China and Korea—War with China—Naval Reform—Defeat of China—Treaty of
Shimonoséki—Peace Terms.
Those who are at all familiar with Chinese history will scarcely have
failed to notice one persistent feature of it—the suzerainty that China
has either exercised, or claimed to exercise, over neighbouring States
which at one time or another have fallen under her domination. This has
been the common experience of nearly all countries whose situation on
the frontiers of the Chinese Empire has exposed them to invasion by
their restless and powerful neighbour. At the time of which we are
speaking some of these States had already recovered their independence,
which was not, however, always recognized formally by China; in others
Chinese suzerainty had been replaced by that of another Power; while in
a few instances China, in the wish to evade the responsibilities of a
protectorate, had of late years allowed her suzerainty to become almost
nominal. This last-mentioned position was that of Korea, when Japan in
1876 concluded the Treaty with that country, to which reference has
already been made. For many years previously Chinese suzerainty had
ceased to be effective, but it was still asserted by China, and
acknowledged by Korea. The despatch from time to time of missions to
Peking bearing presents, which the Chinese were justified in regarding
as tribute, the form given to correspondence between the two countries,
and the ceremonies observed on official occasions, constituted an
admission of the status of vassalage. With this acknowledged status the
Treaty of 1876 was inconsistent, since its first Article contained the
declaration that Korea was an independent State; and in 1882—when Great
Britain and America followed Japan’s example by negotiating treaties
with that country—China, with an inconsistency equal to that displayed
by Korea, weakened her own position as suzerain by making a Treaty with
her nominal vassal on the lines of those already concluded between Korea
and the three Powers above mentioned. This false step on the part of
China strengthened the attitude adopted by Japan in declining to
recognize Chinese suzerainty. At the outset, therefore, of Japan’s new
relations with Korea the situation as between herself, Korea, and the
latter’s nominal suzerain, China, was anomalous and contradictory. In
this fact alone lay the seeds of future trouble. Nor was the aspect of
affairs in Korea itself such as to offer any assurance that the
difficulties which there was every reason to anticipate would not
shortly occur.
Its condition was that of an Oriental State in complete decay. Long
years of misrule had broken the spirit of the people; the occupant of
the Throne was a nonentity in the hands of unscrupulous and incompetent
Ministers, who were supported by rival factions struggling with each
other for power; there were no regular forces, nor police, worthy of the
name; intrigue and corruption prevailed everywhere unchecked; and the
resources of the country were wasted by swarms of rapacious officials
intent only on enriching themselves.
In these circumstances the appearance on the scene of two neighbouring
Powers, each bent on obtaining a predominant influence in the peninsula,
could only result in making matters worse than they were before. The
introduction of foreign elements into the intrigues of contending
factions gave fresh force to domestic quarrels, until increasing
disorder in the country culminated in anti-foreign disturbances, in the
course of which the Japanese, against whom popular feeling was chiefly
directed, were driven out of Seoul, and their Legation destroyed. The
puppet King, accused of favouring Japan, was also compelled to abdicate,
his father, the Tai-wön-kun, one of the few Koreans who possessed both
character and ability, assuming charge of the administration. Thereupon
China intervened. Exercising her acknowledged authority as suzerain, she
sent a military force, supported by some men-of-war, to Korea to restore
order. The Korean capital (Seoul) was occupied, and the Tai-wön-kun
arrested and taken to China. This was in 1883. It was then that Yuan
Shih-kai, afterwards President of the Chinese Republic, first came into
public notice on his appointment as Chinese Resident in Seoul. For a
short time after the reassertion of her authority by China, and the
restoration of order in the Korean capital, affairs remained quiet, both
the Chinese and Japanese Governments maintaining garrisons in Seoul; but
in the following year a conspiracy fomented by the pro-Japanese party
led to the outbreak of further disturbances, in the course of which a
collision occurred between the Chinese and Japanese garrisons, the
latter, which was greatly outnumbered, withdrawing to the port of
Chemulpo.
The critical situation produced by this collision between the troops of
the two Powers in the Korean capital impressed on both Governments the
necessity, if further and more serious trouble were to be avoided, of
arriving at some understanding in regard to action in Korea. With this
object negotiations were opened early in 1885, and in the spring of that
year a convention was signed at Tientsin between China and Japan, by
which the independence of Korea was recognized. Both Governments agreed
to withdraw their forces from Korea, leaving only small detachments as
guards for their Legations, and to give each other previous notice “in
writing,” should the despatch of troops by either to that country become
necessary at any time in the future. A further stipulation provided that
the King of Korea should be asked to organize an armed force for the
preservation of order and public security, and to engage the services of
foreign military experts for this purpose from a foreign country other
than China and Japan.
This was still the position of affairs in 1894 under the _modus vivendi_
established by the Tientsin Convention. Though by that agreement China
had abandoned her pretensions to suzerainty, the rivalry between the two
Powers continued unabated. The interval since 1885 had been marked by
constant strife among Korean factions, and the prosecution of busy
intrigues between the latter and the Chinese and Japanese, to which the
growing interest now taken by Russia in the affairs of the peninsula
gave fresh impetus. The Chinese representative in Korea retained the
title of Resident, which conveyed, as was intended, the impression of
the superiority of his position to those of other foreign
representatives; and the influence of China at the Capital—exercised
through the masterful Queen, who did not conceal her pro-Chinese
sympathies—was predominant. Nevertheless, what advantage China enjoyed
in these respects over her rival was more than counterbalanced by the
political and commercial activity displayed by Japan. Proof of this had
already been given by the prompt action of the Japanese Government in
obtaining redress for the results of the disturbances of 1882 and 1884,
and by the steadily increasing volume of Japanese trade.
[Illustration:
FIELD-MARSHAL PRINCE YAMAGATA.
Distinguished himself in the Restoration campaign; took an active part
in the Government subsequently formed, in the reorganization of the
Japanese army, and in the wars with China and Russia; he wielded
throughout great influence in State affairs.
]
In the spring of 1894 the value of the arrangement under which the two
Powers had agreed to conduct their relations with Korea was put to the
test by the outbreak of an insurrection in the south of Korea. The
Korean troops sent from the Capital to quell the revolt having been
worsted in several encounters with the insurgents, the Min party, to
which the Queen belonged, appealed to China for assistance. The Chinese
Government responded to the appeal by sending troops to Asan, the scene
of the revolt, informing Japan at the same time, in accordance with the
terms of the Tientsin Convention, of its intention to do so. The
Japanese Government replied by taking similar action. The tenour of the
correspondence that ensued between the two Governments gave little hope
of an amicable settlement of the difficulty, China reasserting the
suzerainty she had previously waived, and seeking to impose limits upon
Japanese action; while Japan insisted on her right to interfere, and
supported it by reinforcing the troops she had already despatched. China
at once took similar measures, but the reinforcements sent never reached
their destination. The British vessel conveying them, under convoy of
Chinese men-of-war, was met and sunk at sea by a Japanese squadron
commanded by Admiral (then Captain) Tōgō. A day or two later the Chinese
and Japanese forces at Asan came into conflict, with the result that the
Chinese troops were defeated and were withdrawn to China. Hostilities
had, therefore, already commenced on land and sea when simultaneous
declarations of war were made by both Governments on the 1st August.
These first encounters were a true presage of what was to follow. The
war thus begun was disastrous for China. By the wide extent of her
territories, her vast population, her seemingly inexhaustible resources
and her traditions of conquest, not to mention her industrial and
commercial activities, she had for centuries filled a big place in the
world. Japan, on the other hand, was a comparatively small country,
little known, that had just emerged from a long era of seclusion, and
was regarded abroad with feelings which at the best, apart from the
interest her art inspired, did not extend beyond sympathetic curiosity.
It was quite natural, therefore, that foreigners outside Japan who knew
little of the silent progress made since the Restoration should have
wondered at her audacity in challenging a neighbour who in all respects
appeared to be so much more powerful than herself. In reality, however,
the prospects of success for China were hopeless from the first. She was
in an advanced stage of decadence. Her foremost statesman, Li Hung
Chang, and the whole official hierarchy were notoriously corrupt, the
arrogant policy the Government still pursued serving as a cloak to hide
the real weakness that lay behind. Her ill-paid army, led by incompetent
officers, was without training of a modern kind, or discipline; while
her navy was a house divided against itself, the southern squadron
refusing to fight on the ground that the war was not a national war, but
one into which the country had been drawn through the self-seeking
policy of Li Hung Chang. To the Japanese there was nothing that savoured
of audacity in confronting an adversary of whose weakness they were well
assured. Into the policy of reform which the Government had steadily
pursued since the Restoration many considerations had entered. The
course of recent events in China had been an object-lesson by which it
had profited. Having realized that a chief cause of China’s troubled
relations with Western Powers lay in her military inefficiency, it set
to work to reorganize the army. This work was entrusted to Marshal
Prince Yamagata (then a young officer), who had distinguished himself in
the fighting which took place at the time of the Restoration. He and the
younger Saigō (afterwards created a Marquis) were the chief members of a
mission appointed to enquire into military matters which visited Europe
in 1870. The results of this mission were the engagement of foreign
military instructors and the establishment of conscription, which came
into operation for the first time in 1873. A few years later the
discipline and fighting qualities of the new conscript troops were
tested to the satisfaction of the Government in the Satsuma rebellion.
In 1884 a second military mission, at the head of which was the late
Marshal Prince Ōyama, visited Europe. It was then that the services of a
Prussian officer, the late General Meckel, were secured. The improvement
in the Japanese army which showed itself from that time is generally
ascribed to the ability and energy which that officer brought to the
performance of his duties as military adviser. In consequence of the
sedulous attention thus paid for several years to military organization,
Japan, when military operations against China commenced, had at her
disposal a conscript army of over 200,000 men, with a corresponding
strength of artillery and a supply of efficient officers. Against an
army of this quality, and of these dimensions, China, who was content to
rely on troops recruited on the voluntary system, could do little, even
had she not laboured under other disadvantages already mentioned.
For obvious reasons the development of the Japanese navy had lagged
behind that of the army. The finances of the country did not permit of
any large expenditure on both services. While the feudal system had kept
alive the warlike spirit of the nation in spite of a prolonged period of
peace, the closing of the country to foreign intercourse, accompanied as
it was by the rigid limitations imposed on the size of vessels, had
stifled maritime enterprise. Japanese naval training, therefore, had to
begin with the rudiments of a sailor’s education. Service at sea did not
at first appeal to a people whose military class, before it disappeared
with the abolition of feudalism, had been brought up mainly in
traditions of land fighting. There was another reason. Partly by design,
partly, also, as the result of circumstances, the military control
exercised by the two clans which virtually governed the country soon
after the Restoration had from the first been arranged so as to give
Chōshiū clansmen the larger share of army administration, the direction
of the navy, on the other hand, being left chiefly to Satsuma clansmen,
whose intelligence and energy fell short of the standard of their
colleagues in the Government.
The same year (1872) in which the reorganization of the army began saw
the first steps taken in the direction of naval reform. In that year the
single department which had hitherto been responsible for the
administration of both army and navy was replaced by separate
departments for each of the two services. It was, as already noted, to
Great Britain that Japan turned for assistance in the measures
subsequently taken for the building up of a navy. British naval advisers
and instructors, amongst whom were the late Admiral Sir Archibald
Douglas and Admiral Ingles were engaged, and the first vessels of the
new Japanese navy were constructed in England. In 1892 the determination
of the Government to persevere in the task of creating a navy was shown
by the Emperor’s decision to contribute £30,000 annually for eight years
towards naval construction, the funds required for this purpose being
obtained by proportionate reductions in the expenditure of the Court.
When war was declared, it was the Japanese navy that struck the first
blow. It then consisted of twenty-eight ships, aggregating roughly some
57,000 tons, besides twenty-four torpedo-boats. The day of destroyers
had not yet come. The Chinese fleet at this time was stronger
numerically than that of Japan, and had also an advantage in the fact
that it included one or two ships of a more powerful class than any
Japanese vessel. But this superiority was counterbalanced by the refusal
of the Chinese Southern Squadron, for the reason already given, to take
any part in hostilities; and early in the war the portion of the Chinese
fleet which came into action showed that it had little stomach for
fighting.
Though the war lasted for eight months—from August 1st, 1894, till the
conclusion of an armistice on the 30th March in the following year—its
result was never in doubt. The Chinese troops in the south of Korea had,
as we have seen, been withdrawn to China after their defeat at Asan.
Further north the Japanese at once made the port of Chemulpo the base of
preliminary operations, and having, on the strength of a treaty of
alliance, concluded at the outset of hostilities with the Korean
Government, occupied the Korean capital, compelled the Chinese forces
remaining in Korea to retire towards the frontier. The only engagement
of any consequence in this early stage of the campaign occurred at
Ping-yang, a town occupying a position of some strategic value in the
north-west of the peninsula sixty miles from the Yalu river, which
formed for some distance the boundary between China and Korea. This
place was held in strength by the Chinese forces, and its capture by the
Japanese on the 17th September involved some severe fighting, in the
course of which a Chinese Mohammedan regiment distinguished itself by a
stubborn resistance, which was in marked contrast to the behaviour of
other Chinese troops. On the same day the Chinese northern fleet was
beaten in the only important naval action of the war. In this engagement
the two Chinese battleships, each more than a match for any Japanese
vessel, suffered little damage, but the Chinese lost several smaller
vessels, while no Japanese ships were damaged beyond repair. The beaten
Chinese fleet made its way to Ta-lien-Wan, which lies at the neck of the
Kwantung peninsula. There it stayed for some weeks until the landing of
a Japanese army close to that port, which the Chinese made no attempt to
defend, obliged it to take refuge in Weihaiwei. Thence it never again
emerged, thus leaving to the Japanese until the end of the war the
undisputed command of the sea.
The further course of the war is well known, the general control of
operations remaining, as before, in the hands of Marshal Prince
Yamagata. Nowhere were the Chinese forces able to offer any effective
resistance to the Japanese advance, their experience, whenever they
tried to make a stand, being a repetition of what occurred at Ping-yang,
where their losses, as compared with those of the enemy (6000 to 200),
told their own tale. Towards the end of October the two Japanese
divisions operating on parallel lines in Korea crossed the Chinese
frontier, driving before them the Chinese forces, which made but a
feeble resistance. The Japanese divisions (some 40,000 strong), which
had early in November driven the Chinese from Ta-lien-wan and occupied
the isthmus of Chinchou, thus severing communications between the
Kwantung peninsula and the northern portion of the Fêng-t’ien province,
proceeded to invest Port Arthur. Later on in the month a Chinese army
moving from the north was completely defeated in an attempt to relieve
the fortress. On the 21st November, Port Arthur was stormed with small
loss to the Japanese, considering the natural strength of the position,
and its powerful fortifications. Early in December the Japanese forces
operating from Korea, assisted by a third division detached for the
purpose, continued their advance, occupying successively the towns of
Kaiping and Haicheng. In the course of February and March, 1895, this
army, now under the command of General (afterwards Prince) Katsura,
pushed still further west, defeated the Chinese in three successive
engagements in the neighbourhood of Newchwang and occupied that port,
the Chinese retreating northwards along the course of the Liao river.
Meanwhile an expeditionary force despatched from Ta-lien-wan in January
had landed in Yung-chêng bay to the east of Weihaiwei, and, acting in
co-operation with the Japanese fleet, had laid siege to that place. Its
gallant defence by Admiral Ting was for China the only redeeming feature
of the war. On 16th March it surrendered, after a siege of three months,
its gallant defender dying by his own hand. The fall of Weihaiwei, and
the uninterrupted success of the Japanese armies on the Liao river,
convinced China of the hopelessness of further resistance, though she
had still large military reserves in the vicinity of the Capital. An
armistice was accordingly concluded on the 30th March. The Chinese
Government had previously made informal overtures for peace through a
foreign adviser in the Chinese Customs service, but these had come to
nothing owing to Japan’s insistence upon treating directly with the
responsible Chinese authorities. The peace negotiations which followed
the armistice resulted in the signature of the Treaty of Shimonoséki on
the 17th April. In the course of these negotiations a slight
modification in its demands was granted by the Japanese Government as
reparation for a fanatical attack made on the Chinese Plenipotentiary,
Li Hung Chang, who fortunately escaped without serious injury.
The main provisions of this Treaty, some of which were altered by the
subsequent intervention of Russia, France and Germany, were the
recognition by China of Korea’s independence; the cession to Japan of
the southern portion of the province of Fêng-t’ien, Formosa and the
Pescadores; the payment by China of an indemnity of 200,000,000 Kuping
taels—equivalent, roughly, at the then rate of exchange, to £40,000,000;
and the opening to foreign trade of four new towns in China. These were
Shasi, Chungking, Soochow and Hangchow. The Treaty also established the
right of foreigners to engage in manufacturing enterprises in China, and
provided for the subsequent conclusion of a Commercial Convention, and
of arrangements regarding frontier intercourse and trade. And it was
agreed that Weihaiwei should be occupied by Japan until the indemnity
had been paid. Under the Commercial Convention, duly concluded three
months later, Japan secured for her subjects extra-territorial rights in
China, but these were withheld from Chinese subjects in Japan. In the
following October a supplementary Protocol of four articles was added to
this Commercial Convention.
It will be seen that Japan in making with China this one-sided
arrangement regarding extra-territorial rights, which limited their
enjoyment expressly to the subjects of one of the contracting parties,
followed the example of Western Powers in their early treaties with
Japan, which were still in existence, the revised Treaty with Great
Britain not coming into operation until 1899. Apart from the question
whether this caution on her part was justified or not by the conditions
of Chinese jurisdiction, it is not easy to reconcile her action in this
respect with her repeated protests against the extra-territorial
stipulations of her own treaties with Western Powers and with the
national agitation for their revision which resulted therefrom.