VII. Great Britain, Japan and the Fall of Yuan Shih-K'ai, 1915–1916

Abstract

Until August 1914 the European powers dominated the Far East. Japan was growing rapidly in stature and strength following her victories over China in the war of 1894–5 and over Russia in the war of 1904–5 but she was not in a position to challenge the European powers. Britain was concerned primarily with maintaining the status quo in the Far East and in particular with defending British commercial supremacy in China, especially in the great Yangtze valley. These objectives had involved her in growing friction with her ally, Japan, for Japanese leaders wished their country to play a more effective political and economic role in China. The outbreak of war in August 1914 transformed the situation in the Far East. The European powers were divided and interested principally in winning the conflict in Europe. War spread to the Far East, however, as a result partly of German naval strength necessitating a British request to Japan for assistance but essentially because of Japanese determination to seize the opportunity to extend Japanese power in the region. The German fortress at Tsingtao in Shantung province of China and the German islands in the Pacific north of the equator were in Japanese hands by November 1914. The next Japanese objective was to replace European hegemony in China with Japanese hegemony and in January 1915 a list of twenty-one demands was handed to the president of the Chinese republic, Yuan Shih-k'ai. Yuan had become president after the revolution of 1911–12 which had terminated the ancient Chinese empire.