Introduction

Manchuria

The three north-eastern provinces of China and home of the Manchu people. From 1932 to 1945, with the addition of Jehol province, it became the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

Great Powers

Traditionally those states that were held capable of shared responsibility for the management of the international order by virtue of their military and economic influence.

Pacific War

The phrase usually used to refer to the Allied war against Japan from 1941 to 1945.

The history of the twentieth century is in part the story of the relative decline of Europe and the rise of non-Europeans to a position of equality within the international system; the first step in this process began in East Asia with the rise of Japan. In 1904—05 Japan, which had only opened up to the world in 1853, defeated tsarist Russia in a war over control of Korea and South Manchuria — the first occasion in modern times that an Asian state had vanquished one of the Great Powers. It was a victory that prompted fear and admiration in Europe and the United States and which reverberated around Asia, inspiring nationalists in China, India and elsewhere to work against Western rule. Over the next forty years the Japanese challenge to the status quo continued as it strove to create a hegemonic position for itself in East Asia, until finally in the Pacific War of 1941—45 it fatally undermined the European order in the region while temporarily destroying itself in the process.

The motives behind the Japanese challenge to the West in the inter-war period have been the subject of much debate. In the wake of its defeat in 1945, Japan's expansionism was largely seen as the result of the hijacking of the state in the 1930s by a militarist clique that had sought power for its own sake both at home and abroad. Simultaneously much emphasis was put on American-Japanese relations

as the fundamental dynamic within the region.

This perspective has gradually been modified. Studies of Japan itself have questioned whether the imperial Japanese army should be seen as solely responsible by emphasizing the rivalries within the Japanese elite and by demonstrating that an internal battle for power continued even into the Pacific War. More broadly, analysis of the nature of inter-war Japan has led to interest in the significance of the political, social and economic imperatives generated by modernization and by its position as a late imperial power. In addition, a recent development has been the study of the ideological and cultural roots of Japanese foreign policy. This, in turn, has raised the issue of the degree to which pan-Asianism and ideas about Japan's predestined leadership role in Asia influenced its actions. Meanwhile, works on the international history of East Asia have demonstrated that many actors influenced the history of the region. In particular, access to archives in Taipei, Beijing and Moscow has helped to stress the centrality of China's own modernization process as a force in regional history and the importance of the triangular relationship between Russia, China and Japan. The simple answers provided in the aftermath of the war have thus been replaced by a complex series of interlocking interpretations.

pan-Asianism

The idea that Asia should free itself from Western imperialism and unite in a common effort to modernize. Espoused chiefly by Japan before 1945, but some Indian and Chinese nationalists were also attracted to the concept.

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Source: Best Antony. International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond. Routledge,2008. — 638 p.. 2008

Introduction

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