The so-called “Manchurian Crisis” of 1931, in which Japan invaded northern China and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo, is considered by some historians to be the first in a long series of events that led ultimately to the Second World War. By meddling in Chinese affairs, Japan revealed how powerless the Western countries and the League of Nations were to prevent such intervention, and thus provided an example for Mussolini to invade Ethiopia and for Hitler to re-militarize the Rhineland, annex Austria, and secure the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia for Germany. The League’s inaction in Manchuria allowed these dictators to be unafraid that the international community would unite against their acts of aggression. In The Limits of Foreign Policy, Christopher Thorne explains why the West did not intervene in Manchuria, demonstrating that neither the governments nor the people of Western countries could see the danger that Japan was to be in the future.

The book is divided into three parts – Exposition, Development, and Recapitulation – which are further divided into twelve chapters. Each chapter describes a new development in the Far East, reactions to this development in Washington, London, and Paris, as well as in the League of Nations headquarters at Geneva, and provides an analysis of how the motives and actions of all countries appear in retrospect.

Thorne’s book is masterfully written, and the author ably demonstrates how Westerners’ pro-Japanese sympathies and preoccupation with Europe, along with their fears that a weak and disunited action by the League would discredit its prestige more than complete inaction, blinded them to the danger Japan would play in the late 1930s. Thorne exhaustively researched his subject matter, and provides extensive insights on the positions of all countries by unearthing records kept by governments during the period. However, it must be said that while this is the definitive scholarly work about the Manchurian Crisis, it is primarily useful for those researching the field. The length of the book and the depth it covers leave it difficult to read for enjoyment, and Thorne is primarily concerned with disclosing facts about the events of the early 1930s than with turning it into a story in which the reader could get caught up. Therefore, The Limits of Foreign Policy, while an excellent book, is much more for the scholar than for the casual reader.

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