ABSTRACT
Over four centuries of intimate contact between white and nonwhite peoples preceded the war in Asia, beginning with the European age of expansion. Instead, they became imperialists themselves, taking their first colony in 1895 and the second in 1910, and recording in between those dates the first modern military victory of a nonwhite nation over a white power. In spite of their accomplishments in Western ways, including modern uses of technology and power, the Japanese remained firmly placed among the nonwhite "others"-the cleverest of the pupils of the West, perhaps, but still primarily perceived in terms of color and culture. The natural slave was in this argument not a beast, but a lesser human, a "barbarian", by the same reasoning, women and children were also natural slaves, and some would argue that so also were peasants. Lin Yutang, whom middle-class Americans had previously known as a gentlemanly guide to Asian high culture, was comparably pessimistic and caustic.
