Introduction: The Western Threat

This volume deals with the rise and fall of European power in the world. The successors were to be the United States, the USSR and, eventually, East Asia, so I devote various chapters to all three. This chapter deals with East Asia in the period up to about 1930. I chart the rise of Japan, the one country to resist Western imperialism, industrialize, and develop an empire of its own. It did so largely at the expense of the world’s oldest surviving empire, China. I take China-Japan relations forward to about 1930, just before Japan unleashed the aggressive militarism that was to cause its own downfall and assist the eventual dominance of East Asia by Chinese communism.

East Asia was at the outer logistical limits of the Western powers. They could not colonize either China or Japan, and had to remain content with an informal empire with gunboats. China and Japan were advanced civilizations endowed with a cultural solidarity out of which modern nationalism could rise, enabling them to resist, adapt, and devise their own national versions of modernity. However, this was a much longer process for China. In this period, I will contrast divided Chinese elites – unable to consistently pursue the reforms necessary to modernize or turn back foreign imperialism – with more cohesive Japanese elites – able to reform at home and emulate Western imperialism abroad.