The Shanghai Crisis of 1932: The Basis of British Policy

Abstract

THE Sino-Japaniese clash at Shanghai posed fundamental questions for those responsible for Britain's Far Eastern policy. During the brief period when fighting threatened an area containing iI50 million-worth of British business interests and four thousand British women and children, responses both to Japanese militarism and to Chinese nationalism had to be defined more sharply than at any time since the outbreak of the Far Eastern crisis in September I931. A new wave of criticism was directed against the government's attitude toward the League and collective security. And, as a result of the proposal by the US secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson, for a joint Nine-Power-Treaty declaration against any despoiling of China, the issue of Anglo-American cooperation became the subject of recrimination and confusion for some time to come.1 Following the opening of the official records in London, a closer examination now possible of the problems and priorities of decision makers there who have sometimes been dismissed as simply pro-Japanese, anti-American, and indifferent to the fate of the League and of China. In passing, it may briefly be stated that Stimson's controversial proposal for a joint demarche, described in the Foreign Office as typically American and intended for home consumption,' was deliberately avoided and that Stimson, despite other inaccuracies, was correct in his subsequent contention that Britain preferred to take refuge in the inconspicuousness of League action. In essence, however, this and other decisions taken in London during the Shanghai fighting had been pre-empted some time before. search for decision, writes Samuel Huntington, is often a search for constraints, 3 and by the end of January I932 those responsible for policy had found these constraints. Their images of the international environment, of the Far Eastern situation, and of Britain's capabilities and interests were not to be significantly altered by what then occurred in Shanghai, nor by suggestions then received from Washington. The priorities by which they would screen and order