Texas and the Marco Polo Bridge Incident

What does the State of Texas have to do with an incident at a Chinese bridge in the 1930's?

Once there was no Texas. The area was inhabited, probably sparsely, by groups of Native American Indians. Then the area became part of the Spanish colonial possession Mexico. The Spanish settlement was also relatively sparse, but included notably included the town of San Antonio. The Spanish traded the Louisiana Territory, excluding Texas, to France, who immediately sold it to the United States. Disputes about boundaries between this territory and Spanish Texas were supposed to be settled in 1819. The United States wanted all of Florida as a slave state. Unable to defend Florida against the slaver-predator Andrew Jackson (later founder of the Democratic Party and President of the United States), Spain gave Florida to the U.S. and received, in part, undisputed title to Texas in return. In 1821 Mexico became independent of Spain, and included Texas. Few Mexicans wanted to move to Texas, but many Americans did. In 1835 and 1836 the Americans in Texas revolted against Mexico and became an independent nation, the Republic of Texas. With the consent of the government of Texas, the United States annexed them in 1845, and Texas on January 1, 1846 became a state of the United States. A state where slavery was legal.

A problem was that the border between Mexico and Texas was disputed. Another problem was that greedy men in the United States coveted Mexican lands, in particular California. The United States needed a pretext for war with Mexico so it could grab the disputed lands of south Texas, plus New Mexico, Arizona, California, etc. Mexican troops, a few of them anyway, were stationed between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. President of the United States James Polk, claiming Texas extended to the Rio Grande, in 1846 purposefully sent a patrol of U.S. troops into the disputed territory, where they clashed with the Mexican army and lost the initial skirmish. The United States and Mexico then declared war on each other. (See the Thornton Affair at Wikipedia)

Polk claimed Mexicans "shed American blood upon American soil." Thus, in the American version, it was not a war of aggression, even if the U.S. "won" about 1/3 of Mexico through the war.

Now consider the Marco Polo Bridge incident, which occurred in China, near Peking (or Beijing), in 1936. Here began the war between Japan and the head of a coalition of Chinese war lords, Chiang Kai-shek, that eventually merged into the war between U.S. and Japan that ran in parallel to World War II. The American interpretation of the incident and war is that the Japanese were aggressors, that Chiang Kai-shek's government was the legitimate representative of the Chinese people (although no one was ever allowed to vote on that idea), and that the U.S. acts of war that proceeded the battle of Pearl Harbor were justified by Japanese aggression in China.

To put the incident in context, you need to understand a little about the history of Manchuria, an area in the extreme northeast of modern China that had become part of China when the Manchus conquered China back in the 1600's. Attacked throughout the 19th century by imperialist powers including the both the U.S. and Japan, by 1910 China was in a state of anarchy, with only nominal national governments, the reality being rule by local war lords. Russia, China, and Japan all wanted to control Manchuria, and of course at least some of the Manchurians would have preferred independence from all three powers. So Texas can be seen as a sort of American Manchuria, an area that was fought over by the U.S. and Mexico, but that also had a independent streak.

Two Japanese colonels, Kanji Ishihara and Seishiro Itagaki, with leftist and democratic views tried to turn Manchuria into a utopia starting in the 1920's. They used the Japanese army there, known as the Kwantung Army, to gain control of Manchuria without the permission of army headquarters or the Japanese government. The reality already was that under Japanese guidance the area was prospering economically and attracting many immigrants from China, Japan, and Korea. In 1931, with a name change to Manchukuo, the area became independent.

Unfortunately Ishihara and Itagaki lost control of the Kwantung Army, and were replaced by Kenji Doihara, who wanted to rule China, and who was backed by the expansionist, right-wing Control Clique of the Japanese army. He was able to create another autonomous, self-governing area south of Manchukuo. Chiang Kai-shek was mad that the war lords of this area were cooperating with the Japanese instead of with his southern-China based gang of war lords.

Which brings us to the Marco Polo (Lugou) Bridge, located 8 miles southwest of Beijing, and within the northern autonomous area. Japanese troops were in the area under the usual excuse of protecting the lives of Japanese citizens in the area. Accusations vary, but apparently Chiang thought he was strong enough to kick out the Japanese, so he had his local war lord Sung Chi-yuen, or perhaps some select group under Sung, attack the Japanese without provocation. It took a while for things to escalate. At first the Japanese government thought it was merely sending a punitive expedition of the type the U.S. sent to China during the Boxer rebellion. But the situation turned into an all out war between Japan and the two main government groups in China, the communists and nationalists.

I tend to side with the Mexicans and Chinese on this one. The Japanese had their points, including that Japan and Japanese occupied areas were better governed and more economically successful than the areas of China ruled by Chiang Kai-shek and other war lords. But they were acting as aggressors in a foreign nation. Invitations from local Manchu and other Chinese leaders existed, but that has been a fig leaf for aggression all to often in history. The situation was similar when an American puppet in South Vietnam invited the U.S. to attack North Vietnam decades later.

I see no mitigating circumstances at all regarding the start of the Mexican American War. The disputed area of Texas was, in fact, disputed, and grabbing it would have been one thing. But it was not really the area the U.S. government wanted to grab. It was a pretext for grabbing a vast area that had nothing to do with the disputed area.

Go West Young Man: Japan and Manchuria

I just began reading The Rising Sun, The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936-1945 by John Toland, and it looks to be a fascinating book. In its first few pages he has fleshed-out some of the events I only learned about after beginning research on my U.S. War Against Asia. I was particularly struck by his evocation of Japanese sentiments towards Manchuria, on pages 7 and 8:

"The two officers felt that Manchuria was the only answer to poverty in Japan. It could be transformed from a wilderness into a civilized, prosperous area, alleviating unemployment at home and providing an outlet for the overpopulated homeland, where more than two-thirds of the farms were smaller than two and a quarter acres."

Was that not exactly the attitude of European settlers towards America, and of the citizens of the United States towards the Indian nation lands of the West?

Were not the problems, including ethical problems, the same? After all, people already lived in Manchuria and felt they owned it. The dominant tribe was the Manchu (or Qing Dynasty), who had conquered China in 1644 and ruled it until 1912. In addition to non-Manchu indigenous groups, many ethnic Chinese, Koreans, an others had migrated to Manchuria over the centuries.

For Americans, the American west (and here I mean that ever-shifting West that originally was just few miles west of the shores of the Atlantic ocean) was considered to be essentially empty. American Indian tribe oral land titles were voided by murder. The attitude of the Japanese was that Manchuria was essentially empty. Land that was not mined, tilled, or urbanized was land wasted. Had the Japanese colonized Manchuria before 1850, no one would think much about a Manchurian state dominated by ethnic Japanese today. But the Japanese were coming late to the land-grab game. The United States had already grabbed Hawaii, Alaska and the Philippines by the time the Japanese got serious about Manchuria. Russia and China both wanted Manchuria. England, France, Germany, and the United States wanted Manchuria to be kept open to their own commercial exploitation. So Japan had to fight two major wars to get a grip on Manchuria, first with China and then with Russia.

It is still an interesting question, the relative rights of natives in thinly populated areas against the rights of intruders to settle. Religion aside, it is the fundamental question in Palestine right now. It is also a fundamental question in Tibet. I've heard it is a fundamental question in the states of Washington and Oregon, who look with horror upon the masses of northward trekking Californians who (except in the current recession) keep pushing up real estate prices.

One might also ask about Hawaii. As I recently found out, when the United States seized Hawaii, the biggest ethnic group there was not native polynesians, nor American colonists, it was Japanese. They were not consulted in the deal. Neither were the natives consulted when the U.S. grabbed the Philippines. Lucky for the Filipinos, not many Americans wanted to emigrate there, although about two million Filipinos were murdered to clear the way just in case.

There does not seem to me to be anything fundamentally wrong with Han Chinese emigration to Tibet, as long as the native Tibetans have equal rights and land transfers are fair and transparent. The fear is always that the new majority (or more powerful group even if it is in a numerical minority) will discriminate against the old majority. In American history, brief though it is, we see this happened in Texas. The Mexican government made the mistake of allowing American (northern European-descended) settlers. As soon as they could they rebelled and established a nation, Texas, that discriminated against Mexicans (and the remaining native American Indian tribes), often simply murdering them without a trial or any pretext.

The peaceful process of immigration into the United States, though sometimes politically contentious, actually serves as a good model for the world. I would like to see more mobility, not less. Every person should have the full human rights recognized by mankind. That should include the right to relocated provided you follow reasonable rules. You should be able to buy land, a residence, or a business from someone who is a willing seller. But doing what the Israeli state does: bulldozing communities off their land, then sending in settlers, is wrong. No matter who does it: Chinese, Americans, Japanese, or any nation or group of people.

Manchuria, Manchukuo, Tibet: On Puppets and National Autonomy

Today, in 2008, China is believed by many to be headed towards having the world's second largest national economy (currently Japan has that status) in the near future, and then is headed to having the world's number one economy before the end of the century. China includes several areas that, currently or in the past, have or had majority ethnic groups that do not see themselves as Chinese. The region most Americans know about that might be characterized as occupied by a distinct national group within China is Tibet. Passions run high about Tibet. While keeping Tibet as a reference point, this essay will examine the history of the area known as Manchuria to see what lessons can be learned from it. [Article and map of Manchuria at Wikipedia]. When most Americans think of Manchuria they think of the movie The Manchurian Candidate; they know nothing of the history of Manchuria or its present status.

Free Tibet! is a slogan that has echoed around America for decades. It is one idea that unites both many on the left, who are influenced by the "New Age" component of the counterculture, with many on the right, who hate China and its communist government. While I don't agree with either of those prejudices, the Tibet national question raises the idea of national autonomy in general. It is a common idea that nation-states should correspond to national cultures. This implies that cultural nations have a right to leave a government (even if it is run on a democratic basis) and set up on their own. Of course in the United States of America it was decided by military force that no one has a right to leave our empire, not native American nations, not the Confederate States of America, not Hawaii (the exception being the Philippines, which were allowed to become an independent nation only after being conquered by the Japanese in World War II).

Free Manchuria! is a slogan that Americans have not heard of late. Yet in the 1930's it was the idea of the Manchurian independence movement, and it came to fruition briefly in the nation-state of Manchukuo. The nation of Manchukuo existed between 1932 and 1945. It was conquered by the U.S.S.R. at the end of World War II and then turned over to the Communist Chinese government, which became the government of all of China (including Tibet) after it defeated the Kuomintang government in the Chinese civil war.

Or you can take the standard, non-objective, United States of America propaganda view of Manchukuo. In this version of the world Manchukuo was not an independent state established by a Manchurian independence movement, but a "puppet state" created by the (evil) Japanese military. In particular I should point out the non-objectivity of the Wikipedia article, and it may change by the time you read it, but as I write this it reflects the U.S. view: Manchukuo.

To a large extent this is part of the standard re-writing of history by the winners. If the current U.S. ruling elite and the current Chinese ruling elite can agree on only one thing, they can agree that Manchukuo's government was set up by the Japanese. There are many problems with this view. For instance, both other major candidates for being legitimate rulers of Manchuria during this period have also been accused of being puppets. Chiang Kai-Shek and his Kuomintang party certainly were U.S. puppets by the end of their reign, if not at the beginning. Mao and the Communist government were accused (by Chiang, Japan, the U.S., and virtually everyone who was not a communist) of being puppets of the U.S.S.R.

Let us begin our dissection with a look at Manchuria before it became part of China. We call it Manchuria because the dominant tribe were called Manchus. After the Mongol empire fell apart, they rebuilt their regional empire and then went on to conquer China. The Emperor of China and most of the ruling class were Manchus (much like the Normans became the king and ruling class of England) from 1644 until 1912.

When the Manchus lost power in China in 1912, the idea that Manchuria was part of China was well-established, but it was the part that was the homeland of the people that ruled China. Between 1912 and the communist triumph in 1950 there was no single government of China. In addition to the communist government(s), "nationalist" government(s), and the governments recognized by Japan, there were numerous "warlords" (that is, historic losers) with varying degrees of power and territorial control. Manchuria was never effectively controlled by a would-be Chinese government until the Russians handed it over to the communist Chinese government. Between 1912 and the establishment of Machukuo in 1932, a complex history of Manchuria can be summed up as a period of anarchy, foreign intervention, and local warlord control. But long before 1912 the Manchu government had trouble maintaining control of its old homeland. The Russians and Japanese had intervened there with their militaries, and all the great world powers, including the United States, sought to join in Manchuria's commercial exploitation. If they did not land armies in Manchuria, it was because they could threaten military action against the Chinese, Russians, or Japanese elsewhere to get the leverage they needed. Recall that this was the era of the American Open Door Policy (read: you can't lock your door, or even close it: we can come in and rape and pillage whenever it pleases the U.S.).

According to Cameron et al, when the Japanese "created" Manchukuo, "Japanese policy had gone to great lengths to create the impression that the separatist movement which cumulated in "independence" was both spontaneous and purely local in character." [p. 453] The Manchurians chose Henry Puyi as head of state. Had the Manchu's continued as emperors of China, he would have been the emperor of all of China. Which leads to the question: is it possible that the, or at least some, Manchurians did not want to be part of China? Probably there was a purely local nationalist Manchurian movement that preferred to be allied with the Japanese rather than allied with Chiang Kai-shek, or the Chinese communists, or absorbed into the U.S.S.R. Weak people face often face less than optimal choices.

And where do U.S. historians get permission to call governments Japanese puppets? How many governments in Latin America and elsewhere could be called U.S. puppets in 1932? In 1940? Today?

The existance of Japanese troops in Manchukuo has been given as proof that it was not independent. How many so-called nations have American military bases in them today? Are they all puppet states, or is there some other criteria we should use? America had troops in China throughout the period under discussion; is this, perhaps, one reason that Chiang Kai-shek was called an American puppet. Or was it that he was married into the wealthy and powerful Chinese-American Soong family, and converted to an American religion?

I think perhaps historians had best define the term puppet very clearly, and then apply the standards of puppetness objectively, if they want their history books to be anything besides a record of national prejudice.

In any case, one of the big surprises for me, in history, is that Joseph Stalin did not just keep Manchuria once his troops took control of it. I doubt he had any real fear of the U.S., despite its possession of and proven willingness to use atomic weapons against civilians. I think it must have been a personality quirk combined with a desire to cement good relations with the Chinese Communist Party.

I would not suggest, at this point, that Manchuria should seek any autonomy within China. For exactly the same reason, I see no reason for Tibetan autonomy. The Tibetans should start calling themselves Chinese. I would think that would be more than acceptable to the government of China. I see every indication that the Chinese government wants harmonious relations with all the people within its territories. I believe the Chinese government has no desire to favor Han Chinese over other ethnic groups. I am sure that message does not always get across to everyone in China, just as the idea of ethnic equality still has non-practitioner in the United States. Tibet became part of China (back in the middle ages) because the Chinese got tired of military raids conducted by those nice Tibetan Buddhist monks. Buddhists are famous for despising women, getting a bunch of men together in one place for too long, and then going out and fighting wars. Tibet needs a peaceful culture where woman have an equal social status, which is also what the Chinese government wants (although it, too, has a long way to go to reach true sexual equality).

The area formerly known as Manchuria is today called Northeast China and has a majority ethnic Han Chinese population. Are there disgruntled people in Manchuria. You can bet there are. Does the U.S. have any right to interfere in any part of China, in any way, when it has never fixed its own problems at home? I think not.

Biography: Cameron, Meribeth E., et al, China, Japan, and the Powers, The Ronald Press Company, New York, 1952

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