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Introduction 1 For most people in the Western world, the Pacific War began with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941. The first steps towards the conflict, however, had already been taken as early as the late nineteenth century, when Japan embarked on its gradual expansion into Chinese territory. When a Japan-assisted rebellion broke out in Korea in September 1894 — Korea was a protectorate of China at this time — the Japanese not only captured Pyongyang but also crushed the entire northern Chinese fleet. The Chinese government then was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki. In addition, China was forced to abandon its rights in Korea and was made to pay Japan 200 million taels of silver in war indemnities. Other conditions of the treaty were that Taiwan, the Pescadores, and the Liaodong region of the northeast were ceded to Japan. It marked the beginning of a series of Japanese invasions. During the Russian-Japanese War in 1905, the Japanese navy attacked the Russian fleet in Port Arthur and won from them all rights in the southern part of Manchuria. The end result was Japanese control of Port Arthur in the Liaodong Peninsula, with rights over railways and mines. Under duress, China endorsed the arrangement. China, under the rule of the Qing emperors, was in a state of political and social instability. The two Opium Wars in 1840 and 1860 and the subsequent defeat led foreign powers to establish a foothold in the treaty ports of Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai. The cession of Hong Kong as a colony had given foreign powers further opportunity for advancement and influence in the entire eastern coastal provinces in China. Internally, years of massive famine probably brought the most violent rebellions from its own people. The Taiping Rebellion lasted from 1850 to 1864 and raged over sixteen provinces, the Nien Rebellion lasted from 1851 to 1868, and the Muslim Rebellion in Yunnan lasted from 1855 until 1873. All three rebellions failed after cruel and violent suppression by the government, but the financial and 2 East River Column military strain had weakened the government so much that its collapse was only a matter of time. The First World War provided Japan with further opportunities to encroach on Chinese territory. Japan declared war on Germany and demanded the surrender of the German colony in Qingdao, thus placing China in the position of designating a specified area of its own country as a battleground between two foreign combating powers. Japan then followed with the 21 Demands on China in 1915, requiring China to cede to Japan all German rights in China. Other humiliating demands included supervising and supplying the Chinese army, constructing railways and mines and developing a steel industry, thus reducing China to a virtual Japanese protectorate. China was ruled by a weak and pro-Japanese president, Yuan Shikai, who had been a leader of the Beiyang warlords and had become influential towards the end of the Qing Dynasty. During this period, China was carved up into different spheres of influence by foreign powers, aided and abetted by various warlords. At least in name, China joined other Allied nations in declaring war against Germany in 1917, but as a weak nation, it did not have the means to send any soldiers to the battlefields in Europe. The only people sent were a few thousand men who worked as unskilled labourers for the Allied forces. Japan took the opportunity to wring from the Allied nations an undertaking to support its claims to the former German rights in Shandong Province. At the Paris Peace Conference held after the war, China had to accept the Japanese stake in Shandong as a reward for its help in the European war. In Japan, because of early diplomatic success in the international arena and the ability to manufacture cheap, light, industrial products that flooded the world market, stock prices increased at a spectacular rate. The first direct result was the emergence of some of the industrial/financial conglomerates (Zaibatsu). Unfortunately, the relatively short period of economic prosperity did not produce a large enough middle class, because the economic wealth did not seep into the lower stratum of society. As a result of the stock market crash in the US in 1929, followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, Japan’s economy was hurt badly. On the political front, Japan’s aggressive policy in taking over the former German...

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