ABSTRACT

In 1895 a new factor had been introduced into world diplomacy by the modernisation of Japan and the irruption of the European Powers into her relations with her Chinese neighbour. Japan had ended her two-hundred-year seclusion in 1845. From 1854 she had diplomatic relations with the European Great Powers. From 1868, the date of the accession of the Emperor Meiji, industries of a western kind began to appear. By 1889 she had a parliament of two Houses and western-type Ministries. But the Emperor and his group of personal advisers, the genro, or elder statesmen, comprising much of the military, financial and diplomatic talent of the nation, played a significant part in the Government of the country in addition to the Ministries. The Prime Minister came from among the genro and was virtually chosen by them. Between 1871 and 1873 a Japanese mission toured the western capitals and paid special attention to the industrial organisation of Great Britain from whom the mission raised a series of loans for railway building. While first French and then German officers helped in the modernisation of the Japanese army, a mission from the Royal Navy between 1873 and 1882 reorganised the navy. Between 1870 and 1900 most Japanese battleships were built in British dockyards. On July 16,1894, Britain and Japan had signed a commercial treaty, which ended the unequal relationship established between the two countries by the Treaty of Edo of 1858 and provided the pattern for Japan’s commercial relations with all other countries including the United States. The common interest of ‘the two Island Empires’ in restraining Russia in Korea had already been established. Indeed, Britain’s occupation of Port Hamilton in April 1885 was as much related to her Korean objective as to her fear of war arising with Russia out of the Penjdeh incident (above, p. 324). She left Port Hamilton in 1887 when Russia had given China assurances about Korea. 1