33.6 The far east: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 3/6)

In 1894 Japan defeated China in a year of war and incidentally then took control of Formosa, along with a cash indemnity. After that defeat a generation of revolutionary Chinese leaders, of whom Sun-Yat-Sen (d. 1925) was the most imminent, undertook an almost panic search for new talismans of power and national salvation. The obvious models were the great western powers, so in 1898 the young Emperor Huang Hsu issued a series of astonishing decrees which, if they could have been accepted and enforced, would have advanced China vigorously and yet peaceably on the road to westernization. But the Dowager Empress, shocked by what seemed to her the radicalism of those edicts, imprisoned Huang Hsu, annulled his decrees and made herself the government of China, with a reaction against all western ideas. She deftly turned an organization known - historically as the "Boxers", originally formed by rebels against her own dynasty, into a furious movement against foreign invaders. This resulted in a killing of Christians, which in turn caused retaliation by armies of the west, including some from the United States. Those armies moved in on Peking and slaughtered the inhabitants in 1900. As in India, it is little wonder that Christianity has had very little success in China. At the beginning of the l9th century a real Protestant missionary effort had been made by English and American churches, but it has been estimated that there were never more than 1,000,000 converts and few of those were 100% converted. In this l9th century perhaps 12,000,000 Chinese migrated into Southeast Asia and along the Indian coast. (Ref. 139 , 101 , 12 )

Manchuria remained somewhat isolated, kept as the special preserve of the Manchu emperors. It had great agricultural potential but was closed to immigrants. In 1858 and 1860 Russia took back 380,000 square miles of Manchuria from a rather helpless China, claiming that the original Treaty of Nerchinsk (see page 906) had been signed under duress. That area, as well as Korea, then remained under Russian influence until after the war with Japan was concluded early in the next century. (Ref. 101 , 131 , 8 )

Japan

Japan exhibited a marked duality under the Tokugawa Shoguns, a separation between political and economic power; moral ideal of Spartan warriors versus sensuous indulgences of the "Floating World". Then in 1850 there was conflict among rival cliques over the succession to a childless ruler and that set the stage so that the rather modest emergency of Perry's "black ships" triggered far-ranging, deep-going transformations of Japanese society. The Age of Military Feudalism of Japan may be said to have terminated at that time when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Uraga Bay in 1853 with 2 warships and 2 side-wheelers. The American got nowhere with negotiations at that time, but he returned 8 months later in 1854 with 9 ships, 3 under steam, along with a miniature steam train, which he set up on shore for demonstration. The subsequent dedication of the Japanese to trains may have started with that. Treaties allowing western access to 2 ports, with resident western consular officials followed. But this was still not the end of turmoil in Japan regarding East-West intercourse. The emperor ref used to sign the treaties and political war against the Tokugawas was instituted and Lemochi became shogun. In 1862, at Emperor Komei's order, Lord Shimazu of Satsuma went to - Kyoto, killed a few enemies and, with Prince Ashiko, temporarily got rid of the emperor's chief advisor, Iwakura of the clan of Choshu.