In 1902, the British government concluded a defensive alliance with Japan, a state that had surprised much of the world with its sudden rise to prominence. For the next two decades, the Anglo-Japanese alliance would hold the balance of power in East Asia, shielding Japan as it cemented its regional position, and allowing Britain to concentrate on meeting the German challenge in Europe. Yet it was also a relationship shaped by its contradictions. Empire Ascendant examines how officials and commentators across the British imperial system wrestled with the implications of Japan's unique status as an Asian power in an international order dominated by European colonial empires. On the settlement frontiers of Australasia and North America, white colonial elites formulated their own responses to the growth of Japan's power, charged by the twinned forces of colonial nationalism and racial anxiety, as they designed immigration laws toexclude Japanese migrants, developed autonomous military and naval forces, and pressed Britain to rally behind their vision of a 'white empire'. Yet at the same time, the alliance legitimised Japan's participation in great-power diplomacy, and worked to counteract racist notions of a 'yellow peril'. By the late 1900s, Japan stood at the centre of a series of escalating inter-imperial disputes over foreign policy, defence, migration, and ultimately, over the future of the British imperial system itself. This account weaves together studies of diplomacy, strategy, and imperial relations to pose searching questions about how Japan's entry into the 'family of civilised nations' shaped, and was shaped by, ideologies of race.
Author(s): Cees Heere
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: Oxford
Cover
Empire Ascendant: The British World, Race, and the Rise of Japan, 1894–1914
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Note on Names and Style
Introduction
1: ‘The Englands of East and West’: Britain and Japan, Empire and Race, 1894–1904
Britain, Japan, and the ‘Far Eastern Question’
‘Outside the White Comity’: Race and Anglo-Japanese Relations
Imperial Entanglements: Japanese Expansion and the ‘Pacific Question’
‘As a colony, we cannot keep the Japanese out’: Australian Federation and Global Competition
Japan, Britain, and a ‘White Australia’
Conclusion: ‘The “Jap” is a very great deal more’
2: A War for Civilization: The Russo-Japanese War, 1904–5
‘A force of civilising progress’
‘The danger of the Yellow Peril depends on what we make of it’
‘Placing her at once in the position of a Great Power’: The Renewal of the Alliance
‘The only tolerated subject of conversation’: The War in the British Pacific
‘To swallow this race prejudice against the Japanese’: ‘White Australia’ Revisited
3: ‘The Inalienable Right of the White Man’: Contact and Competition in China
China after the Russo-Japanese War
Drawing the Local Colour Line: Britons and Japanese in China
‘These fiercely Asiatic Asiatics’
4: Empire and Exclusion: The Japanese ‘Immigration Crisis’
‘A civilisation more efficient than their own’
‘The fires of race hatred’: The Vancouver Riots
‘To brand their own race as inferior in the eyes of the world’: Canada’s Immigration Crisis
‘Fleeing the Star-Spangled Banner’: American Overtures
‘The danger of it is obvious’: British Imperialism and the Immigration Crisis
‘Great Britain would stand with the white peoples’: Mackenzie King in London
5: The Pacific Problem: Race, Nationalism, and Imperial Defence
Nationalism, Imperialism, and the Japanese ‘Threat’
‘One cannot draw the colour-line without a decent fleet’
The Arms Race and the ‘Race in Arms’: The 1909 Dreadnought Scare
‘It is the dread of the Japanese that is at the bottom of the matter’
6: Alliance and Empire: British Policy and the ‘Japanese Question’, 1911–14
The Alliance and Edwardian Geopolitics
‘Every colour to its own zone’
Selling the Alliance: The 1911 Imperial Conference
‘A movement which may dismember the empire’
‘The only thing for which Australia would throw over the Empire’
‘The immense service rendered by Japan . . . will have to be recognised’
Conclusion
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
