THE First Sino-Japanese War took place between 1894 and 1895, in the context of Japanese imperialist expansionism from the second half of the 19th century. This war resulted in the beginning of Japan's control over strategic areas of the Far East, such as peninsula ofKorea, which made the Japanese Empire more visible to the Western world, that is, to the Western imperialist powers of the same time.
Japanese expansion in the Meiji Era
Japan became an economic and military power with imperialist tendencies in the advent ofera Meiji, in the year 1867. The Meiji Era began with the Emperor Mutsuhito, which ended the it was edu, which lasted in Japan for about two hundred years and was characterized by building an agrarian, feudal society based on political clans. The main clan was the shogunatetakugawa.
With Mutsuhito, the Japanese feudal bases were gradually being demolished. Japan managed to modernize itself and insert itself into international capitalism, mainly through the purchase of Western technology: industrial machinery and weapons. In addition, there were political, agrarian and urban reforms in Japanese territory, which made the country's economy more dynamic than in feudal times.
This prosperity coming with the WasMeiji generated the need for expansion of Japan in the Asian continent. One of the first territorial conquests was the IslandsRyukyu, to the south, in 1879. However, the greatest interest of the Japanese was in the Korean peninsula. The problem is that the Korea it had long been subordinate to China.
Korean Peninsula Issue
China had traditional relations with Korea, which served it as a vassal state. As a peninsula open to the Indian Ocean, Korea was considered a strategic region, especially with regard to the reception and flow of commercial products and raw materials. Furthermore, Korea paid tribute to China and came under its cultural influence, with Confucianism as its official religion.
However, due to conflicts like the two Opium Warsand the Sino-French War, China was gradually weakened in the second half of the 19th century and, unlike the Japanese, the Chinese did not modernize. This situation of Chinese vulnerability was the opportunity that the Japanese Empire found to place Korea in its zone of influence.
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The most reformist sectors in Korea saw in the rise of modern Japan a possibility of gaining more autonomy and, consequently, of modernizing the peninsula as well. The more traditional sectors sought, on the contrary, to solidify relations with China, as researcher Dora Martins says:
Thus, in 1876, Japan forced Korea to establish diplomatic relations with it, weakening traditional ties with China. China, in turn, sought to neutralize Japanese influence, promoting relations between the Korea and Western countries, starting with the Treaty between North Korea and the United States, in 1882. It was exactly this rivalry between Japan and China for the control of Korea that would trigger a military conflict between the forces of these two Asian countries on 1 August 1894 and what became known as the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. [1]
war breaks out
The trigger for the conflict occurred on March 28, 1894 with the assassination of a Korean revolutionary allied with Japan, named Kim Ok-Kyun. Kyun was killed in Shanghai by agents of YuanShikai, one of the main generals who served the DynastyQing, Chinese. After being killed, Kyun's body was still sent back to Korea, where it was dismembered and displayed in a public square.
Japan saw this as a direct affront. The conflict broke out when China sent 2,800 soldiers under Shikai's leadership to the Korean Peninsula. The Japanese Empire, in turn, sent 8,000 well-trained fighters with modern weaponry. Chinese forces quickly succumbed to Japanese power. The Japanese invaded Seoul and captured the Korean Emperor on June 8, 1894. Conflicts continued until the following year both by land and by sea.
Shimonoseki Treaty
The war only officially ended on April 17, 1895 with the signing of the Shimonoseki Treaty, which made Korea independent from China. In addition, the treaty required China to indemnify Japan for the damages of the war and to allow Japanese ships to enter its territory through some rivers, such as the Yangtze.
GRADES
[1] MARTINS, Dora A. AND. Sino-Japanese Relations during the 20th century XX. In: observatoriodachina.org. P. 10.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
