THE INTENSIFICATION OF IMPERIALRIVALRIES AROUND THE YEAR 1900:

But two of these issues promoted cooperation among the Great Powers

1898Fashoda Crisis: France and Britain nearly go to war over control of the Sudan (Rich, pp. 272-77)

1899-1902

Boer War: Might Germany intervene? (See Rich, pp. 278-98)

1900Boxer Rebellion provokes joint European relief expedition to the Beijing embassies (pp. 322-24)

1904/05 Russo-Japanese War (Rich, pp. 324-28)

1899-1910

Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway gains support from Russia & Britain (Rich, pp. 339-45)

China under the Qing (Manchu) Dynasty, mid-18th century

A fierce Manchu warrior (1760):

But the Empire had no foreign ministry or diplomatic corps

“Export blue” Chinese soup plate from the 1750s

Europeans could visit only one port:“The Canton Factories,” ca. 1780

Lord Macartney’s mission to Beijing, 1793

CHINESE OPIUM DEN: By 1838 enough opium was being imported from India each year to keep several million Chinese addicted and cause a

major trade deficit.

Emperor Daoguang(reigned 1820-1850): In 1838 he decided to

suppress the opium trade

But his officials knew nothing about the Europeans:“The old hairy one” (Chinese cartoon of a British sailor, 1839)

A Chinese warship guarding the approach to Canton is destroyed by the British steamship Nemesis, January 1841

A British fleet bombards Canton in 1841 and lands marines to reopen the foreign factories. In 1842 China ceded Hong

Kong and opened five “Treaty Ports.”

Ruins of the Summer Palace outside Beijing,destroyed by the British in October 1860

The “black devils”: Sikh troops fighting for the British in China, 1860

Chinese militia from upcountry, summoned to help defend Beijing in 1860

COMMODORE PERRY HAD MEANWHILE “OPENED” JAPAN TO U.S. TRADE IN 1852-54 (a humiliation for the Shogun)

THE CHARTER OATH SWORN BY EMPEROR MEIJIon April 7, 1868

By this oath, we set up as our aim the establishment of the national wealth on a broad basis and the framing of a constitution and laws.

1.Deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all matters decided by open discussion.

2.All classes, high and low, shall be united in vigorously carrying out the administration of affairs of state.

3.The common people, no less than the civil and military officials, shall all be allowed to pursue their own calling so that there may be no discontent.

4.Evil customs of the past shall be broken off and everything based upon the just laws of Nature.

5.Knowledge shall be sought throughout the world so as to strengthen the foundation of imperial rule.

EMPEROR MEIJI RETURNS FROM KYOTO TO TOKYO,DECEMBER 1868

China’s defeat by Japan in 1894/95 resulted in a vast expansion of the

Treaty Port system and a wave of

nationalist resentment

The German naval base at Tsingtao, northeast China,established by Admiral Alfred Tirpitz in 1897

Appointed German naval commander in late 1897,

Tirpitz proved a brilliant lobbyist

Tirpitz and Wilhelm II persuaded the Reichstag to fund the building of 19 battleships in 1898, raised to 38 in 1900

Member of the nationalist martial arts society,

“Boxers United In Righteousness,”

China, 1900

Russian Icon of Chinese Orthodox Christians

martyred in 1900

Sketch map by Captain John T.

Myers, U.S. Marine Corps, of the

embassy district in Beijing during the

Boxer siege in 1900

Kaiser Wilhelm II addresses the troops departing for China on July 27, 1900:

“No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under King Attila made a

name for themselves, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German!”

“Germans to the Front!”(painting to celebrate the role of German marines in suppressing the Chinese Boxer Rebellion in 1900)

A Chinese “Boxer” flanked by Germanguards in Tientsien, 1903/04

Travels in the East,by E. Ukhtomsky

(1896):Russia’s

“Manifest Destiny”

THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA IN ASIA, ca. 1900:(with new rail links across Manchuria to Vladivostok & Port Arthur

“The Yellow Peril,” seen from Europe (French cartoon, 1904)

“The White Peril,” as viewed by Asians (French cartoon, 1904)

Japan as the pawn of the Anglo-Saxon powers(Russian postcard, c. 1902): Since the Meiji Restoration of

the 1860s Japan had sought to learn from the West

Admiral Haihachiro Togo, Japanese naval commander in 1904:

His fleet blockaded Port Arthur and destroyed both Russia’s Pacific

and Baltic Fleets when they sought to break

the blockade

Japanes troops enter the

conquered city of Liaujang,

1904

The Japanese besieged Port Arthur from

February to December 1904; after they dragged

their siege guns into position, they quickly

pounded it into submission on January 2, 1905

The “Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway” was formerly treatedas a major cause of World War I, but Rich shows that

it gained support from both Britain and Russia….

Why did so many colonial conflicts take place around 1900?