By Paula Harrell
Both countries have shown the ability to accommodate and cooperate in the past. Can they do so again?
This year has seen a spate of retrospective analyses of the horrific war in Europe that began July 28 a century ago, so named the Great War for its unprecedented scale, death count, and destabilizing aftershocks reverberating as far as Asia. How this could have happened, should Britain have entered the war at all, and what was the ultimate meaning of the war are still the stuff of intense controversy and debate. The Britain-Japan-China part of the story, a sidelight to the war engulfing Europe, has gotten less attention. Yet it, too, begs for further explanation of policy choices and cascading consequences that led to a disastrous turn in East Asian politics in the decades to follow.
Britain and Japan in 1914 were linked by treaty obligations under the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1923), the first-ever reciprocal agreement between a Western and an Asian power. The relationship was already showing signs of strain, chiefly over access to the vast China market, but growing distrust took second place to immediate political calculations: for Britain, the promise of Japanese assistance to counter German naval power in the Pacific, on Japan’s part, assurances of British support in the takeover of German-leased territory in China. On these terms, Japan declared war on Germany just a few weeks after Britain decided to intervene on the side of France and Russia in early August. The payoff to Britain from its Asian ally came not in the Pacific but in the Mediterranean, where in 1917 Japanese destroyers provided protection to British merchant shipping. Japan reaped its reward in 1919 when the dealmakers at the Versailles Peace Conference recognized Japan’s claims to former German holdings in China, news that triggered widespread Chinese protests in early May. Indeed, in China May 7 became popularly known as “National Humiliation Day.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat