The period from 1870-1914 is generally referred to as the age of imperialism, a period when the nations of Western Europe embarked upon a race for overseas empires that held profound implications for the entire world. A large part of recorded history deals with the rise and fall of empires. Europeans themselves have been among the most expansionist and imperialist of peoples throughout the ages, however the imperialist phenomenon of the late nineteenth century had distinctive features with far reaching effects.
This “new imperialism” was aimed at the underdeveloped world and it led to the domination and exploitation of Asia. What were the specific implications for India, Japan and China? Why did India wind up under the direct control of the British, while China and Japan escaped such a fate? By looking at the character and outcome of Western imperialism in these three countries, we may come to a broader understanding of the nature of Western imperialism in Asia. The causes for and impact of imperialism in Asia were many and complex, but unequivocally, one of the most popular explanations of modern imperialism concerns economics. In fact, modern imperialism is often referred to as “economic imperialism,” and there is just enough empirical evidence in favor of these explanations to make them plausible, in terms of the imperialist outcomes and impacts for Japan, China and India.
In order to understand the dynamics of economic imperialism and its impact and outcomes with regards to India, China and Japan, it is necessary to set forth a template of conditions at the onset of Western imperialism in Asia. Although parts of Asia had been open to European influence and conquest since the beginning of the sixteenth century, much of it remained in isolation. In the first half of the nineteenth century Britain controlled India and some of its surrounding territories, the Dutch held most of the islands of the East Indies and Spain retained the Philippines. The French and Portuguese maintained small trading settlements on the Indian coasts. As noted by historian Barbara Ward in The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations imperial control was “a byproduct-and an increasingly ruinous one in commercial terms-yet as late as 1850 the nominal ruler in India was still a merchant corporation-‘John Company, ‘the East India Company'” (Ward 52). Early British conquests in India, Ward explains, had not been made by the British government, but by the East India Company acting under a royal charter.
After the Seven-Year’s War, widespread corruption among company officials and brutal exploitation of the natives led to progressive government intervention. The Regulating Act of 1774 provided for the appointment of a governor-general by the British Crown and limitation of the company’s privileges. The India Act of 1784 placed the company under the control of the newly created India Office, thus providing a clumsy form of dual government, Ward explains.
While a law in 1813 abolished the company’s monopoly of trade between India and Britain, colonial control originating in trade in this manner, had by this time prompted not only a shift in population to merchant-economies in urban centers, but resulted in an overall increase in population that had serious implications for India. Ward notes, “But in the Far East, in India, where population was already dense, the effect of the colonial impact was to increase the rate of the population’s growth without launching a total transformation of the economy. More births, longer lives sent population far beyond the capabilities of a stumbling economy” (Ward 52). Moreover, the East India Company, which had ceased to be a trading company for all practical purposes, began obtaining most of its revenue in the form of taxes from the provinces it governed. By 1820 it had brought all of India under its control. In 1858, a new India Act was passed transferring the company’s powers directly to the British crown, corresponding with a new attitude toward imperial and colonial affairs that had been gaining strength in Britain.
This was spawned by the creation of the German Empire, the Russo-Turkish War and the depression that had begun in 1873, all of which had set the stage for a competitive scramble for colonies in which Britain, as the leading imperial nation, could hardly avoid. Anglo-Russian tension in the Middle East continued throughout the final quarter of the nineteenth century. A period of instability followed by entrenchment of colonial imperialism in the name of humanitarianism ensued. At length, the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907, occasioned by the mutual fear of the new German Empire, led to an agreement that left Afghanistan as a buffer state between Russian Turkestan and British India, with Russia recognizing predominant British interests in the control of its foreign relations.
By the turn of the century, Britain’s Queen Victoria was comfortably settled in with the title “Empress of India,” according to early twentieth century historian Henry Steele Commager. “The naked imperialism of the bad old days was giving way to an enlightened imperialism. The imperialism of the white man’s burden… seemed to be justifying itself by its good works in the backward areas of the earth. The British Empire stood as a vindication of imperialism” (Commager 4).
The vast and ancient empire of China, however, as well as Japan, Korea and the principalities of Southeast Asia, attempted to remain aloof from Western civilization and its imperialism, which they regarded as inferior to their own. They refused, for example to accept Western diplomatic representatives, excluded or persecuted Christian missionaries and allowed only a trickle of commerce with the West.
As observed by historian Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History, “It is worth observing that in the early years of the seventeenth century, nearly a hundred years before Peter the Great, and two-and-a-half centuries before the ‘Meiju Restoration,’ both Russia and Japan had experienced and repelled a Western attempt at absorption…. The Japanese exorcised ‘the White Peril,’ by expelling all resident Western missionaries and merchants, by forbidding Westerners to set foot henceforth on Japanese soil-with the exception of a few Dutch merchants licensed under ignominious conditions-and by exterminating the Japanese Catholic community by ruthless persecution” (Toynbee 269).
The Chinese Empire in the nineteenth century was ruled by the Manchu Dynasty, the last in a long succession of dynasties that had risen and fallen in China for more than three thousand years. The Manchu Dynasty was about two hundred years old and had already begun to show signs of decrepitude before the Europeans intervened to hasten its demise. British commercial interests provided the initial occasion for intervention. Chinese tea and silks found a ready market in Europe, but British traders could offer little in exchange that appealed to the Chinese until they discovered that the Chinese had a marked taste for opium. The Chinese government forbade its importation, but the trade flourished by means of smugglers and corrupt customs officials. When a large shipment of opium was burned by Chinese government officials in 1839, British traders demanded retaliation. Thus began the Opium War, which ended with significant gains for the British Empire. Not only did it gain Hong Kong, but also China agreed to open five more ports to trade under consular supervision, establish a uniform five percent import tariff and to pay a substantial indemnity, while the opium trade continued.
Other nations, noting China’s weakness, sought equally favorable agreements, which were accordingly granted. An anti-government and anti-foreign sentiment festered, leading to the Taiping Rebellion between 1850-1864. While government forces eventually put down the rebels, the unrest gave Western expansionists another excuse for intervention. Between 1857-1858, a joint Anglo-French force actually occupied a number of principal cities and extorted further concessions from China, including the United States and Russia.
For the remainder of the nineteenth century, China’s experience with Western imperialism remained in this venue. Concessions to foreigners led to new outbreaks of protest, which led in turn to more aggressive imperialist expansion. John Hobson, in his renowned treatise on the economic bases of imperialism, offered a less “humanitarian” model to explain the phenomenon of this feeding frenzy. A people limited in number and energy and in the land they occupy have the choice of improving to the utmost the political and economic management of their own land, confining themselves to such accessions of territory as are justified by the most economical disposition of a growing population, or they may proceed, like the slovenly farmer, to spread their power and energy over the whole earth, tempted by the speculative value or the quick profits of some new market, or else by mere greed of territorial acquisition and ignoring the political and economic wastes and risks involved by this imperial career” (Hobson 72).
Germany, Portugal, and even Japan, which had resisted Western pressures while adopting Western ways, joined in the scramble for concessions and special privileges. Japan, in fact, went to war against China in 1894-95, forcing China to recognize the independence of Korea and to cede Formosa, the Pescadora Islands, and the Liaotung Peninsula. In the end, China avoided complete partition by the great powers only by virtue of great power rivalry. Instead of outright partition, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the United States and Japan contented themselves with special treaty ports, spheres of influence, and long-term leases of Chinese territory.
In 1899, the great powers agreed to follow an “open door” policy in China agreeing not to discriminate against one another in their own spheres of influence. The growing pressures and humiliation culminated in “The Chinese anti-Western Movement which flared up in the Boxer Uprising of 1900, and attempted in AD 1925-7 to fight out its losing battle to the bitter end by borrowing the weapons of Russian communism” (Toynbee 273). The Republic of China grew out of that fray, at the time weak and divided, and perhaps forever changed by Western imperialism, but not without some semblance of autonomy. As historian Barbara Ward notes, “Everywhere there was ferment, everywhere there was the beginning of change; everywhere a profound sense that the old ways were becoming inadequate… and this feeling stirred up an equally violent reaction” (Ward 57).
Japan maintained its policy against foreign intrusion more effectively than any other Asian nation in the first half of the nineteenth century, However gradually, under continuous Western pressure for diplomatic representation, missionary activity and commercial trade, resistance weakened and in 1854, the United States and other Western nations obtained diplomatic and trading privileges. As in the case of China, anti-Westernization rioting broke out. Western interests began to take reprisals, and it seemed as if Japan was destined to repeat China’s fate. However, the anti-foreign movement took a propitious turn. The Japanese turned their anger inward, toward the shogun leadership that had made the Western concessions.
The Japanese subsequently demanded a restoration of the emperor as head of the government in 1867. The following year, Emperor Mutsuhito ushered in what is known today as the birth of modern Japan, designating his reign the Meiji period. Mutsuhito’s policies managed to keep Western imperialism at bay, while it capitalized on Western technology, politics, government, trade science and finance. Historian Arnold Toynbee observes, Japan entered upon her modern policy of holding her own in a semi-Westernized Great Society by modernizing herself on Western nationalistic lines… just what was needed for asserting Japan’s national individuality in her new international circumstances” (Toynbee 514).
Japan, as noted above, in fact joined the ranks of the imperialist nations by annexing Chinese territory and staking out its own sphere of influence in China proper. Moreover, just tern years later, Japan defeated Russia in the Battle of Port Arthur in 1904, and by the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905, Russian was forced to acknowledge Japan’s preeminence in Korea, transfer its lease on Port Arthur and the Liaotung peninsula, and cede the southern half of Sakhalin to Japan (Toynbee 515).
In conclusion, while India was already entrenched within a lengthy history of colonization by Great Britain, succumbing most easily to the tides of Western imperialism, China and Japan’s experiences were somewhat different. By partitioning out treaties while allowing the great Western powers to fight among themselves and dilute their impact with an “open door policy,” China managed to avoid complete partition. Japan, on the other hand, managed to turn the external challenge brought forth by Western imperialism into a period of intense, internal reformation.
By analyzing the impact and character of Western imperialism on these three countries, one can see that economics was a key factor in all three cases. In the case of India, Western imperialism began with commerce, and as conditions festered internationally, the British campaign to lock in India became a protectionist measure. In China, with Western powers satisfied to divide amongst themselves the spoils of commerce, without political claim, the economic motive could not be more apparent. Japan, which fostered the best of Western imperialism and trade while keeping encroachment from its own doors, obviously economically benefited itself, perhaps the most definitive achievement of Western imperialism in Asia.
In summary, economics appears to have played a vital role in both the character and impact of Western imperialism in Asia, as evidenced in the experiences of Japan, China and India.
Works Cited
Commager, Henry Steele. 1900-1950: From Victorian Age to Atomic Age.” The
New York Times Magazine 17 December 1949, pp. 3-7.
Hobson, John. Imperialism London: Allen & Unwin, 1948.
Toynbee, Arnold. A Study of History New York: Oxford University Press, 1947.
Ward, Barbara. The Rich Nations and the Poor Nations New York: W.W. Norton
& Co., 1962.
