as

and national interests—and not ideological ones—are what matter at the

these ideological delusions, which often disguise the interests of power

Many chapters in this book pay attention to the affective appeal of

Museums and Monuments

In Chapter 3, Zhou Hau Liew discusses another South Korean

Films and Television Serials

In Chapter 6, Chen I-ting discusses a pair of Taiwanese films, the short

Novels and Non-Fiction Books

of mainland Chinese women. They are examples of how narratives of

Cold-War Lived Experience

and the choices and options that confront them. Micro-socioeconomic

In the next chapter, Giacomo Bagarella “re-visits” the museums

Curating Memory: Cold-War Narratives

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 25

These narratives are inseparable from where I’ve lived. My parents’

In my travels, I found many stories, some contradictory and some

Kinmen, Taiwan: The Island

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