Sarah Paine: evaluation

Transcript context

…it renegotiates its treaties with Japan on the basis of juridical equality. The other powers follow suit and do it. This happened in Japan a half century before China got rid of its unequal treaties. The domestic phase is over the moment Japan signs that treaty with Britain. The foreign policy phase has to do with China. Japan believes it needs an empire and its neighborhood is a mess. China is imploding for various reasons, which I will get to, and Korea's even worse. China, because it's having massive civil wars throughout China, can no longer fulfill its suzerain role to stabilize Korea. And the Korean royal house is busy mailing package bombs to each other. I kid you not, they're blowing each other up. What Japan is terribly concerned about is that Russia might try to fill this power vacuum. Why would Japan think that? Well, it’s the Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia decides in 1891 that it's going to build a Trans-Siberian Railway to exactly what? There is no Russian population out there. Japan understands exactly what it is. It's a bid for an empire in Asia. Because once Russia completes this thing, it's going to overturn the Asian balance of power because Russia is going to be able to deploy troops where nobody else can. Therefore, treaty revision happens on the 16th of July, 1894. That's when it's signed on the dotted line with Britain. Nine days later, Japan fires the opening shots of the First Sino-Japanese War. The Japanese fight three wars of Russian containment. I'm going to talk about the two that went well for them today. The third one's a whole other topic. The first one's the First Sino-Japanese War, when little Japan defeats the greatest land power of Asia, China. Incredible. The second one, which I'll get to a decade later, is the Russo-Japanese War when the Japanese defeat, sorry spoiler alert, Russia, the greatest land empire of Europe. Amazing that they can do this. The third one does not go nearly as well. That would be the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1931 to 1945. That morphs into World War II. That ruins the Japanese, but it's a different topic. The First Sino Japanese War, to let you know what happened in it. It's comprised of two pairs of key battles. There are other battles as well, but this is a good way to understand it. The first battle is at Pyongyang. The Japanese defeat the Chinese army, which takes off and retreats all the way over the border river, which is the Yalu, back into Chinese territory. So Japan has actually achieved its war objective, which was to remove Korea from the Chinese sphere of influence. Battle number one, they've already done it. The second battle occurs within the week, the same week in mid September 1894. It's the Battle of the Yalu, where the Japanese navy trounces the Chinese navy, which, believe it or not, in this day both countries had state-of-the-art navies. Japan trounces it and gets command of the sea after that. That's terribly important for Japan. For Japan to reach the theater here, it's got to cross the sea. If there's a hostile navy out and about, it can sink troop transport, supplies and other things. It's very important to get rid of the hostile navy. reach the theater here, it's got to cross the sea. If there's a hostile navy out and about, it can sink troop transport, supplies and other things. It's very important to get rid of the hostile navy. The reason it gets command of the sea is because the Chinese decide they're never going to engage with the Japanese navy ever again and they duck into port. The Japanese are going to solve that problem for them. There is a second pair of battles which are fought over the winter of 1894-95. China only has one naval refitting station where you can actually fix large ships. That's at Port Arthur. They will take it by land the same way they're going to take it in the Russo-Japanese War. The Chinese fleet, what's left of it, flees to Weihaiwei to hang out in port. Japan lands an army on the Shandong peninsula there and also it blockades with its navy. Then the army turns the landward guns on the ships in port and they sink them all. And that is the end of that war. Here's what Japan got out of this war. What I've got is a very simple framework: domestic, regional, international. This is a way to help you remember what I'm going to tell you. Three-part frameworks are helpful for getting information to other people. Domestically, victory in this war validated a very controversial Westernization program. All those Meiji reforms which sound so great in retrospect, actually the Japanese population didn't like them. Who wants their kids being sent to elementary school if they were working on the farm before? Who wants this Westernized curriculum? Who likes westerners anyway? People are wearing all this Western clothing and stuff. It's crazy land. Why would anyone like that? Once Japan wins this war and trounces China, a lot of Japanese have second thoughts about this. They're quite proud of their achievements and it vastly increases the prestige of the military, particularly the army. This is going to have bad follow-on effects for civil military relations because it's going to increase military power over civil power but it takes a while to play out. Regionally, Japan's replacing China as the dominant power and Japan's getting the beginnings of its empires, Taiwan and the Pescadores. Internationally, Japan becomes a recognized great power. What's my proof? It would be the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which is Britain's only long-term alliance between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I, alliance with Japan. However, this war gets the eye of Mordor turned onto them because Russia is going, “Whoa, rising power in Asia. Potential two-front war problem for us with Europe in the west and whatever the Japanese think they're doing. That triggers a Russo-Japanese arms race and Russia, the eye of Mordor, turns from Europe to Asia. That's going to be problematic. ith Europe in the west and whatever the Japanese think they're doing. That triggers a Russo-Japanese arms race and Russia, the eye of Mordor, turns from Europe to Asia. That's going to be problematic. So now my transition sentence, I've done part number one. Not only did Japan Westernize its institutions in order to overturn the balance of power, but it also mastered grand strategy and integrated multiple instruments of national power. Here we go on that one. Marshall Yamagata, who was the writer of war plans for the very successful Sino-Japanese war, predicted another war within the decade. The Russo-Japanese war came right on time. In the meantime, Japan prepared for war. It integrated such instruments of national power as diplomacy, intelligence, military, economics. I'm going to go through each in turn, starting with diplomacy. Here you have Sun Tzu, who's China's big guru, Art of War, who's talking about how it's really important to disrupt alliances. In modern terminology, that would be isolating the adversary. That might be a good thing to do. That's the purpose of the Anglo-Japanese alliance. How does that work? Its terms say that if more than one European power comes to Asia to fight Japan, that means Russia plus one European buddy, then Britain is going to weigh in on Japan's side. Britain is the number one power in Europe, so why would you ever want to help Russia out? It won't go well with you if Britain is on Japan's side. This alliance goes into effect from 1902 to 1907. It's a five year event. It opens a window of opportunity for Japan to sort out its empire in Asia. But the Trans-Siberian Railway, when it gets completed, is going to threaten to close that window. Here's why. The Trans-Siberian Railway in those days, it's not north of the Amur, it's actually straight through Manchuria. This Chinese Eastern Railway, it's Russia's bid for empire, trying to control Manchuria. It was unfinished. It hadn't been double tracked. That means you're always having to push trains off so other trains can pass them in the other direction. It's missing its Lake Baikal link. Don't think lake, think Switzerland. Lake Baikal is about the size of Switzerland. The Boxer Rebellion—the Al Qaeda of their day and I'll get to them—had destroyed much of the track, really upsetting the Russians. As a result of all of this, at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War which began in 1904, the carrying capacity of that railway was only 20,000-40,000 men per month to the front. By the end of the war, the last battle, it's 100,000 men per month. If those numbers had been available at the beginning of the war, Japan would have faced numerically superior Russians from start to finish and would have been in a world of hurt. So Japan has got a window of opportunity that it's worrying about sorting things out in. In addition, Japan engages in a really big military buildup. It gets a really big indemnity from the First Sino-Japanese War and it spends it. That spending was finished in around 1901, meaning it's about ready to go to war.…

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