The Scramble for Concessions in 1880s Siam

Abstract

It is the events of the late 1890s in China which represent the most notorious example of a ‘scramble’ or ‘battle’ for concessions in the era of Western imperialism. The five years following her defeat in her war with Japan of 1894–95 seemed to reduce China to chaos and the brink of dismemberment, when the so-called ‘Boxer Rebellion’ was crushed by an international army comprised mainly of Russian and Japanese troops. But the powers could not agree on how to extend the concessions they had previously secured, and the ‘open door’, championed by Britain, the United States and initially Japan, prevailed. The ultimate blow to Western imperial expansion on a world scale was then delivered by Japan against Russia in the war of 1904–05, and a mere six years later, the Chinese launched out on their own revolutionary path which was to culminate in the Communist victory of 1949.