1931 - a year of change in the British Empire?
Before looking at the British policy towards Japan after the Manchurian Incident, which started on 18 September 1931, brief mention should be made about three events which took place in Britain in the same month.
At first sight these events had little to do with the topic of this chapter, but in fact they symbolized the changing nature of the British Empire at this juncture and had close bearing on the British policy in east Asia.First, from 7 September the Round Table Conference about India was convened in London and Mahatma Gandhi attended it from the 14th. Secondly, on the 15 th a large-scale naval mutiny broke out at the naval port of Cromarty Firth in Scotland ('the Invergordon Mutiny'). And thirdly, on the 21st, the British government decided to abandon the gold standard.
The Indian Round Table Conference followed the first conference that took place in the autumn of 1930, and the representatives from the Indian National Congress, who were absent from the first one, took part in the second one. Though the demand of the National Congress for the complete independence of India received a cool reception at the conference, the sight of Gandhi, who epitomized the forces opposing British imperial rule, joining the conference barefooted, was shocking enough to those who cherished the notion of the British title to prolonged rule over India. As will be seen in this chapter, British policy in east Asia could not be separated from its consideration of the security of British rule in India, which was likely to be disrupted by the upsurge of the power of the nationalists.
The holding of the Round Table Conference showed that Britain was ready to concede, to some extent, to demands from various parts of the Empire. Just like the setting up of the British Commonwealth of Nations by the Westminster Statute of December 1931, which in form recognized equal status among its members but in substance retained the central and dominating position of Britain, the Round Table Conference was a ploy to maintain the British grip on India by making a gesture towards negotiating with the Indian nationalist leaders.6
If the convening of this conference indicated the weakening of the ruling power of Britain over nationalist movements, the Invergordon Mutiny was a symptom of the new inscrutability of the strength of the British navy, which was the most important military foundation of British imperial power. It was a historical irony that the battleship Repulse which occupied the key position in this mutiny was to be sunk by the Japanese air force off Singapore together with another battleship Prince of Wales in December 1941 immediately after the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific War.
This mutiny soon came to an end after the severe paycuts, which were the cause of the revolt, were modified, but the shockwave sent out from this revolt was considerable.7 According to Paul Haggie, it was 'not until January 1933, when Admiral Field was succeeded as First Sea Lord by Sir Ernle Chatfield, that the echoes of Invergordon were effectively stilled'.8 As is discussed below, the British attitude towards events in east Asia was much influenced by its consideration of viable naval power which could be deployed in the Asia- Pacific, and the state of affairs which came to the fore in this mutiny was certainly detrimental to the British assertion of naval power.Finally, the decision to leave the gold standard was also a significant event in the history of the British Empire. Cain and Hopkins describe its meaning and the subsequent development of British imperial economic policy as follows:
The abandonment of the gold standard in September 1931 was a defeat for the City, for gentlemanly capitalism and for cosmopolitanism. But the impact of the depression was even greater in the United States, and her international economic sphere shrank markedly in the 1930s. As the United States retreated into economic isolationism, leaving wreckage strewn across the world, the British were left with the freedom to strike out on their own and to try to regain, within the confines of the empire and the Sterling Area, the power they had exercised before 1914 but which had eluded them in the 1920s.9
After abandoning the gold standard, Britain increased its drive to construct an international financial system centred on sterling, and in this attempt east Asia occupied an important part. Japan chose to link the value of yen to sterling in line with the formation of the sterling area,10 and Britain tried to incorporate China into the orbit of the power of sterling. This formed the background of British policy in east Asia after the Manchurian Incident.
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