AMERICANS AND EURASIA (Review)

James C. Thomson, Jr. Peter W. Stanley and John Curtis Perry, Sentimental Imperialism: The American Experience in East Asia. New York: Harper & Row, c. 1981. 323 pp.



The genre of this volume is difficult to define. Written in the collaborative mode by three well-connected educators (from Harvard, Carleton College in Minnesota and Tufts, respectively), it lacks bibliography, footnotes and illustrations. The four maps are poorly reproduced and are of marginal utility. The editorial decision to maintain the Wade-Giles system of transliteration is, on the other hand, highly commendable. The prose is consistent in a style recognizable as "formally Washingtonian:" bureaucratic, academic and liberal. The volume is intended, apparently, for readers with little or partial previous knowledge of the area.

The authors have attempted to delineate a contrast among American experiences with China, The Philippines and Japan. Beginning with China, the study is clear as regards China's Canton System of regulating foreign trade, the role of the Opium Wars (1840-42) and the outline of the "treaty system" emerging from the Treaty of Nanking (1842). Fluctuations in regional currencies and the price of silver are noted and the incresed role of the comprador (a Chinese llicensed broker employed by a foreign trading company is outlined. The summary of the American "Open Door" policy (1899) has obviously benefitted from previous scholarly reinteerpretation. The development of the May 4th movement, stemming fronm China's rejection of the Versailles Treaty, is traced from its original emphasis on individual emancipation to an emphasis on strengthening the state. On the other hand, the ideology of the Taiping Rebellion is virtually ignored, Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of Nationalism, Democracy and Socialism are not satisfactorily amplified, and neither the Japanese Black Dragon Society nor Chiang Kai-shek's relationship to it are mentioned. Also ignored is M.M. Borodin (Gruzenberg), the former Chicago schoolteacher and later Comintern representative, whom Dr. Sun Apotheosized as the "Lafayette of the Chinese revolution."

While Protestant missionary activity was only marginally effective in converting the Chinese, it enjoyed greater success in establishing a network of training institutions in education and medicine. It is curious to read that the Rockefeller Foundation recommended an ambitious new program to exploit China's "plasticity" by undertaking a massive program to raise the living standards of rural China in 1934 (p. 186) while Chiang's New Life movement of the same year, modelled on the YMCA and the protestant churches, was executed ",,,with fascism as its covert sponsor and enforcer.:" (p. 182). Missing in action is the wartime American liason with Mao Tse-tung (code-named "Dixie Mission"); unpersoned and presumably not rehabilitated are President Liu Shao-chi and Mao's once-designated successor, Gen. Lin Pao. While Maoism is not defined, the Great Helmsman is commemorated on only a few pages more than Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R.-WI), whose influence on world events was significantly less. Pursuit of the mythical question "Who lost China?" suggests that the responsible corps of American China specialists is still deeply defensive and has not yet regained a desirable degree of self-confidence and impartiality.

The Philippines offer a case study of forty years of American imperial administration. Conquered by Spain in the 18th century, the peoples of the archipeligo lived in barangay's or extended kinship units, without a national state as such. Following the Spanish defeat by the Vermont-born Commodore Dewey in 1898, Filipinos led by Emilio Aguinaldo (1869-1964) rose in insurrection against both Spain and the United States. Annexation was nearly defeated in the U.S. Senate. Inexplicably, the authors do not refer to the quotable Sen. Albert J. Beveridge, the influlential William Randolph Hearst, the Protestant interest in Christianizing the "little brown brother," or the enlisted man's variant, "Civilize 'em with a Krag!" (referring to the .30/40 repeating rifle, purchased from Norway, US Army standard issue 1894-1903). Despite this inauspicious beginning, the civil administration of William Howard Taft and his "policy of attraction" in The Philippines signified an alliance between American imperial power and native collaborators among the local elites. The "imperialism of suasion" developed into a bulwark protecting class interest. The personalism of social relationships within the barangay was destroyed during the economic "rationalization" of the 1920's and 1930's. The Japanese invaders of 1941 found fewer collaborators (except the independence-minded Aguinaldo), and those were resisted by the Hukbalahap, part of which later developed into a Communist-led anti-landlord uprising until defeated by President Ramon Magsaysay in the 1950's. His successor, Ferdinand Marcos, declared martial law in 1972. In the opinion of the present authors, "...Eight decades of collaboration have been tried and found wanting."
Rejecting not only alliances but commercial intercourse (save with the Dutch and Chinese),, Tokugawa Japan enforced social tranquillity through a policy of "centralized feudalism /sic/." The less populous but more industrialized United States compelled the insular Japanese into a "treaty system" in 1858, following the naval mission of Commodore Mathew Perry in 1853. The Emperor Meiji was restored to full autority over the Tokugawa and other clans in 1868 in Japan's response to the perceived Western threat. Subsequent Westernization of the "military-industrial complex" was capitalized domestically. Influenced by Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, among others, the modernizing Meiji leadership returned in force to Korea by 1876, defeated the reformed Chinese military in 1894-5, and contributed nearly half the forces sent to rebuff the Boxer uprising in 1899. Japan next defeated Russia in 1904-05, agreeing to a relatively modest settlement at the Treaty of Portsmouth (NH) for which President Theodore Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize. Following Secretary Hay's Open Door notes, the United States attempted to act as balance-maker between Japan and China in the expectancy that Japan would pursue its expansionist aims in northeastern Asia rather than among the Pacific islands. Basic American military strategy (Plan Orange) of 1907 and after envisaged a defensive posture in the Pacific. During the Wilson era the realism of Theodore Roosevelt and Secrtary Elihu Root was replaced by a "...new sense of the universal applicability of American values." While the value of Japanese exports fell 50% during 1929-31, expansion into Manchuria (1931) and China's Yangtse Valley (1937) under various Pan Asian slogans significantly underestimated Chinese nationalism. Associating itself with the Anticomintern Pact (1936) and the Tripartite Alliance (1940), Japan became loosely associated in American public opinion with European Fascism. President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary Cordell Hull believed in "collective security" (pace Maxim Liltvinov) and directed stiffening American resistence to Japan in her role of German ally. No mention is made of the Japanese and Allied interventions in Siberia (1917-22), which included the Americans, or the forces urging Japan into war against the Soviet Union in 1939. The authors' opinion that the Soviets were "...still too weak to challenge the Japanese" may disturb the spirit in Valhalla of Lieutenant-General Georgii Zhukov, whose tank-led army exacted some 50,000 Japanese casualties at the battle of Khalkin Gol' on the Mongolian frontier in August, 1939.
Political and social reforms were undertaken during the American occupation of Japan (1945-52, while ambitious economic reforms were projected but subsequently curtailed. Since 1945, the authors conclude, the United States has enjoyed better relations with its former enemy, Japan, than with its former ally, China., or former colony, The Philippines. The Japanese Wirtschaftwunder is remarked on and while the aulhors comment on the Japanese "vulnerability complex" and its nearly total dependence on imported oil, they do not associate these phenomena with political friability in Japan, Inc. where "...the same conservative party always wins a plurality." The contrast in conclusions relative to American coopertion with the Japanese and Philippine elites is not explained. Someday, somewhere, an independent institute or journal to foster integrated studies of modern Eurasia might be welcomed.

Publhed in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Philadelphia in the Spring of 1983. Insignificant rhetorical modifications have been introduced in this version.