Asian Waters: The Struggle Over the South China Sea and the Strategy of Chinese Expansion

by Humphrey Hawksley

The change came in 1842, with Britain’s victory against China in the First Opium War. Japan took note of British determination and how better guns, bigger ships, more sophisticated technology, and disciplined soldiers had defeated China. Twelve years later, an American naval commander, Commodore Matthew Perry, led a flotilla of ships to Japan and, under threat of military action, insisted Japan open its ports for American whalers to resupply. Japan complied, prompting Perry to expand his brief and insist that Japanese ports open for American trade. In March 1854 Perry signed the Kanagawa Treaty, which ended Japan’s isolation and allocated a handful of ports for international trade. The treaty sparked a civil war between those who supported the existing militaristic system of shogunates that had controlled Japan pretty much from the end of the twelfth century and those who wanted reform. By now, Britain and France hovered behind America to get a slice of Japanese trade and took different sides in the conflict. Britain armed the reformists, while France supported forces loyal to the shogunate. Fighting continued on and off for fifteen years, but by 1869 shogunate rule ended and Japan began the era of the Meiji Restoration.