Abstract
The three-year period between the Armistice in 1918 and the Washington Conference in 1921–1922 saw a ‘blank’, as it were, in the international order of East Asia. The old order was gone, a new order based on consent was yet to emerge. The pre-war balance of power and the status quo in East Asia had been totally destroyed by the defeat of enemy states, the defection of Russia, the expansion of Japan in China, and the ascendancy of the United States in world politics. There was also the growing national consciousness of the Chinese to be reckoned with. There seemed to be a recognition in world politics that East Asia was becoming a theatre in international politics in its own right. By the same token, East Asia was now left to work out its own salvation. The most interested Powers, Britain, the United States and Japan,1 were each groping in their own ways for an order, a way to deal with the legacies of the war and the prospect of post-war development. China, on the other hand, was to assert its more independent standing in its external relations. The construction of an international system with the consent of all parties concerned was the central theme around which the development of international politics in post-war East Asia was to evolve.
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Notes and References
France was almost impotent in East Asia after the war, with its preoccupations in Europe. There was even a fear in the Foreign Office in London that, if France abandoned its interests in Indo-China, the Japanese would step in. See Balfour’s minute on a Foreign Office Memo, ‘French Indo-China and British-Japanese Perspectives: Policies after the War’, no date, FO371/3190. There was talk that if the French were willing to hand over Indo-China to Britain, a compensation deal could be made in Africa. See minute by Lord Hardinge, no date, ibid.
Bonsal Diary, May 1, 1919, Bonsal Papers, Container 2.
Jordan to Tilley, Sept. 24, 1919, FO350/16.
What was the most revealing of the so-called ‘united front’ of foreign Powers vis-à-vis China was the existence of a Diplomatic Corps at Beijing before and during (representing the Allied and Associate Powers only) the war. The Diplomatic Corps, with the British Minister as its Dean most of the time, represented the collective interests of all treaty Powers in China and spoke in one voice to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. It collapsed after the war only because the treaty Powers were now divided, with the defeated (Germany and former Austria-Hungary) and the defected (Russia) losing their treaty rights. It can be argued, however, that a ‘united front’ of a sort composed of the remaining Powers on the scene in China survived even after the Washington Conference in 1921–1922.
Huang Yanpei et al. to Alston, June 1920, Enclosure in Alston to Curzon, Aug. 7, 1920, FO228/3352.
Macleay to Jordan, Nov. 26, 1918, FO228/3543.
Ibid.
Jordan to Macleay, Dec. 4, 1918, FO371/3191.
Minute by Max Müller, Dec. 13, 1918 on Jordan to Macleay Dec. 4, 1918, FO371/3191.
See Jordan to Balfour, Oct. 23, 1918, FO371/3191.
The letter was received only on Feb. 24, 1919. For the full text of Jordan’s letter, see Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–1939, First Series, (hereafter DBFP), vol. VI, pp. 566–83.
Ibid. See also minute by Max Müller on Jordan to Balfour, Dec. 23, 1918, FO371/3693.
Ibid.
Minute by Max Müller on Jordan to Balfour, Dec. 23, 1918, FO371/ 3693.
Jordan to Macleay, Dec. 4, 1918, FO371/3191.
Jordan to Balfour, Oct. 23, 1918, FO371/3191.
Jordan to Balfour, Dec. 23, 1918, DBFP, vol. VI, pp. 582–3.
The Undersecretary of State, Colonial Office to Undersecretary of State, Foreign Office, Jan. 14, 1919, FO371/3690.
See for example, minute by Max Müller on Jan. 18, 1919, FO371/3690.
Undersecretary of Foreign Secretary to Undersecretary of Colonial Office, Feb. 24, 1919, FO371/3690.
Jordan to FO, Feb. 11, 1919, FO371/3690.
Undersecretary of Foreign Office to Undersecretary of Colonial Office, Feb. 24, 1919, FO371/3690.
Jordan to FO, Jan. 23, 1919, FO228/3543.
Curzon was referring to the Hong Kong Extension.
Minute by Curzon, Jan. 29, 1919 on Jordan to FO, Jan. 23, 1919, FO608/209.
Minute by Max Müller, March 1, 1919 on Jordan to Balfour, Dec. 23, 1918, FO371/3693.
Minute by Macleay, Dec. 12, 1918 on Jordan to Macleay, Dec. 4, 1918, FO371/3191.
Minute by Müller, April 17, 1919, FO371/3693.
Minute by Müller, June 14, 1919 on Jordan to Curzon, June 12, 1919, FO371/3694.
On the April 22 session discussing China’s demand on the restoration of Jiaozhou, Lloyd George simply asked ‘What is the Twenty-One Demands?’ He confessed that he had never heard of that before. Proceedings of the Council of Heads of Governments, April 22, 1919. For Balfour’s sympathy for the Japanese, see Balfour to Curzon, May 8, 1919, commenting on the Big Three’s decision on Shandong, DBFP, vol. VI, p. 564. Jordan’s criticism of Balfour’s understanding of the Far Eastern questions was straightforward. He noted: ‘The despatch of 8 May from Mr. Balfour to Lord Curzon deals with the Shantung question in a superficial way. It shows no knowledge of the question in its bearing upon political development in Corea and Manchuria during the past twenty-five years … it fails to touch the facts as they exist and are common knowledge to students of Eastern problems’. A Note by Jordan, July 22, 1919, FO228/3543.
Jordan to Curzon, June 12, 1919, FO371/3694.
Minute by Müller, May 1, 1919, FO371/3694.
Minute by Macleay, March 31, 1919 on Jordan to Balfour, Dec. 23, 1918, FO608/210.
Alston to Curzon, June 17, 1919, FO371/3694. Alston was then the British chargé d’affaires in Tokyo.
Curzon to Alston, July 18, 1919, FO371/3695.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Curzon told Chinda that ‘Viewing the circumstances in which these agreements [during the war] have been concluded, and the fact that China had not been in a position to defend herself, I could not regard them as possessing any great validity’. Ibid.
Curzon to Alston, July 18, 1919, FO371/3695.
Curzon’s attitude as such can probably be accounted for partly by his experience of being the Viceroy of India, 1898–1905. Nish observed that ‘his approach to diplomacy was magisterial, and to Asian countries paternalistic’. See Nish, I., Alliance in Decline, pp. 263–4.
Curzon to Alston, July 18, 1919, FO371/3695.
Curzon to Alston, July 22, 1919, FO371/3695.
Ibid.
FO Minute by Müller, April 17, 1919, FO371/3693.
Quoted in Louis, W. R., British Strategy in the Far East, p. 46.
Ibid.
Curzon to Alston, July 18, 1919, FO371/3695.
Curzon’s interviews with Chinda were actually transmitted to the State Department of the United States for its consultation. See Curzon to Lindsay, July 23, 1919, DBFP, vol. VI, p. 639.
‘Foreign Office Memorandum on Effect of Anglo-Japanese Alliance upon Foreign Relationships’, Feb. 28, 1920, DBFP, vol. VI, p. 1016. Sir Beilby Alston, the British Minister to China after Jordan, also expressed his agreement with the idea that the British and the American interests in China were almost identical. See Nish, Alliance in Decline, p. 308.
Quoted in Louis, British Strategy, p. 88.
This was, in fact, a rationale which was later repeatedly appealed to to justify the continuation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance at the Imperial Conference in 1921. See Nish, I., Alliance in Decline, chs. XIX, XX and XXI, and Louis, W. R., British Strategy, ch. II. See also DBFP, vol. VI. pp. 1051–5.
Jordan to Curzon, June 12, 1919, FO371/3694.
FO Minute by Wellesley, May 31, 1920, FO371/5340. Wellesley was then the head of the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office.
Ibid.
Nish, Alliance in Decline, p. 281.
FO Minute by Parlett, March 27, 1920 on the Foreign Office Memo March 23, 1920, DBFP, vol. VI, pp. 1051–2. H. G. Parlett was Counsellor of the British Embassy in Tokyo, then on leave in London.
Cubitt (representing the war Office) to the Foreign Office, Feb. 14, 1920, DBFP, vol. VI, p. 1055.
Minute by Hardinge (no date) on the Foreign Office Memo, March 23, 1920, DBFP vol. VI, p. 1053.
‘Foreign Office Memorandum on Effect of Anglo-Japanese Alliance upon Foreign Relationships’, Feb. 28, 1920, DBFP, vol. VI, p. 1022.
Quoted in Louis, British Strategy, p. 82.
The Committee was composed of W. Tyrrell, Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, C. Greene, former British Ambassador to Japan, J. Jordan, former British Minister to China, and V. Wellesley, Head of the Far Eastern Department. For more details about the Committee, see Nish, Alliance in Decline, pp. 310–13.
In the earlier part of the Report, it had been suggested that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance should be substituted by a Tripartite Entente between the United States, Japan and Great Britain. The closest cooperation of the United States, not that of Japan, should be relied upon for the success of British policy towards the Far East.
Report of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Committee, Jan. 21, 1921, DBFP, vol. XIV, pp. 226–7.
Nish, I., ‘Japan in Britain’s View of the International System, 1919–37’, in Nish, I. (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation, 1919–1952, p. 32.
Curzon’s words. Quoted in Louis, British Strategy, p. 46.
Lloyd George, in spite of his ignorance of China, exclaimed once that ‘The trade of China is only one pound sterling per head of the population, whereas the trade of Japan is ten pounds sterling per head. If you have the same thing in China you would have a trade of about 4,000 millions’. See Louis, British Strategy, p. 74.
Reinsch to Lansing, Jan. 6, 1919, FRUS, PPC, 1919, vol. II, p. 520. Reinsch asked specifically that Polk, Acting Secretary of State, forward this dispatch of his to President Wilson in Paris.
Reinsch to Lansing, Nov. 23, 1918, FRUS, PPC, 1919, vol. II, p. 494.
Ibid., pp. 493–4.
Reinsch to Lansing, Nov. 24, 1918, FRUS, PPC, vol. II, p. 508.
‘Problems and Policy in the Far East’ — a memo by Stanley Hornbeck to the American Commissioners to Negotiate Peace, no date, Bliss Papers, Box 356.
Reinsch to Polk, Jan. 6, 1919, FRUS, PPC, 1919, vol. II, p. 524.
Other Americans in China, notably Dr. W. W. Willoughby, an international lawyer and adviser to the Chinese Government, sent separate despatches to the State Department at approximately the same time, defining the ‘Chinese question’ in similar vein. See ‘Précis of Second Report of W. W. Willoughby to Department of State’, no date, White Papers, Box 47.
Reinsch to Polk, Jan. 6, 1919, FRUS, PPC, vol. II, pp. 522–3.
Ibid., pp. 524–5.
Ibid., p. 524.
Reinsch to Polk, April 11, 1919, Polk Papers, Box 12.
Reinsch to Polk, Jan. 6, 1919, FRUS, PPC, vol. II, pp. 522–5.
See ‘Far East: Problems and Policy’ — a memo by E. T. Williams and S. Hornbeck, Jan. 20, 1919, Bliss Papers, Box 356.
Hornbeck to Peace Commissioners (no date), Bliss Papers, Box 356. Williams, at the same time, also tried to call the Commissioners’ ‘particular attention to the serious importance’ of this message. He warned that ‘Japan must be restrained if justice is to prevail or liberty to survive in the Far East’. Williams to the Commissioners, (no date), Bliss Papers, Box 356.
See for example, Koo’s memos on his interviews with Lansing on Nov. 15, 1918, with Wilson on Nov. 26, 1918 and with House on Dec. 18, 1918, Koo Papers, Box 1. It must be noted, however, that none of them had shown any appreciation of the so-called China problem as deep as that of Reinsch.
Polk to Reinsch, Feb. 28, 1919, Polk Papers, Box 12.
Bliss to Nellie, Dec. 18, 1918, Bliss Papers, Box 244.
Bonsal Diary, Dec. 6, 1918, Bonsal Papers, Box 17.
Memo of a Conversation with Wilson, Nov. 26, 1918, Koo Papers, Box 1.
Ibid.
This is what Clemenceau said to House on Dec. 5, 1918; see Bonsal Diary, Dec. 6, 1918, Bonsal Papers, Box 17.
Desktop Diary, June 9, 1919, Lansing Papers, MC, Ac 15,347, Reel 2.
Ibid.
See, for example, Polk to Ammission, Jan. 5, 1919, Bliss Papers, Box 356; Hornbeck and Williams to Lansing, Jan. 12, 1919, Lansing Papers, vol. 41; Polk to Ammission, Jan. 21 and 25, 1919, White Papers, Box 47.
Congressional Record. Senate, July 23, 1919, p. 3046.
Lansing to Reinsch, Nov. 4, 1918, FRUS, 1914, Supp., p. 190. Yuan Shikai, the Chinese President at the time, had a penetrating and well-known remark on this American ambivalence: ‘Your words — very fine words — but after all only words’. Koo Papers, Box 3.
Tyler Dennett, a well-known historian of American diplomacy, had tried in 1922 to explain this ambivalence in a different light. In his words, ‘The discussion of American policy in the Far East is sometimes misleading when it seizes upon the open-door policy as primary, for while that is the substance of America purpose, the play of policy is not around this doctrine, from which the American government has never receded, but around the method by which it may be made more effective, i.e. whether by isolated or by co-operative action’. See Dennett, T., ‘Seward’s Far Eastern Policy’, American Historical Review, vol. XXVIII, no. 1, Oct. 1922. Almost fifty years later, Israel, J. in his book, Progressivism and the Open Door — America and China, 1905–1921, developed a similar framework, arguing that American policy towards China was vacillating between competition and cooperation with the other Powers to realize the Open Door doctrine. The difficulty of this approach is that it saw America’s China problem only in terms of the Great Powers’ relations and cannot explain the ambivalence of American attitudes in response to the internal changes of the Chinese society, especially the emerging Chinese nationalism.
Nish, Alliance in Decline, p.280. The American support, if any, was only limited to their sympathy with the Chinese nationalist movement. In the diplomatic dispatches from the American Legation in Beijing at the time, there could be found little beyond some descriptive details of the May Fourth Movement.
See Cohen, W., ‘America and the May Fourth Movement — the Response to Chinese Nationalism, 1917–1921’, Pacific Historical Review, vol. XXXV, Feb. 1966, pp. 83–100.
Li, Tien-yi, Woodrow Wilson’s China Policy, 1913–1917, p. 5, see also ch. I ‘Academic Background’, pp. 11–22.
See Turner, F. J., The Frontier in American History, pp. 311–4.
Wilson, a personal friend of Turner, once wrote: ‘All I ever wrote on the subject [the interpretation of American history] came from him [Turner]’. Turner in 1918 was ‘warmly in favour’ of Wilson’s Fourteen Points and the League of Nations. See Williams, W. A., ‘The Frontier Thesis and the American Foreign Policy’, Pacific Historical Review, vol. XXIV, 1955, p. 388.
For statistics of American investment in China: see Remer, C. F., Foreign Investment in China, pp. 88–89 and Ch. XV ‘American Investments in China’, pp. 239–338.
In a special memo for the American Delegates to the Washington Conference, it was frankly admitted that there was ‘abandonment by the United States of Chinese interests at times’. See ‘Memorandum to the American Delegates to the Washington Conference’, Oct. 31, 1921, Hughes Papers, Reel 140.
Storry, R., Japan and the Decline of the West in the Far East, p. 113.
Joe Robinson (Senator from Arkansas) to Secretary of State, July 3, 1919, Polk Papers, Box 12.
Lansing to Polk, Aug. 14, 1919, Polk Papers, Box 9.
Lansing to Polk, Oct. 1, 1919, Polk Papers, Box 9.
Congressional Record, Senate, July 15, 1919, p. 2606.
Ibid., Aug. 26, 1919, p. 4349.
Ibid., Aug. 5, 1919, p. 3640.
Ibid., Aug. 26, 1919, p. 4345.
Ibid., Aug. 5, 1919, p. 3641.
White noted that ‘the President’s mind is not in a normal state and he believe [sic] that if only he can get a discussion of the Treaty into the Presidential Campaign the Senate can be compelled to accept it with no reservation’. White to Miss Pussy, April 1, 1920, White Papers, Box 6.
White to Lady Wemyss, April 27, 1920, White Papers, Box 6.
Before the Peace Conference, Bonsal had made a pertinent remark on the unpredictability of the American foreign policy. ‘There is no continuity in the American foreign policy — and who can deny it? One President can cancel the work of his predecessor and an act of a new Congress can write off the slate all previous engagements.’ Bonsal Diary, Dec. 7, 1918, Bonsal Papers, Box 17.
Statement by Hughes, Dec. 13, 1921, Hughes Papers, Reel 140.
Memorandum to the American Delegates to the Washington Conference [Especially Confidential], Oct. 31, 1921, Hughes Papers, Box 161.
John MacMurray, the chief of the Far Eastern Division of the State Department, in a memo written in April 1921, also defined the purpose of the American policy in the Far East as ‘restoring the equilibrium in the Far East which has been so dangerously upset by Japan’s process of aggrandizement’. SDA 811.30/131.
Hughes Papers, Reel 140.
Quoted in Hosoya, C., ‘Britain and the United States in Japan’s View of the International System, 1919–37’, Nish, I., (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation, p. 4.
Hara, K., Hara zenshū (Collected Works of Hara Kei), vol. II, p. 894.
Morris to Lansing, Nov. 13, 1918, FRUS, PPC, vol. I, p. 489. Sir Conynghame Greene, the British Ambassador to Japan, also reported that ‘the news [of the Armistice] had caught the nation more or less unprepared’. Greene to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1919, FO410/69.
See ‘Gaikō Chōsakai kaigi hikki’ (Minutes of Meetings of Advisary Council on Foreign Relations), no. 2, Nov. 13, 1918 and no. 4, Dec. 2, 1918 in Suiusō nikki (Suiusō Diary), pp. 281–93 and pp. 315–32.
Gaikō Chōsakai (Advisary Council on Foreign Relations) was organized in 1916 under the Terauchi Government ‘to put ‘foreign affairs’ beyond the pale of domestic polities’. It was composed of important cabinet ministers and leaders of the political parties. Only Katō Takaaki, leader of the Kenseikai, refused to join. Nish called it the ‘watch-dog’ of Japan’s foreign policy making. It is probably more than that. Gaikō Chōsakai had actually taken into its hand the Japanese foreign policy-making, as Crowley has argued that the formation of Gaikō Chōsakai ‘signified the end of active leadership of the genrō in policy-making. Thereafter, the cabinet and the Advisory Council on Foreign Relations emerged as the primary locus of decision-making’. See Crowley J. B., ‘Military Foreign Policy’, in Morley, J., (ed.), Japans Foreign Policy, 1868–1941 — A Research Guide, p. 34.
It is worth noting that the only matter for discussion on the agenda of Gaikō Chōsakai’s meeting on Nov. 19, 1918 was Wilson’s Fourteen Points. See Suiusō nikki, p. 294.
See ‘Gaikō Chōsakai kaigi hikki’, no. 3, Nov. 19, 1918 in Suiusō nikki, pp. 294–314. The Japanese seemed to have divided the matter touched on in the Fourteen Points into two categories: those of purely European concern and those of world-wide concern. On the matters in the former, such as Poland, Turkey and Serbia, there was little discussion before the decision was adopted to the effect that the Imperial [Japanese] Government in principle had no disagreement and could conform to them.
See Hosoya, C. in Nish (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation, pp. 3–4.
Ibid., p. 7.
Morris to Polk, Jan. 7, 1919, FRUS, PPC, vol. I, p. 494, Millard Review of the Far East, vol. VII, No. 6, pp. 193–5, Nish (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation, p. 77.
Morris, the American Ambassador to Japan, noted that ‘Prince Konoye’s views are shared by a number of publicists’. Morris to Polk, Jan. 7, 1919, FRUS, PPC, vol. I, p. 494.
Shiratori, R. (ed.), Nihon no naikaku (The Japanese Cabinets), vol. I, p. 111.
Greene to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1919, FO410/69.
Ibid.
Nish, Alliance in Decline, p. 277.
Greene to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1919, FO410/69.
Nish, Alliance in Decline, p. 281.
Suiusō nikki, pp. 326–8 and pp. 333–40.
Matsui to Uchida, June 17, 1919, quoted in Asada, S., ‘Washinton kaigi to Nihon no taiō’ (Washington Conference and Japan’s Counter-measures), in Iriye, A. & Aruga, T. (eds.), Senkanki no Nihon gaikō (The Japanese Diplomacy Between the Wars), pp. 28–9. Almost all the communications from the Japanese Delegation at Paris to the Japanese Government in Tokyo were carried out in the name of Matsui during the Peace Conference.
See, for example, Hosoya, C. and Saitō, M. (eds.), Washinton taisei to Nichi-Bei kankei (The Washington System and the Japanese-American Relations) and Iriye, A. and Aruga, T. (eds.), Senkanki no Nihon gaikō.
Banno emphasized that there had been tussles between the Army and the Foreign Ministry on Japan’s China policy all through the war. The Army had its way during the war, while after the war there began an ascendancy of the influence of the Foreign Ministry on Japan’s overall foreign policymaking. See Banno, J., ‘Nihon rikugun no Obeikan to Chūgoku seisaku’ (Japanese Army’s Attitude towards European Powers and the United States and its Policy towards China), in Banno, J., Kindai Nihon no gaikō to seiji (Politics and Foreign Relations in Modern Japan), pp. 77–105.
Kitaōka, S., Niho rikugun to tairiku seisaku (The Japanese Army and Japanese Policy Towards Mainland Asia), p. 229.
Quoted in Hosoya, C. in Nish, (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alienation, p. 6.
Asada in Iriye & Aruga, Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, pp. 21–2.
Viscount Itō Miyoji was then a member of the Gaikō Chōsakai.
Suiusō nikki, p. 611.
Hara, K., Hara nikki (Hara Kei Diary, ed. Hara, Keiichirö), vol. III, p. 250.
Asada in Iriye & Aruga, Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, p. 31.
During the war, Japanese exports to the U. S. increased three times and imports from the U.S. five times. With the European countries coming back to the China market, Japan would become more dependent on the American market. Besides, Japan also depended on America for finance. See Hosoya and Saitō, (eds.), Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, p. 205.
Asada in Iriye & Aruga, Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, p. 31.
Greene to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1919, FO410/69.
See Gaikō nempyō, vol. I, pp. 471, 487, 501–3.
Hara nikki (ed. Hara, Keiichiro), vol. IV, p. 319.
Hara zenshū, p. 916.
Ibid., pp. 895, 902–3.
Alston to Curzon, March 31, 1920, FO405/228.
Morley, J., Japan’s Quest for Autonomy, p. xvi. Morley further argued that ‘the identification of national security and economic prosperity with a hegemonic position in East Asia became an article of faith for the imperial government that was not compromised until the end of the Pacific war’. This was laid down in a report Yamagata submitted to the Japanese Throne in October 1906, reviewing the national defence policy of the Japanese Empire and recommending some basic guidelines of future Japanese defence policy.
Asada, in Iriye and Aruga (eds.), Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, p. 38.
Suiusō nikki, p. 634. Uchida himself put forward this notion when he first became Foreign Minister of Japan in 1912. See also Asada, in Iriye & Aruga, Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, p. 38.
Suiusō nikki, ‘Gaikō Chōsakai kaigi hikki’, no. 19, pp. 605–14, and no. 22, pp. 666–71.
Greene to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1919, FO410/69.
Hara nikki, Sept. 9, 1921, vol. IX, p. 435.
Gaikō nempyō, pp. 523–4.
Suiusō nikki, p. 812.
Banno, J., ‘Seitō seiji to Chūgoku seisaku, 1919–1926’ (Party Politics and China’s Policy, 1919–1926), in Banno, J. Kindai Nihon, pp. 152–8.
Alston to Curzon, July 17, 1919, FO410/67, Eliot to Curzon, Oct. 12, 1920, FO410/68. See also Banno, Kindai Nihon, p. 156.
Eliot to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1920, May 24, 1921, FO410/69.
Yamane, Y., Ronshu Kindai Chūgoku to Nihon (Modern China and Japan), pp. 250–63, and also Andō, H., Nihonjin no Chūgoku kan (A Study of the Japanese View of China in Recent History), pp. 63–86.
Alston to Curzon, June 20, 1919, FO410/67.
Alston to Curzon, March 31, 1920, FO405/228.
Greene to Curzon, Annual Report, Japan, 1919, FO410/69.
Alston to Curzon, June 20, 1919, FO410/67.
FO410/68, Enclosure: ‘Report of Conversation between Major Cardrew and Major-General Tanaka recording Latter’s Views on Japanese Expansion’.
Alston to Curzon, March 31, 1920, FO405/228.
Hara nikki, vol. VIII. pp. 291–2.
Baron Hayashi was said to belong to ‘Kokusai kyōchō ha’ (faction which advocates international harmonization) and Shidehara, to ‘E-Bei kyōchō ha’ (faction which advocates harmonization with Britain and the United States). See Asada, in Iriye and Aruga (eds.), Senkanki no Nihon gaikō, pp. 25, 29.
Hughes Papers, Box 161.
Jordan to Curzon, Annual Report, China, 1919, Jan. 17, 1920, FO405/229.
Ibid.
For details of the Treaty, see MacMurray, Treaties and Agreements, vol. II, p. 1429. The extraterritoriality was granted in an appendix to the Treaty.
Treaties and Agrements with and Concerning China, 1919–1929, p. 22.
Pollard, R., China’s Foreign Relations, 1917–1931, p. 97.
Article 2 of the Treaty spelt out specifically that the diplomatic representatives of the two High Contracting Parties ‘shall be treated, in the respective countries, in the same way as the Ambassadors or Ministers Plenipotentiary of the most favoured nations, and, except in regard to rights in connection with consular jurisdiction, shall enjoy in every respect the same privileges and immunities’. And Article 4 reads ‘Subjects or citizens of either of the two High Contracting Parties residing or travelling in the country of the other Party shall be subject to the jurisdiction of the other country — Persia or China as the case may be — in which they are residing or travelling, as regards legal proceedings, disputes, law-suits, or as regards crimes and offences which they may commit.’ Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China, 1919–1929, p. 26. For some negotiation details, see Wang (Chinese Minister to Italy) to Foreign Ministry, April 5, 1920, CA 1039–330.
See NCH, Sept. 25, 1920, vol. CXXXVI, p. 819, NCH, Sept. 18, 1919, vol. CXXXII, p. 728, NCH, July 17, 1920, vol. CXXXV, p. 146, and Far Eastern Review, March 1920, vol. XVI, p. 173.
NCH, April 28, 1919, vol. CXXXI, p. 269.
Jordan noted that this category included ‘the States with which China has never been in treaty relations, those with which she has severed relations by her declaration of war, States which have broken away from their former mother States, and States which have recently been recognized as national entities by the terms of the Peace Conference’. According to Jordan’s list, there were 19 countries in treaty relations with China and 24 non-treaty countries at the end of September 1919. Jordan to Curzon, Oct. 8, 1919, FO405/226.
Reinsch to Polk, May 9, 1919, FRUS, 1919, vol. I, p. 685. For a slightly different version in English, see NCH, April 28, 1919, vol. CXXXI, p. 269.
Foreign Ministry to Wang, April 9, 1920, CA 1039–330.
Chen Bao, May 27, 1920. The St. Germain Treaty was signed on Sept. 10, 1919. Foreign Minister Lu signed it on behalf of China.
Chen Bao, May 29, 1920.
Zhang to Foreign Ministry, Mar. 25, 1920, CA 1039–330.
NCH, Mar. 8, 1920, vol. CXXXIV, p. 678 and Mar. 10, 1920, p. 748.
See CA 1039–373,
Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China, 1919–1929, p. 48.
By the treaties in the 1840s, Chinese import tariff was fixed at 5 per cent ad valorem. By the most-favoured-nation clause, this privilege extended to all countries later entering treaty relations with China. In commercial treaties signed with China in 1902 and 1903, Britain and other Powers agreed that the Chinese import tariff increase eventually to 12½ per cent ad valorem. This, however, was not put into effect until after the Washington Conference.
Jordan to Curzon, Oct. 8, 1919, Enclosure 1, Memorandum respecting Chinese General Tariff and Certificates of Origin, FO405/226.
Ibid., Enclosure 2, Wai-chiao Pu (Foreign Ministry) to Jordan, July 23, 1919.
Jordan to Curzon, Oct. 8, 1919, FO405/226.
Ibid., Enclosure 1. See also Enclosure 3, British Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai to Commercial Counsellor, Aug. 29, 1919.
Wai-chiao Pu (Foreign Ministry) to Legation, Dec. 22, 1919, Enclosure 1 in Clive to Curzon, Sept. 24, 1920, FO405/228.
NCH, Sept. 20, 1919, vol. CXXXII, p. 725.
For Chinese nationalism and the ‘rights-recovery movement’ in the first decade of the century, see Wright, M., ‘Introduction: The Rising Tide of Change’ in Wright, M. (ed.), China in Revolution, The First Phase, 1900– 1913, pp. 11–19.
See Political Intelligence Department to Foreign Office, no date, FO608/ 209.
Jordan to Curzon, Annual Report, 1919, China, FO405/229.
NCH, June 12, 1920, vol. CXXXV, p. 642.
China Yearbook, 1919–1920, p. 741.
See Clive to Curzon, June 30, 1920, FO405/228. Alston frankly admitted later in his annual report of 1920 that ‘while the Alliance had not saved her [China] from the twenty-one demands, it had enabled Japan to tie our [the British] hands over the Shantung question’. Alston to Curzon, Annual Report, 1920, China, Feb. 4, 1921, FO405/229.
Clive to Curzon, June 30, 1920, Enclosure ‘A Friendly Word to Mr. Alston Regarding the Anglo-Japanese Alliance’, Extract from the Wei I Jih Pao of June 12, 1920, FO405/228.
Huang was vice-President of the Educational Association of the Jiangsu Province at the time.
Alston to FO, Aug. 7, 1920, Enclosure, FO228/3352.
Ibid.
Clive to Curzon, June 30, 1920, Enclosure, FO405/228.
NCH, June 12, 1920, vol. CXXXV, p. 642.
Alston to Curzon, Feb. 4, 1921, Annual Report, 1920, China, FO405/229.
Treaties and Agreements with and Concerning China, 1919–1929, p. 29.
NCH, June 18, 1921, vol. CXXXIX, p. 791.
See Fifield, Woodrow Wilson and the Far East, pp. 215–16.
Wilson, G., Handbook, p. 25.
Ibid., p. 18.
Curzon to Clive, Dec. 22, 1920, FO228/3338.
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© 1991 Zhang Yongjin
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Yongjin, Z. (1991). Whither China in the East Asian International Order?. In: China in the International System, 1918–20. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21238-5_4
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