Manchuria

I am reading AJP Taylor this week. Since I can't (yet) tackle this text head-on, I'll take this space to touch on its side-shows. One side-show which, in American war propaganda, was the main show was the career of Japan. This, to Capra's Why We Fight, starts in Manchuria.

Manchuria is named after the Manchus. They were one of many barbarian tribes which aimed to raid and sometimes to conquer China proper. In modern times, some Manchus actually succeeded at it, founding the "Qing" dynasty there. But then in the early 1900s the Chinese deposed that ruling house and founded a republic. This republic claimed to inherit Manchuria along with the other Qing-ruled lands.

What the Chinese Republic claimed and what it could extract taxes from weren't exactly coterminous. In fact Manchuria - like Mongolia, and Tibet - went into limbo. Mongolia had the "advantage" that a Russian warlord took it over and reorganised it; when the warlord was deposed, the Mongols with Communist aid organised a non-Chinese "independent" government. Manchuria, meanwhile, went full anarchic. Where AJP Taylor steps in, page 62 has the Japanese (and the Koreans, he might add) losing out on Manchurian trade over the 1920s; the Japanese military 1931 took measures to secure it.

In this, the Japanese had done what they'd done before, and what the Brits had done before - and by "before" I mean as late as 1927 to Shanghai. Also, by securing Manchuria, a reasonably-strong and reasonably-sane state kept it away from Stalin. Then - Taylor adds - the Chinese republic accepted that they'd lost what they'd never had and what they arguably shouldn't have ever claimed. In 1933 they signed a treaty with Japan in as many words.

Herein is, perhaps, an analogue to German (and Hungarian) foreign policy over the 1930s. Certainly to the Romanians' policy in Transylvania 1918-19, although Taylor scorned any citation of rival Bryant. A region fell into near-anarchy and the locals weren't fixing it, except for communists from outside. Rather than see that happen, some militaristic force acts first.

In this light, there was no real problem with the Japanese invading Manchuria. There was, perhaps, a problem with the 1930s Japanese invading Manchuria. An earlier, more-"Western" government could have taken Manchuria as a mandate like France took Syria. By the 1930s Japanese culture had gotten a little... intense.

Understanding that, we can turn back to Mitteleuropa over 1923-31 versus over 1932-39. Taylor proposes that "Appeasement" in the 1930s was just a natural progression from movements in the 1920s to scale back the scope of Versailles and, in places, to reverse it.

We could counter - Taylor would likely counter himself - that appeasing a reasonable if pro-German negotiator like Stresemann was one thing; appeasing Hitler, quite another. To decide on that, Neville Chamberlain required the services of a mind-reader with a crystal ball. Chamberlain, tragically, had neither.

BACKDATING 9/27: This post developed from some comments at the HQ last night.