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Wilson and China: A Revised History of the Shandong Question

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The Shandong question arose when Japan, as an ally of Britain, seized the German concession at Shandong at the outbreak of the first world war. At the 1919 Versailles Conference, President Wilson tried hard to reach an agreement that would allow both China and Japan to 'save face' while preserving China's territorial integrity.
It has become a myth of Chinese nationalist history that Wilson 'betrayed' China at Versailles. Elleman shows that is not so. To the contrary, China was partly an architect of its own misfortune when it sent its delegates to Versailles without telling them that it had entered into a secret agreement with Japan in September 1918.
Elleman's book is also a reminder of how much Russia/USSR preyed on China- something that the Chinese nationalist version of history chooses to forget.
The book would have been even stronger if it took a more sceptical view of Japan's ambitions. After all, Japan's notorious 'Twenty One Demands' on China in 1915 were little more than a bid for hegemony over all of China. As a consequence, the US concluded that Japan was using its treaty with the UK as a screen for its pursuit of ambition in China, and demanded that the treaty be abrogated. That did much to set Japan adrift, and it soon became a menace to itself and others.