ABSTRACT
The history of US-East Asia relations When the Cold War came to an end, many observers predicted that the Pacific was about to replace Europe as the main focus and top priority of US foreign policy. The pundits, however, told only part of the story. The United States had been a Pacific Power long before it became an Atlantic one. The first American trade activities date back to 1784 when the Empress of China set anchor in the Chinese port of Canton. The Empress was the first American merchant ship ever to cross the Pacific. In the early 1840s the US intensified their commercial engagement in East Asia. Under the terms of the Treaty of Wanghia (1844), the US gained the right to trade in Chinese ports. More decisively, in 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry terminated Japan’s self-imposed isolation and forced the country to enter into trade with the US. Both events paved the way for America’s later colonial involvement in the region which took shape with the takeover of the former Spanish colonies in the Philippines and Guam in 1898. Within only a few decades the US had experienced a metamorphosis from a colony to a colonial power. Since the late nineteenth century the United States has held onto a pre-eminent position in the Asia-Pacific, only briefly interrupted by Japan’s imperialistic attempts to establish a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’ during the Pacific War.
