I posted my notes on the book Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan by Francis L. Hawks earlier today (See Commodore Perry Notes).
Isn't it interesting that Matthew Perry, representing the United States of America, demanded that Japan trade with us? When they did not want to. They politely refused. He threatened them with his armada of cannon-bearing ships. They politely accepted.
How did the war between Japan and the United States start (part of World War II)? The United States, along with Britain and the Netherlands, said the Japanese could not trade with anyone.
Since the United States was willing to go to war with Japan in order to force it to trade, why was it wrong later for Japan to go to war with the U.S. in order to continue the trading. Of course it is always wrong to go to war, unless it is the U.S. going to war, in which case any excuse will do.
The United States and its current gang of allies is doing the same thing to Iran right now. We want them to stop doing something that we and our allies do (making atomic weapons), so we refuse to trade with them. Except we do allow them to export their precious petroleum.
In 1854, when the Japanese and the U.S. signed their first treaty, the Treaty of Kanagawa, the U.S. was not considered to be one of the top world powers. Great Britain, France, Russia and Germany were all clearly more powerful. But rapid population growth combined with the industrial and agricultural revolutions changed America's internal strength, while staying out of World War I and II long enough gave Great Britain, France, Russia and Germany the time to exhaust each other.
America's military-industrial-political complex has forgotten the lessons of the first half of the 20th century. Staying out of war is what makes you strong. Bleeding slowly in Afghanistan while nations like China focus on building their economies is a plan for self destruction.
In 1600 China was arguably the most powerful nation in the world. By 2020 it probably will be so again, if it can have one more decade without a civil war or an external war. Perry was powerful because the U.S. economy could easily build steam ships and could mass produce guns. Let us hope the Chinese will be nicer to the U.S. than the U.S. ever was to China or Japan. It is a reasonable hope: the Chinese have been civilised for thousands of years. They know the value of peace and harmony.
Showing posts with label Commodore Perry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commodore Perry. Show all posts
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Okinawa, Commodore Perry, and the Lew Chew Raid
The ramifications of the U.S. War Against Asia are ever present, and of course the U.S. could resume the war at any time. In fact, Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq are in Asia, although my work-in-progress is devoted to wars in East Asia.
The United States occupied Japan after World War II and still has bases on the island of Okinawa. Apparently there is a Marine Corps base and a Marine Corps air station. The new Japanese government would like the U.S. to remove its bases, but for now is asking that the air base be smaller. Barack Obama would like to keep the bases, hoping for a change back to a more U.S. sycophantic government. [See, for instance, Japan Offers New Plan in Okinawa Dispute, nytimes.com]
Recently I read Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan, and much of the book is about the adventures prior to actually ordering Japan at gunpoint to give the U.S. bases there. A big section of the book is on the visit, or raid, to Lew Chew island. It turns out Lew Chew and Okinawa are one and the same. American's don't know about the Lew Chew incident, but I am sure Japanese historians and well-educated Japanese in general do.
Matthew Perry and crew had first sailed around Africa to China. They stopped at Okinawa on their way to Japan. They came originally in four large (for the time) vessels [Susquehanna, Mississippi, Supply, and Caprice], all heavily armed, two run by steam power, two by sail alone.
Okinawa was a possession of Japan. Perhaps it could be said to be naturally part of the Japanese islands geographically, and that the central government of Japan had extended its sway there around 1609, though actually a clan from the island of Kyushu did the sway extension.
We can only try to imagine the thoughts of the Japanese upon seeing the great war ships in their harbor in 1853. They sent out a couple of officials to greet the Americans. Commodore Perry refused to see them. He did see a missionary, Bettelheim, and got intelligence about the island from him. The next day the Japanese brought gifts of food, but were again declined. Two of Perry's officers were sent ashore (with interpreter) to talk to the mayor of Napha (Naha), the harbor town. When the regent of Lew Chew came to Perry's ship, he at last was received.
What followed was a preliminary to the tactics Perry used in Japan. He would ask the Lew Chew officials for permission to do something. They would say no and explain why. "There was evident opposition on the part of the authorities, at first, to visits on shore from the ships." Perry would say it would be done anyway, and then do it. The Okinawans were afraid of the obvious military power of Perry, so they did not oppose his visit, more of an invasion, with force. Perry did not conduct the usual U.S. raid on Asia, complete with killing people. He had the island surveyed and insisted on meetings with officials, and a house to stay in, and the construction of a building to be used to store coal for future U.S. steamship visits. Just in case, he had the American flag planted on a mountaintop, the traditional symbol of conquest. He planned a fuller conquest of Okinawa if the Japanese government failed to grant the U.S. the right to set up bases in Japan proper.
One amusing aspect of the book, which probably reflects the attitudes of both the author, Francis L. Hawks, as well as Perry and his crew, is that they suggested that Lew Chew was badly governed. The peasants seemed poor and mistreated. How much better off they would be if they were part of the United States. Of course, good government in the 1850's in the United States included a slave work force who were far worse off than the Lew Chew peasants. Perhaps Perry was already thinking of putting the Asians into reservations and populating the island with white Americans.
The United States occupied Japan after World War II and still has bases on the island of Okinawa. Apparently there is a Marine Corps base and a Marine Corps air station. The new Japanese government would like the U.S. to remove its bases, but for now is asking that the air base be smaller. Barack Obama would like to keep the bases, hoping for a change back to a more U.S. sycophantic government. [See, for instance, Japan Offers New Plan in Okinawa Dispute, nytimes.com]
Recently I read Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan, and much of the book is about the adventures prior to actually ordering Japan at gunpoint to give the U.S. bases there. A big section of the book is on the visit, or raid, to Lew Chew island. It turns out Lew Chew and Okinawa are one and the same. American's don't know about the Lew Chew incident, but I am sure Japanese historians and well-educated Japanese in general do.
Matthew Perry and crew had first sailed around Africa to China. They stopped at Okinawa on their way to Japan. They came originally in four large (for the time) vessels [Susquehanna, Mississippi, Supply, and Caprice], all heavily armed, two run by steam power, two by sail alone.
Okinawa was a possession of Japan. Perhaps it could be said to be naturally part of the Japanese islands geographically, and that the central government of Japan had extended its sway there around 1609, though actually a clan from the island of Kyushu did the sway extension.
We can only try to imagine the thoughts of the Japanese upon seeing the great war ships in their harbor in 1853. They sent out a couple of officials to greet the Americans. Commodore Perry refused to see them. He did see a missionary, Bettelheim, and got intelligence about the island from him. The next day the Japanese brought gifts of food, but were again declined. Two of Perry's officers were sent ashore (with interpreter) to talk to the mayor of Napha (Naha), the harbor town. When the regent of Lew Chew came to Perry's ship, he at last was received.
What followed was a preliminary to the tactics Perry used in Japan. He would ask the Lew Chew officials for permission to do something. They would say no and explain why. "There was evident opposition on the part of the authorities, at first, to visits on shore from the ships." Perry would say it would be done anyway, and then do it. The Okinawans were afraid of the obvious military power of Perry, so they did not oppose his visit, more of an invasion, with force. Perry did not conduct the usual U.S. raid on Asia, complete with killing people. He had the island surveyed and insisted on meetings with officials, and a house to stay in, and the construction of a building to be used to store coal for future U.S. steamship visits. Just in case, he had the American flag planted on a mountaintop, the traditional symbol of conquest. He planned a fuller conquest of Okinawa if the Japanese government failed to grant the U.S. the right to set up bases in Japan proper.
One amusing aspect of the book, which probably reflects the attitudes of both the author, Francis L. Hawks, as well as Perry and his crew, is that they suggested that Lew Chew was badly governed. The peasants seemed poor and mistreated. How much better off they would be if they were part of the United States. Of course, good government in the 1850's in the United States included a slave work force who were far worse off than the Lew Chew peasants. Perhaps Perry was already thinking of putting the Asians into reservations and populating the island with white Americans.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Commodore Perry, Japan, and Hypocrisy
Reading in detail about Commodore Perry's mission to Japan in 1853 and 1854, I could not help but be struck by the astonishing level of hypocrisy in the account. Perhaps this is because Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan was written by a minister, Francis L. Hawks, but more likely it simply and accurately reflects ruling class Amerian attitudes of that day.
The United States already had an extensive trade with China, and its whaling ships regularly operated in the seas around Japan. The U.S. had first been extended to the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. You'll recall that Napoleon Bonaparte claimed France owned extensive lands that were in fact the sovereign tribal lands of native American Indians. He sold this dubious title to the United States, led by slaver President Thomas Jefferson, for $15,000,000. The Oregon area was disputed by Spain, Russia, and Great Britain, but by1818 the U.S. had the upper hand and in 1846 the current border was settled by treaty, again without input from the Indians.
The war of aggression against Mexico starting in 1846 was largely designed by U.S. expansionists to get California and the port of San Francisco. American colonists moved rapidly into California, where their new government raised taxes on land just long enough to force most Mexican landholders to sell their holding.
Racism against the Asiatic peoples known as American Indians of course carried over to Euro-American attitudes towards Asians in China and Japan. But another matter that looms behind the Perry expedition is slavery. In the 1850s the U.S. nation practiced slavery, although slavery had been banned in the British Empire.
So if you believe the constant protestations by Perry and his gang that his expedition was about extending the "friendship" of the United States to the nation of Japan, you are naive.
The Japanese were not naive. They had already had considerable experience with the Christian and European meanings of friendship. They had closed off Japan to almost all intercourse with Europeans since the 1600s, in self-defense. Even their traditional trading partner, China, was allowed to trade only at the port of Nagasaki. The one European power the Japanese traded with was the Netherlands. But the Japanese government used the Dutch (also confined to Nagasaki) not so much for physical trade as to keep up on world events. When Perry came knocking at their door they knew about the United States, and they knew about the history of Europeans colonizing Asia. They also knew about many of the inventions of the West, like steam engines, although they had prohibited their actual importation. They had translators that read or spoke Dutch, Chinese, English, and probably other foreign languages. They knew the U.S. had successfully rebelled against Great Britain, and that Franklin Pierce was its President.
And they knew about the First Opium War. The government of China had made opium illegal for the obvious reasons. British (and also some American traders) had insisted on their right to profit from selling opium into China, and the British government defeated the Chinese in 1842, just ten years before the Perry expedition. In the aftermath of the Opium War the U.S. signed a rather one-sided treaty with China, one of the Unequal Treaties, the Treaty of Wanxia of 1844.
While protesting friendship on his mission to Japan (commanding a battle fleet capable of flattening Tokyo), Perry presents the U.S. treaty with China as a model of the sort of treaty the U.S. wants with China.
Even the summaries of the treaty sparring in the book can be tedious, but both sides knew what was really going on. The Japanese certainly knew about the imposition of the Unequal Treaties on China after the Opium War, and certainly had a copy of the treaty. Matthew Perry pretended the Japanese did not know, but he knew they knew. He kept threatening to send for more ships (with more cannon, and soldiers) if the Japanese would not make a treaty. The Japanese said they understood the need of the U.S. to take on coal (the petroleum of that era), water and food, and wanted to allow it at Nagasaki. Perry, representing American merchants and industrialists, wanted free trade, the right to trade anything anywhere. Politely, no one mentioned opium.
The Japanese were not in a position to defend themselves and their way of life, and knew it. They signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the U.S., and soon signed similar treaties with the European powers. Within a decade the rulers of Japan had decided that to defend themselves they needed to rapidly modernize, at whatever cost to their traditional ways.
In the 1850's Japan looked to some Americans like the next California, a place that could be grabbed, where the native peoples could be put on reservations and left to die.
By 1900 the Japanese were ready to withstand an attack from the imperialist powers. They expanded their vision. They would eventually free all of Asia from colonial slavery to Germany, France, Russia, Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands.
And that really angered the U.S. ruling class and its global allies.
The United States already had an extensive trade with China, and its whaling ships regularly operated in the seas around Japan. The U.S. had first been extended to the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. You'll recall that Napoleon Bonaparte claimed France owned extensive lands that were in fact the sovereign tribal lands of native American Indians. He sold this dubious title to the United States, led by slaver President Thomas Jefferson, for $15,000,000. The Oregon area was disputed by Spain, Russia, and Great Britain, but by1818 the U.S. had the upper hand and in 1846 the current border was settled by treaty, again without input from the Indians.
The war of aggression against Mexico starting in 1846 was largely designed by U.S. expansionists to get California and the port of San Francisco. American colonists moved rapidly into California, where their new government raised taxes on land just long enough to force most Mexican landholders to sell their holding.
Racism against the Asiatic peoples known as American Indians of course carried over to Euro-American attitudes towards Asians in China and Japan. But another matter that looms behind the Perry expedition is slavery. In the 1850s the U.S. nation practiced slavery, although slavery had been banned in the British Empire.
So if you believe the constant protestations by Perry and his gang that his expedition was about extending the "friendship" of the United States to the nation of Japan, you are naive.
The Japanese were not naive. They had already had considerable experience with the Christian and European meanings of friendship. They had closed off Japan to almost all intercourse with Europeans since the 1600s, in self-defense. Even their traditional trading partner, China, was allowed to trade only at the port of Nagasaki. The one European power the Japanese traded with was the Netherlands. But the Japanese government used the Dutch (also confined to Nagasaki) not so much for physical trade as to keep up on world events. When Perry came knocking at their door they knew about the United States, and they knew about the history of Europeans colonizing Asia. They also knew about many of the inventions of the West, like steam engines, although they had prohibited their actual importation. They had translators that read or spoke Dutch, Chinese, English, and probably other foreign languages. They knew the U.S. had successfully rebelled against Great Britain, and that Franklin Pierce was its President.
And they knew about the First Opium War. The government of China had made opium illegal for the obvious reasons. British (and also some American traders) had insisted on their right to profit from selling opium into China, and the British government defeated the Chinese in 1842, just ten years before the Perry expedition. In the aftermath of the Opium War the U.S. signed a rather one-sided treaty with China, one of the Unequal Treaties, the Treaty of Wanxia of 1844.
While protesting friendship on his mission to Japan (commanding a battle fleet capable of flattening Tokyo), Perry presents the U.S. treaty with China as a model of the sort of treaty the U.S. wants with China.
Even the summaries of the treaty sparring in the book can be tedious, but both sides knew what was really going on. The Japanese certainly knew about the imposition of the Unequal Treaties on China after the Opium War, and certainly had a copy of the treaty. Matthew Perry pretended the Japanese did not know, but he knew they knew. He kept threatening to send for more ships (with more cannon, and soldiers) if the Japanese would not make a treaty. The Japanese said they understood the need of the U.S. to take on coal (the petroleum of that era), water and food, and wanted to allow it at Nagasaki. Perry, representing American merchants and industrialists, wanted free trade, the right to trade anything anywhere. Politely, no one mentioned opium.
The Japanese were not in a position to defend themselves and their way of life, and knew it. They signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with the U.S., and soon signed similar treaties with the European powers. Within a decade the rulers of Japan had decided that to defend themselves they needed to rapidly modernize, at whatever cost to their traditional ways.
In the 1850's Japan looked to some Americans like the next California, a place that could be grabbed, where the native peoples could be put on reservations and left to die.
By 1900 the Japanese were ready to withstand an attack from the imperialist powers. They expanded their vision. They would eventually free all of Asia from colonial slavery to Germany, France, Russia, Britain, the U.S. and the Netherlands.
And that really angered the U.S. ruling class and its global allies.
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