The Opening of Asia

by OWEN LATTIMORE

1

THE Anglo-American Open Door Doctrine in China, at the turn of the century, marked the first phase of transition from a Far East under control to a Far East out of control, and from rivalry between similar competitors to rivalry between dissimilar competitors hostile to each other in ideology, social and political structure, and economic operation.

Until the end of the nineteenth century, the instability inherent in the unceasing redistribution of power had been mitigated by the fact that the redistribution took place under conventions accepted by all the competitors. Countries vied with each other in seizing ports and bases and controlling lines of communication and access to new, unexploited territories. If the rivalry led to war, the winner acquired immediate rewards in the form of indemnities and annexations. The loser paid an indemnity and ceded territory, or bases, or priority of access to a country that might be conquered and made into a colony, but was not debarred from recovery and re-entry into competition. No Carthaginian peace terms were imposed; the rules of the game were observed, and the game went on.

The second half of the nineteenth century was prepared for by the European revolutions of 1848, and even more by the wave of reaction following 1848. It was shaped by Perry’s opening of Japan, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, and Russia’s acquisition of the Amur and Ussuri territories. The Taiping and Moslem Rebellions in China, the American Civil War, and the emancipation of the serfs in Russia were followed by the filling up of the American West all the way to the Pacific coast, and by the vast Russian conquests in Inner Asia.

At the close of the half century came the SinoJapanese War of 1894-1895, the Spanish-American War, the completion of the Trans-Siberian and Chinese Eastern Railways, the enunciation of the Open Door Doctrine, and the Boxer Rebellion in China. The next half century opened with the Russo-Japanese War, in which Japan was strengthened by the Anglo-Japanese Entente, later to become an alliance.

This period was the great age of modern imperialism. In it three types of empires are to be distinguished.

The British Empire was built by an accumulative process. Its component parts were separately acquired, and were physically divided from each other and from the center of imperial power in Britain by expanses of ocean. To relatively unpopulated domains like Canada and Australia, Britain exported colonists. To conquered territories already well populated, of which India was by far the most important, Britain exported not colonists to people the land but garrison troops, administrators, merchants, and managers. The growth of the empire was accompanied by the growth of a caste system. “Colonials” from Canada and Australia were long regarded as socially somewhat uncouth. As for the peoples of India, Burma, and so on, even their aristocratic families were definitely subjects, not citizens.

Germany, France, Holland, Belgium, America, and Japan, by the end of the century, all approximated the British type in their relations with possessions overseas.

The Russian Empire was built by an incorporative process differing from the accumulative process. All its holdings lay within one vast, unbroken expanse of land. Alaska, the one exception, was given up. Peoples were incorporated, as well as territories. The overwhelming majority of the Russians themselves were subjects, rather than citizens. Non-Russian subject peoples were given, on the whole, a status much like that of subject Russians; but a part, at least, of the non-Russian ruling classes were incorporated with the Russian ruling class.

Precedents for this process of incorporation could be found in earlier periods of history. Centuries of interpenet ration with nomadic peoples on the steppe frontier had made class warfare and class politics as familiar as national warfare and politics to both Russians and non-Russians. When nomad khans had the upper hand, some of the Russian nobility became their vassals but continued as a subordinate ruling class. The degree of subjection was not great enough to prevent intermarriage, which is allimportant in welding a ruling class together. Similarly, when the Russians in turn conquered the steppe, they took part of the steppe nobility into their service, continued some of their privileges, and allowed intermarriage.

The differences between the British and Russian types of empire assumed increasing importance as modern nationalism developed. Among the colonial subjects of the British, many who would have been high in the ruling class, had it not been for the British, became leaders of nationalist movements for independence. This was especially true in the early period.

In the Tsarist Empire, on the other hand, the majority of the non-Russian ruling class identified themselves with the Russian ruling class. Consequently the outcome of the Russian Revolution was determined, throughout the possessions of Russia in Asia, by a left-wing leadership which believed in revolution against its own ruling class as well as in rebellion against the Russian state. There was thus a community of interest between the left-wing nationalists and the Polohoviks, who were determined to destroy both the Tsarist state and the society that had supported it and been supported by it.

The third great type of nineteenth-century empire, that of the Chinese, may be called absorptive, to distinguish it from the accumulative British and incorporative Russian types. The importance of the Chinese type has been insufficiently appreciated because of the weakness of the state in China in modern times and because the Chinese Empire was encroached on by the other empires.

One of the most important phenomena in the territorial spread of the Chinese has been their willingness throughout history to accept as Chinese any barbarian who would drop his language and learn Chinese, wear Chinese clothes, farm like the Chinese, and accept the other conventions of being a Chinese. This attitude has been a source of untold strength. A great part of the nation is descended from barbarians absorbed into the Chinese state by being first absorbed into the Chinese culture.

In the face of modern nationalism, however, this old Chinese strength has become a weakness: such peoples as the Mongols, the Tibetans, and the Central Asian subjects of China reject a Chinese “equality” the price of which is abandonment of their own languages and other distinguishing cultural characteristics. Among the fatal mistakes of the Kuomintang, in its struggle with the Chinese Communists, was its attempt in strategically important border territories, even after the eleventh hour had struck, to force the Chinese language and Chinese schools on non-Chinese peoples.

Changes in the distribution of power over the Far East in the last half of the nineteenth century were effected by interaction between these three kinds of empire. In this connection it should be noted that while China lost in power to the other kinds of empire, the Chinese in their own empire gained in power over the non-Chinese minorities.

2

TAKEN as a whole, the relation of the Far East to the rest of the world was one of subordination. The condition of subordination had two aspects, external and internal.

In the external aspect the wars, trade rivalries, and differing rates of industrialization of the Great Empires resulted in an unceasing distribution and redistribution of power among them. Imperial power as such, however, was stable. The shares of power passed from hand to hand; but any hand that held a share of this power could be stretched out over Asia. From the point of view of the Great Empires, Asia was under control; and the condition of being under control is what distinguishes this period from our own, for in our time the distinguishing characteristic of Asia from the point of view of the Great Empires is that it is out of control.

When Britain put down the Indian Mutiny, it was possible to go far beyond the mere restoration of law and order. The British were able to revise the entire administrative system and to set up a new and more imperial one that endured for many decades. When the West, after some hesitation, decided not to let the Taiping Rebellion in China take its course, but to uphold the Manchu Dynasty, it was able to prolong the tenure of the dynasty for half a century. When Britain, rounding out the northwestern frontier of India, and Russia, rounding out its conquests in Inner Asia, decided to stop sparring and to recognize each other in spheres of activity, their decision stood.

Countries like Persia and Afghanistan were unable to assert the right — much less to demonstrate the ability — to cross over from one sphere of influence into the other, even when the line of division, as in the case of Persia, ran right through the country. A mere approximation toward agreement between Britain and France, more tacit than explicit and motivated by their common interest in the face of German rivalry, was enough to enable Siam to survive as the only nominally independent country in Southeast Asia. The apportionment of power in Manchuria was repeatedly changed by diplomatic representations, wars, and treaties between the imperial powers.

Below the level at which imperial control was unchallengeable, however, change was at work. In spite of its shaky sovereignly, China became more Chinese. Looking back from the present, we can see clearly that there originated in that period an Indian nationalism and mode of politics, and a Chinese nationalism and mode of polilics; and that there were weaker but kindred stirrings throughout the rest of Asia.

The difference between that time and this is that the major and the minor phenomena have changed places. The primary, active force then at work was the projection of imperial power over Asia; the secondary, reactive force was the beginning of nationalism among I he peoples and in t hr countries of Asia. The primary, active force now is the dominant nationalism of Asia; the secondary, reactive force is the effort to conserve some of what remains of the old power of empire. Instability then arose not out of Asia bill out of the incessant redistribution of power among the empires controlling Asia. Instability now arises out of the fact that while Asia is in the main out of control from the point of view of the West, it is not yet fully under control from its own point of view. Nationalism is dominant, but not completely free to act; national policies are still clogged by the hampering remains of external economic, strategic, and political control.

In trying to relate that time to our time, we have a problem of peculiar interest to us as historians. The problem lies on the margin of our discipline, and spreads into the fields of other disciplines. To see ourselves clearly in our present position against our historical background, we must attempt to coördinate a historical analysis of the last half of the nineteenth century with a political, social, and economic analysis of the first half of the twentieth century.

3

THE Open Door Doctrine partly succeeded in changing the rules of the game because the nature of the game was changing. It was the stop-Russia doctrine of its day, especially on the British side, and it is curious how practically all mention of its origin as a policy to “contain” Russian expansion has dropped out of recent historical writing. Lord Charles Beresford, who in the winter of 1898-1899 toured China on behalf of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of Great Britain, and then went on to America to advocate the adoption of the Open Door, was perfectly plain-spoken. In The Break-Up of China, the book he wrote describing his mission, he referred on page after page to the danger that Russian occupation of Chinese territory might put an end to the opportunities for merchants of other countries.

In his book China and America Foster Rhea Dulles, the American historian who has most clearly dealt with the Russian aspect of the origin of the Open Door, cites the American press of 1898 as interpreting the situation to mean that “the real danger in the Chinese situation came from Russia, whose persistent advance in Manchuria appeared to foreshadow imperialistic control over all north China.” He adds that Secretary of State John Hay’s objective was “to thwart, discrimination against American trade from any quarter,”whereas “Great Britain had perhaps hoped to draw the United States into a common policy primarily directed against Russia.”

Henry Adams, however, friend of John Hay and the State Department “insiders,”was one of those who were alarmed by the “glacier"-like advance of Russia on China.

The Open Door formula brought into being in fact, though not by specific declaration, a league of countries with maritime access to the trade of the Far Fast, to maintain conditions under which they could compete with each other and could enjoin Russia, which alone had easy, commercially exploitable access to China by land, to observe these conditions. In order to make the policy effective it was necessary to renounce annexations. If annexations were allowed, Russia, which could annex contiguous territories and incorporate them with the home domain, had an advantage of position that would make the competition of the others futile.

To put it in another way, the Open Door rewrote the rules of the game in such a manner as to try to make Russia, in spite of having a land frontier with China longer than the American-Canadian frontier, act as nearly as possible as if it had access to China only by sea.

The enlistment of Japan, an Asian country, as one of the Open Door powers was of special importance. Japan was at the time still under “unequal treaty" disabilities, like China; but Japan had also already fought a successful imperialist war against China, had been deprived of part of the spoils of war by Russia (with the hacking of France and Germany), and was in a position to accept bids for support as a sentinel against Russian expansion. A few years later, with Britain neutral on her side and the United States certainly not neutral against her, Japan defeated Russia.

Japan then began to show an ambivalent ability to be both a part of the old system of keeping Asia under control and a part of the new process that eventually resulted in Asia’s getting out of control. As the most permanently anti-Russian of the maritime powers, Japan was essential to the working of the Open Door system. As a power within Asia, and so close to the mainland of Asia as to have almost the same kind of contiguty enjoyed by Russia, Japan sabotaged the Open Door. To the extent that support against Russia was useful, Japan worked with the other Open Door powers; but step by step, as Japanese control was expanded over Manchuria and into North China, commercial opportunities and the exploitation of all resources were monopolized in favor of Japan.

This ambivalence of Japan should not be overlooked at the present time. No necessity ties Japan down to be permanently an ally in Asia of powers outside of Asia. Nothing guarantees America against the possibility that while some Japanese demand American help against “Communist imperialism,”other Japanese — who could easily become a majority — may negotiate for an understanding with China, and through China with Russia, as an offset against “American imperialism.”The propaganda of “Asia for the Asiatics" was not silenced by Japan’s defeat in the war; it is still a good line of propaganda, though it falls now on different ears, or ears differently attuned.

4

THE next phase in the passage of Asia from being under control to being out of control was marked by the Chinese Revolution of 1911. At the time of the Taiping Rebellion, the Western powers had been able to salvage the Manchu Dynasty. By 1911 it was not only impossible to salvage the dynasty; even the nomination of Yuan Shih-k’ai as a “strong man" to maintain order and the security of loans and investments was far from successful. The Western formula for a “strong man” called for a man strong enough to carry out policies urgently demanded by foreign diplomats, but not quite strong enough to defy foreign control. The measure of the changes going on in Asia was that by this time a man not quite strong enough to defy the policies that suited the special interests of foreign countries was also not quite strong enough to be a dictator in China.

The third phase of transition was the Russian Revolution, which affected both the West and Asia. With the Russian Revolution, the old rules of the game of international relations completely broke down, both in war and in peace. Here was a country thoroughly defeated which, instead of acknowledging defeat according to the accepted conventions, began a new kind of warfare. In war between imperial powers, colonial troops could be used effectively; but there was no form of appeal from an imperial power that was effective in winning support from the colonial subjects of another imperial power. Germany tried to find such an appeal in the First World War but failed; Russia succeeded by declaring a war of ideas, and wherever possible of arms, on behalf of all colonial subjects against all imperial rulers.

The development in Asia that responded to the Russian Revolution was the realization that the ranks of the imperial powers showed a gap, and that weak countries and immature political movements could now take advantage of a new kind of irreconcilable quarrel among great powers. Russia had been one of the greatest of the empires. The fact that such an empire could not only be defeated in war but subverted by an internal, anti-monarchic revolution roused a new vigor in the nationalism of all subject peoples and half-subject peoples like the Chinese.

Up to this time, the best that a weak country like China had been able to do was to try to play great powers against each other. But the rival interests of the great powers were also similar interests. For this reason Chinese exploitation of their rivalry could never achieve more than a partial success; at this point similarity of interest invariably superseded rivalry of interest, and China was confronted once more with united policies and united demands.

The hostility between Russia and the other great powers was not of this reconcilable kind. Russia was the only great power that showed unlimited willingness to defy, and considerable ability to defy successfully, the very countries that exerciser! control or rule over countries like China, India, and the rest of Asia. Those capitalist countries that consider themselves democratic, and base their political appeal on democracy, have always been the most reluctant to admit that this characteristic of Russia is the basic reason why colonial and subject peoples do not make reliable anti-Russian allies.

Wherever Russian and Communist propaganda can be traced, Russian methods of using political movements in weak and dependent countries to throw great powers off balance and to hamper their political maneuvers have been studied. The importance of making such studies has led to neglect in studying the answering process in Asia: the way in which nationalist movements all over Asia exploit — and the word “exploit" is not too strong — the exist (Mice of Russia. As long as such movements, even when they are non-Communist, can exploit the existence of Russia in their struggle againsl Britain, France, or Holland, they have a vested interest in the continued existence of a strong Russia.

The fact that in Russia one of the world’s great imperial governments had collapsed was the first and most powerful Russian propaganda. It is significant that Sun Yat-sen in China showed interest in the Russian Revolution before the new Soviet government showed interest in him. Chou En-lai, a Chinese intellectual living in France, jumped from the Social Democratic Second International to the Communist Third International because he appreciated that the mere existence of a revolutionary Russia made it possible to strike out for China’s emancipation in new and more effective ways. Chu Teh, a professional soldier who had gone to Germany to study military organization because, like many Chinese, he considered that Germany, even though defeated in the First World War, had shown superior military skill, turned instead to Communism, because as a soldier he was convinced that I he Bolsheviks, in the Russian civil war and in resisting the intervention of the great powers, had developed the kinds of military skill most suited to China. Similarly in India, Nehru, without benefit of Russian prompting, began a careful study of the founders and leaders of world Communism, even though he never became a Communist himself. All of these are famous names; there are many other leaders, all over Asia, whose names are less famous.

The fourth phase of the transition was dominated by Japan’s aggressions, beginning with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931, continuing with the attack on all China in 1937, and involving the whole of Asia, after Pearl Harbor, in 1 he Second World War. This phase was significant because it demonstrated that Asia had passed out of control in two ways. In the first place Japan itself, maneuvering from a position within Asia and between Russia and the great capitalist powers, could not be made to abide by the rules of a game which required all capitalist nations with interests in Asia to help one another exclude Russia from the Far East, but not to exclude one another from the competitive market. In the second place, while Japan thus proved itself out of control from the point of view of the West, the mainland of Asia, and especially that part of it occupied by the massive bulk of China, proved itself to be out of control from the point of view of Japan.

The phases of transition were completed with the end of the war, and we are now in the period of the almost total uncontrollability of Asia. The marks of this period are: —

1. The ability to defeat Japan did not confer on the victor nations the ability either to undo what Japan had done successfully or to complete what Japan had not succeeded in completing.

2. Japan succeeded in destroying the nineteenth-century structure of colonial empire in Asia. Britain has recognized this by negotiating recognition of dominion status for India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, and independence for Burma. Britain in Malaya, Holland in Indonesia, and France in Indo-China have not yet been willing to give lip as much as they will eventually have to give up. But it is already clear, from an imperial point of view, that the best that can be hoped for is a partially successful salvage operation. Some interests may yet be saved. The ruling interest cannot be saved.

3. On the other hand, the control over China that Japan failed to make good cannot now be asserted by any other country. It is true that there are differences of opinion about whether Russia might succeed; but there can be no differences of opinion about America. We have spent two billion dollars since “V-J Day on an extensive field test — only to demonstrate that America cannot control China.

Whether Russia can control China is a question that should not be asked of the historian alone. The political scientist and the economist should have more to contribute to the answer than the historian. A contribution the historian can make, however, is to point out that in recent history countries and political movements in Asia have been moving toward Russia more because they have been trying to get away from something than because the conditions prevailing in Russia are the goal at which they aimed.

The importance of the negative factor in promoting historical action and movement is indeed a somewhat neglected study. It may be that more peoples have advanced backward into the future than have marched boldly forward; backward because their faces were turned toward something which they resisted, and from which they were defending themselves. There was certainly something of this phenomenon in the American Revolution; there was a great deal of if in the Russian Revolution, when many patriotic Russians, turning their faces to the alien intervention on their soil, from which they tried to defend themselves, found themselves backed into Bolshevism.

The same phenomenon has been important in the recent history of Asia, and most important of all in the history of the civil war in China. The mixture of harsh oppression, incompetence, and scandalous corruption in the Kuomintang, rather than the wiles or eloquence of either Chinese or Russian Communists, has been the chief recruiting agent of the Communist cause in China.

The changes that have been taking place in the last fifty years in the status of many peoples and nations, and in what is vulgarly called “power politics,”are none of them more important than the changes that have been taking place in the societies within nations; and none of the changing relations among nations can be satisfactorily explained if the study of changing societies within nations is neglected.

These social changes can provide more data for the understanding of the changed status of countries like India, Pakistan, colonial Asia, China, Mongolia, and Japan than all the secret papers of the chancelleries, foreign offices, and general staffs of the self-styled great powers. Until we understand better than we do now these changes of the past fifty years, we shall be poorly equipped for fumbling our way into the next fifty years.

A second article by Mr. Lattimore drawn from his forthcoming book will appear in the April Atlantic.