On 18 November 2020, the Banja Luka Grammar School professor Tatjana Jurić held an online
lecture on the topic "The Manchurian Crisis of 1931".
The lecture, organized by the Confucius Institute of the University of Banja Luka in cooperation
with the Banja Luka Grammar School as part of the activities of the Confucius Classroom in the Grammar School, was held via Google Meet for the students and professors of this school, as well as history students at the Faculty of Philosophy.
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.
It is a well-known fact that the Second World War began on 1 September 1939 when the Nazi
Germany attacked Poland, and this fact is highlighted in textbooks and literature around the
world. However, a few years ago there was an initiative to accept the fact that World War II
began in 1937, when Japan started a general 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”.
Due to this new, transnational concept in the world historiography, the topic of the Manchurian
Crisis of 1931 as the first stage of the Japanese attack on China, is of great importance. In this lecture which 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, as well as the beginning, course and end of the crisis. She also analyzed 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.
Her lecture on the topic of the Manchurian crisis in 1931 was the first in a series of online
lectures as part of the activities of the recently opened Confucius Classroom at the Banja Luka
Grammar School.
The Confucius Classroom is a specialized classroom for studying Chinese
language and culture in which students and professors of this school have the opportunity to learn and improve their knowledge of the Chinese language and learn more about the Chinese culture through classes and different activities and projects.