On 23 November 2020, the professor of the Banja Luka Grammar School Tatjana Jurić gave a lecture on the topic Japanese Expansion in East Asia at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Banja Luka. The lecture was organized by the Confucius Institute in cooperation with the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Banja Luka for the students of history at this faculty.
In her one-hour lecture, Professor Tatjana Jurić spoke about a new transnational concept in the world historiography and its significance for understanding the beginning of the Second World War and its consequences for China.
A few years ago there was an initiative to accept the fact that World War II began in 1937, when Japan started an invasion of China. The initiative was started by Robert Frank, Secretary General of the International Congress of Historical Sciences.
In 2015, Frank published the book World War 1937-1947, in which he points out that the war began in China, near Beijing, after the incident near the Marco Polo Bridge, in which he analyzes in detail the beginning of the war in Asia, the Japanese occupation of parts of China, as well as the resistance and suffering of the Chinese population.
This view of the military history of the 20th century is supported by other eminent historians, such as Rana Mitter from the University of Oxford. In 2013, Mitter published the book „Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II 1937-1945“ in which he points to the fact that "China was the first country to experience a strong attack from the Axis powers, two years before it happened to France and the UK and four years before the US”.
In this lecture that is necessary for understanding the beginning of the Second World War, Tatjana Jurić analyzed the situation in Japan, China and Europe in the interwar period in the first half of the 20th century, foreign policy relations between these countries, focusing in particular on Japan (as a traditional and isolated feudal society that traded only with China, Korea and Holland), the Japanese imperialism and its ambition to conquer the Chinese territories.
She analyzed the beginning, course and end of the Manchurian crisis, as well as the consequences of this crisis for China, Japan, the League of Nations and the rest of the world.
Tatjana Jurić is a professor of history and Latin language at the Banja Luka Grammar School, she is the only professor from the Republic of Srpska admitted to the Association of the Best Teachers of Former Yugoslavia. She also received an award for the best teacher in the region.