BRITISH, JAPANESE AND AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN CHINA, 1895-1949 (Dyplomacja brytyjska, japonska i amerykanska w Chinach 1895-1949)

• Authors: Polit Jakub
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

During the period of 1895-1949, from the first Sino-Japanese war to the victory of Chinese Communists, China was the only territory where the interests of almost all great powers, economic and political, overlapped. The most important of them were undoubtedly Great Britain, Japan and the United States. These trio participated in diplomatic game almost during all this period, controlling the majority of foreign investments in China. The British and Japanese ministers were all in general professional diplomats, graduates from universities, who had had considerable prior experience in consular post in China and therefore spoke Chinese. They had the closest knowledge of any of the foreign powers concerning Middle Kingdom's political and economic affairs. But while the British diplomatic body harmoniously cooperated with British Foreign Office in case of Japan brutal, dishonest and arrogant policy of Japanese Imperial Army upset and ruined all efforts of Japanese ministers to improve relations with China. American ministers formed a strongly different group. They were (with some exceptions) political appointees who reached that office through their friendships with presidents. Hardly anybody spoke Chinese and had very moderate political experience. In addition, during the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they were marginalized by president's personal envoys (some of them turned out to be Soviet spies). Finally, despite all diplomatic failures, the American superpower crushed or marginalized all its rivals in China. But myopic diplomacy resulted in triumph of Chinese Communism, that finally appeared US diplomatic catastrophe.

Keywords

EN

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN CHINA; BRITISH DIPLOMACY IN CHINA; JAPANESE DIPLOMACY IN CHINA; SINO–JAPANESE WAR.

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Historii im. Tadeusza Manteuffla PAN w Warszawie
• Journal: Dzieje Najnowsze
• Year: 2010
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 19-40
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Polit Jakub

• Jakub Polit, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Instytut Historii, ul. Golebia 13, 31-007 Kraków, Poland

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10PLAAAA082428