Post on 11-Jan-2016
THE INTENSIFICATION OF IMPERIALRIVALRIES AROUND THE YEAR 1900:
But two of these issues promoted cooperation among the Great Powers
1898Fashoda Crisis: France and Britain nearly go to war over control of the Sudan (Rich, pp. 272-77)
1899-1902
Boer War: Might Germany intervene? (See Rich, pp. 278-98)
1900Boxer Rebellion provokes joint European relief expedition to the Beijing embassies (pp. 322-24)
1904/05 Russo-Japanese War (Rich, pp. 324-28)
1899-1910
Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway gains support from Russia & Britain (Rich, pp. 339-45)
China under the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty, mid-18th century
A fierce Manchu warrior (1760):
But the Empire had no foreign ministry or diplomatic corps
“Export blue” Chinese soup plate from the 1750s
Europeans could visit only one port:“The Canton Factories,” ca. 1780
Lord Macartney’s mission to Beijing, 1793
CHINESE OPIUM DEN: By 1838 enough opium was being imported from India each year to keep several million Chinese addicted and cause a
major trade deficit.
Emperor Daoguang(reigned 1820-1850): In 1838 he decided to
suppress the opium trade
But his officials knew nothing about the Europeans:“The old hairy one” (Chinese cartoon of a British sailor, 1839)
A Chinese warship guarding the approach to Canton is destroyed by the British steamship Nemesis, January 1841
A British fleet bombards Canton in 1841 and lands marines to reopen the foreign factories. In 1842 China ceded Hong
Kong and opened five “Treaty Ports.”
Ruins of the Summer Palace outside Beijing,destroyed by the British in October 1860
The “black devils”: Sikh troops fighting for the British in China, 1860
Chinese militia from upcountry, summoned to help defend Beijing in 1860
COMMODORE PERRY HAD MEANWHILE “OPENED” JAPAN TO U.S. TRADE IN 1852-54 (a humiliation for the Shogun)
THE CHARTER OATH SWORN BY EMPEROR MEIJIon April 7, 1868
By this oath, we set up as our aim the establishment of the national wealth on a broad basis and the framing of a constitution and laws.
1.Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion.
2.All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.
3.The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.
4.Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature.
5.Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.
EMPEROR MEIJI RETURNS FROM KYOTO TO TOKYO,DECEMBER 1868
China’s defeat by Japan in 1894/95 resulted in a vast expansion of the
Treaty Port system and a wave of
nationalist resentment
The German naval base at Tsingtao, northeast China,established by Admiral Alfred Tirpitz in 1897
Appointed German naval commander in late 1897,
Tirpitz proved a brilliant lobbyist
Tirpitz and Wilhelm II persuaded the Reichstag to fund the building of 19 battleships in 1898, raised to 38 in 1900
Member of the nationalist martial arts society,
“Boxers United In Righteousness,”
China, 1900
Russian Icon of Chinese Orthodox Christians
martyred in 1900
Sketch map by Captain John T.
Myers, U.S. Marine Corps, of the
embassy district in Beijing during the
Boxer siege in 1900
Kaiser Wilhelm II addresses the troops departing for China on July 27, 1900:
“No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under King Attila made a
name for themselves, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German!”
“Germans to the Front!”(painting to celebrate the role of German marines in suppressing the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in 1900)
A Chinese “Boxer” flanked by Germanguards in Tientsien, 1903/04
Travels in the East,by E. Ukhtomsky
(1896):Russia’s
“Manifest Destiny”
THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA IN ASIA, ca. 1900:(with new rail links across Manchuria to Vladivostok & Port Arthur
“The Yellow Peril,” seen from Europe (French cartoon, 1904)
“The White Peril,” as viewed by Asians (French cartoon, 1904)
Japan as the pawn of the Anglo-Saxon powers(Russian postcard, c. 1902): Since the Meiji Restoration of
the 1860s Japan had sought to learn from the West
Admiral Haihachiro Togo, Japanese naval commander in 1904:
His fleet blockaded Port Arthur and destroyed both Russia’s Pacific
and Baltic Fleets when they sought to break
the blockade
Japanes troops enter the
conquered city of Liaujang,
1904
The Japanese besieged Port Arthur from
February to December 1904; after they dragged
their siege guns into position, they quickly
pounded it into submission on January 2, 1905
The “Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway” was formerly treatedas a major cause of World War I, but Rich shows that
it gained support from both Britain and Russia….
Why did so many colonial conflicts take place around 1900?