Globalizing the Second World War.

This article reconceptualizes the Second World War as a global conflict embedded within a longer cycle of regional wars and revolutions spanning from the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 to the Korean War's end in 1953. It challenges the conventional 1939–45 framework by broadening temporal and spatial horizons to include often marginalized regions such as Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, while emphasizing transnational flows, hybridity, and popular agency. Central to this analysis is the emergence of American hegemony as the primary outcome of the war, shaped and qualified by the Chinese Revolution, Soviet power, and anti-colonial struggles. The article also highlights the complex interplay between global capitalist dynamics and nation-state politics, illustrating how the war and its aftermath cannot be neatly divided into discrete "war" and "post-war" periods but rather form a continuous, multifaceted process.