The Battle of Penang : World War One in the Far East

Having part of the Penguin China World War One series of shorter e-books I’m glad to see others are writing on the war as it affected a wider Asian sphere….JR Robertson’s The Battle of Penang is out now and covers events around 1914-1918 in South East Asia and Hong Kong as well as China…

From civil war-torn China to the Singapore Mutiny, Robertson traces the dramatic events at the beginning of WW1, as the imperial forces of the UK, France, Russia and Japan expelled the German navy from their colonial possessions in the Far East and Pacific. It follows the desperate rear-guard action fought by the German cruiser Emden, sinking a score of Allied merchant ships over several weeks around the Bay of Bengal and culminating in the Battle of Penang. Robertson throws new light on the debacle amongst the allied warships in Penang.