1600-1997 Japan. 5.02 The Move To Global War
Reference
📕 The Move To Global War: Course Companion by Keely Rogers, Jo Thomas (Oxford)
Factors
EXTERNAL: Chinese political instability
Summary
Key in encouraging imperial competition on its mainland, and preventing Japanese expansionism into Korea and Manchuria.
- 1839-1842, 1856-1860 Opium Wars – China was a semi-colonial country
- European powers had extraordinary privileges – the Chinese empire was technically independent, but really at the mercy of other powers and treaties (backed up by their military power)
- 1800s: China was forcibly opened to trade by the West
- 1868: Japan had similar circumstances, but turned the situation around after Perry’s arrival by borrowing Western ideas to become a stronger country
- Christian missionaries flooded the country
- for more details, see 1839-1842, 1856-1860 Opium Wars
- Meiji ambition to be a “first-class country” helped encourage public sentiment towards expansion on the mainland
- Japan sought to achieve equality with the West → it had to acquire colonies
- economic motivations; China had the raw materials and the markets of East Asia
- strategically, Japan’s security depended on controlling East Asia
- the possibility of other powers having political control in Korea (a "dagger thrust at the heart of Japan") and China was alarming
- China’s weakness over a modernised Japan was evident in the 1894-1895 First Sino-Japanese War, fought over Korea → Japan emboldened and proud → enabled their expansionism