Sarah Paine: prediction

Transcript context

…e. They set themselves a policy objective which is to protect Japanese national security and sovereignty in an age of accelerating imperialism. They come up with a two-phase grand strategy to do this. It's going to start with a domestic phase of Westernization, Westernizing your institutions. When they're done with that, they're going to have a foreign policy phase which is going to be about starting an empire. Why do that? Because they look at all the powers of their day and think “What's a great power look like in those days? Well, it has an empire.” So they go, “Well, we're going to have an empire, all right.” This is the domestic phase. These are known as the Meiji reforms in honor of the emperor who reigned in this period. It's between 1869-1890. It's a whole generation. If you look at them, only two of them pertain to the military. There's the draft and then creating the general staff. Then if you look at the two that start it all, they start it at the top of the social pyramid with the feudal domains. Those are the power brokers of Japan. They're getting rid of all those and then they go right to the bottom of the social pyramid, which is children. They decide that they need to have compulsory elementary education because they don't believe you can have a modern country, a strong country, without a literate population. But if you look at the rest of these things, you're getting a Bank of Japan, you're going to be having something running your currency and other things. You've got a cabinet, a higher education, you're going to have a professional civil service constitution, a parliament, you're going to have a court system that looks like a Western court system with laws that look an awful lot like Western laws. As a result of doing all of this, the Westerners had no excuse left for having a treaty port system because this mirrors what's going on in the West. So Britain, which is the precedent setter in these things, the superpower of its day, 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. 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.…

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