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    Red Sun Rising: Japan, China and the West: 1894-1941
    Red Sun Rising: Japan, China and the West: 1894-1941
    Red Sun Rising: Japan, China and the West: 1894-1941
    Ebook77 pages1 hour

    Red Sun Rising: Japan, China and the West: 1894-1941

    By Nick Shepley

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    About this ebook

    In the second half of the 19th Century, Japan awoke from centuries of isolation to be a surprising and warlike challenge to European power in Asia. This ebook charts the rise of Japan's power and her dominion over China. It also explores how Japan came to challenge European nations convinced of their own invincibility in the east, culminating in the attack on the USA at Pearl Harbour.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAUK Academic
    Release dateDec 7, 2015
    ISBN9781782345831
    Red Sun Rising: Japan, China and the West: 1894-1941

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    • 1/5
      Innumerable typos and many grammatical errors. Seems historically sound at least. But the author seriously needs to learn when to use a period instead of endless commas. Not to mention all the other problems. It's disturbing they have written other books. 17 pages in and I just can't justify reading to the end of this short book. Find an alternative, it is painful to get through.

    Book preview

    Red Sun Rising - Nick Shepley

    1988.

    Overview

    When the Russian fleet was swiftly destroyed by the Japanese at Tsushima in May 1905, a shockwave reverberated throughout the world. Not only had Russia been defeated and humiliated, but Western imperialism, with all it’s grandiose assumptions of European superiority, had been dealt a bloody nose. Astute European and American commentators looked on in a mixture of awe, surprise and fear, suddenly understanding that a modernising warrior nation had defied Euro-centric assumptions and established itself as a major world power. The colonial subjects of Britain, France and other European nations also paid close attention to defeat, noting the ease with which a supposedly invincible and notionally western great power had been defeated. It signified a fundamental and long term shift in the balance of power in Asia, and began Japan’s rise to globalism, one that would only be finally ended with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    This is the first of several books about Japan and her relations with the rest of Asia and the Western World in the 20th Century. This ebook follows the rise of Japan to global power status, a rise than surprised, then worried the West.

    This is also an attempt to understand how China became, after 1900, perhaps the most contested region in the world, and how Japan came to see China as rightfully belonging to her.

    It is these conflicts and crises that pave a very long road to Japan’s doomed Pacific War, a war that begins with this ebook’s sequel, Red Sun At War.

    Introduction: A Day Of Infamy

    The mood was sombre, but there was a tension in the air, a sort of electrified charge that manifests itself prior to the breaking of an almighty storm. The President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, crippled by polio but standing before Congress, using specially designed leg braces to stand articulated the shock and the anger of the American people.

    "Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

    The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with the government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific."

    He went on to paint a far bigger picture, revealing to the American people the scale of Japan’s ambitions.

    "Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island. This morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

    Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation. As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense. Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us."

    The facts were sobering, but to Roosevelt surely they were unsurprising; shocking maybe, but to some degree inevitable. In this ebook we’re going to examine how, for the second time in a generation, a supposedly isolationist power wound up fighting a world war, especially given the fact that America had re-elected Roosevelt on a platform of non intervention in 1940. As with most popularly held notions on the importance of events, the attack itself is perhaps not even half the story. To understand the motivations for America’s entry into the Second World War we need to look at her foreign policy during the previous decade and her long term predictions about how the world might look in the decades to come. The simplistic notion that America existed in blissful ignorance of world affairs until her peace was rudely interrupted by Japan needs to be revised, as with 1917, America did not suddenly declare war, but witnessed a gradual drift towards war, with Pearl Harbour a final tipping point, after which a war policy not only existed but became an unstoppable expression of national will. Roosevelt had long seen war as an inevitability, and since his famous Arsenal Of Democracy speech in December 1940, he had been strongly suggesting to the American public that the USA would be better to fight for democracy before it w extinguished in Europe and elsewhere altogether.

    Americans had a right to feel confused by the growing chaos in Europe during the 1930s, the horrors of World War One, a war to end wars, had seemingly solved nothing. all that appeared to have emerged was a brief hiatus, likely to be interrupted at some point in the future, and as the 1930s progressed, the likelihood grew ever greater. Each power left the negotiating tables at Paris having learned lessons from both the war and the peace. In particular Japan walked away, determined not to allow a repetition of the treatment meted out to her by Britain, France and America, and she was not without justification for feeling aggrieved. She had been an active part of the alliance against Germany during World War One and was treated at Versailles like a second rate power, an obscure Oriental backwater who could be easily bullied and humiliated. It was remarkably short sighted and demonstrated a remarkably short Western memory, some 14 years before, Japan had stunned the world and dispelled any comfortable Western notions that she was a

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