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VII. Great Britain, Japan and the Fall of Yuan Shih-K'ai, 1915–1916
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
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.
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References
1 For a detailed discussion of the subjects covered briefly in this paragraph, see my book Great Britain and Japan, 1911–1915 (London, 1969).Google Scholar This article is based on the British Foreign Office archives and relevant private papers at the Public Record Office, London. Unpublished crown-copyright material in the Public Record Office is reproduced by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office.
2 For a recent study of Yuan, see Ch'en, Jerome, Yuan Shih-k'ai, 1859–1916 (London, 1961).Google Scholar
3 P.R.O. London, F.O. 371/2338, Jordan to Grey, 25 August 1915. In a private letter written some days earlier, Jordan had remarked that he thought Yuan might become emperor before the end of the year: ‘The only political item of any interest is the movement in favour of a Monarchy which seems to be gaining ground rapidly. I should not be greatly surprised if Yuan assumed the Crown with a proper show of reluctance before the year is out’, Jordan Papers, P.R.O. F.O. 350/13, Jordan to Langley, 19 August 1915.
4 Ibid.
5 P.R.O. F.O. 371/3338, Minute on Jordan to Grey, 10 September 1915 (received 5 October 1915).
6 The most significant of Okuma's remarks, as given to the Jiji and reported by the British ambassador, were as follows: ‘Judging by the present situation, the restoration of the monarchical regime will surely eventually materialize…the future realization of…the present republican regime must be pronounced an utter impossibility. For popular conditions and popular knowledge and progress in China today have certainly not attained the necessary standard for the achievement of national development under republicanism. It must be held natural that the Chinese, assuming them in some degree alive to their position, should take up this question and desire the resuscitation of the monarchical system…It is manifest that today President Yuan, though he became emperor, would encounter no particular opposition from the nation, should he possess the practical capacity and ability to unite the country under one rule; and the more so that Yuan Shih-k'ai's skill as President of the Chinese Republic for the past four years furnishes ample proof of his practical capacity to rule the country, and that in any case he certainly possesses the quality of being the one great man of present-day China…Therefore we should not in any way interfere, so long as a change of polity is not now realized at the instigation of another Power or its realization does not affect Japan's interest…At the same time, if this change of national polity should develop any features prejudicial to Japan's interests, we shall not shrink from taking immediate measures of some kind’, P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Greene to Grey, 20 September 1915 (received 22 October 1915).
7 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Jordan to Grey, 11 October 1915.
8 Ibid. Greene to Grey, 15 October 1915.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. purport of telegram, 15 October 1915, communicated to the Foreign Office, 18 October 1915.
11 Ibid. Jordan to Grey, 19 October 1915.
12 Ibid.; see minute by Alston, 24 October 1915, and Grey to Greene, 27 October 1915.
13 P.R.O. F.O. 405/218, p. 226, Spring Rice to Grey, 28 October 1915. See also Department of State to Japanese and British embassies, 4 November 1915, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1915 (Washington, 1924), pp. 76–7.Google Scholar
14 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Greene to Grey, 28 October 1915.
15 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 28 October 1915.
16 P.R.O. F.O. 405/218, p. 232, Grey to Jordan, 5 November 1915.
17 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Jordan to Grey, 9 November 1915.
18 Yim, Kwanha, ‘Yuan Shih-k'ai and the Japanese’, Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV, no. 1 (11 1964), 65.Google Scholar The ronin were independent nationalist adventurers who constantly agitated to enhance the Japanese position in China: they were bitterly opposed to Yuan, as was Kato Takaaki.
19 Ibid.
20 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, paraphrase of telegram from Ishii communicated to Foreign Office, 18 November 1915.
21 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2340, Shuckburgh to Alston, 10 November 1915.
22 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 12 November 1915. Liang Shih-yi was responsible for originally intimating to Jordan that China would cooperate in dealing with the German intrigues provided that the allies raised the matter with Japan themselves and did not expect China to do so. Jordan telegraphed on 15 November that he had confidentially informed Liang of Grey's interview with Inouye, ‘He was especially gratified to learn you had represented proposal to Japanese Government as emanating from His Majesty's Government,’ P.R.O. F.O. 371/2340, Jordan to Grey, 15 November 1915. Liang's objective was to secure allied sympathy for Yuan's wider designs. The allies were also interested in securing arms from China to assist the Russian war effort, as the Russians were desperately short of weapons.
23 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, minutes on paraphrase to telegram from Ishii, 18 November 1915.
24 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2349, Grey to Greene, 23 November 1915.
25 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2341, minutes by Alston, 25–6 November 1915.
26 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 26 November 1915.
27 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 28 November 1915.
28 Alston added: ‘It is very tempting to tell the Japanese what we think of them but it would scarcely be judicious. If all the Allies considered their immediate material interests like the Japanese do before their duty to each other the cause would fare badly’, P.R.O. F.O. 371/2341, minutes 15 December 1915. Langley observed, in a letter to Jordan, ‘it has been a very unpleasant chapter in the history of the Alliance’, Jordan Papers, P.R.O. F.O. 350/14, Langley to Jordan, 15 December 1915.
29 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Grey to Greene, 1 December 1915.
30 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Greene to Grey, 4 December 1915, and Grey to Greene, 5 December 1915.
31 Ibid. Foreign Office minutes, 15 December 1915.
32 Ibid. Jordan to Grey, 17 December 1915.
33 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Jordan to Grey, 21 December 1915, with minutes.
34 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 21 December 1915.
35 Ibid. Bertie to Grey, 21 December 1915, with minutes.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid. Grey to Bertie, 22 December 1915.
38 Jordan Papers, P.R.O. F.O. 350/13, Jordan to Alston, 21 December 1915. The final comment referred to the prompt congratulations extended to Yuan by the German and Austro-Hungarian ministers at Peking.
39 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, Jordan to Grey, 24 December 1915, with minutes. Sun Yat-sen had fled to Japan in August 1913, following the failure of the southern rebellion aimed at overthrowing Yuan. In fact it seems that Sun played little part in the Yunnan rising.
40 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2338, minute on Jordan to Grey, 27 December 1915.
41 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 29 December 1915.
42 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2644, Jordan to Grey, 7 January 1916.
43 Ibid. Greene to Grey, 12 January 1916.
44 For brief discussion of Aoki and his bitter hostility to Yuan, see Kwanha Yim, loc. cit. p. 68.
45 Kwanha Yim, loc. cit. p. 70.
46 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2644, memorandum for the Japanese ambassador, 31 January 1916.
47 Ibid. Jordan to Grey, 7 February 1916. The India Office had become increasingly perturbed at Japanese interest in India and areas bordering India after the Chinese revolution of 1911. Early in 1916 the Indian authorities were tapping telegrams sent by the Japanese consul in Yunnanfu together with messages from General Aoki to his subordinate in Yunnanfu; the messages were being sent over the Burmese telegraph owing to a breakdown in communications in northern Indochina. These clearly revealed Japanese encouragement of the rebels: as Shuckburgh of the India Office later wrote to Gregory, ‘It seems to me pretty outrageous conduct on the part of our beloved Far Eastern ally’, 19 August 1916, P.R.O. F.O. 371/2648.
48 Jordan Papers, P.R.O. F.O. 350/15, Jordan to Langley, 1 February 1916.
49 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2647, minute on Greene to Grey, 31 December 1915. The minute was probably written on 3 January 1916.
50 P.R.O. F.O. 405/220, Grey to Greene, 31 January 1916.
51 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2647, Grey to Jordan, 11 February 1916.
52 Ibid. Jordan to Grey with minutes, 15 February 1916. Jordan added that Chinese antagonism would be minimized if Japan undertook in return to support Yuan's regime; Yuan might then drop his monarchical ideas completely.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid. Grey had already given the Japanese ambassador to understand that Britain would not object to Japan's absorption of German railway concessions in China.
55 In March 1917 China broke off diplomatic relations with the Central Powers, and in August 1917 entered the war; Japan acquiesced in return for allied recognition of her succession to German rights in Shantung and the northern Pacific islands.
56 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2645, Jordan to Grey, with minutes, 3 April 1916.
57 Ibid. Greene to Grey, 6 April 1916. Grey had implied when speaking to Inouye on 5 April that Yuan might yet stay: ‘I said I had no suggestion to make. Our one wish was to see something which would produce agreement and not chaos in China, and it was difficult to see any successor to Yuan at the moment with whom North and South would agree.’ P.R.O. F.O. 371/3645, Grey to Greene, 5 April 1916.
58 Ibid. Grey to Spring Rice, 13 April 1916.
59 Ibid. Jordan to Grey, 24 May 1916, with minutes.
60 Ibid. Grey to Greene, 29 May 1916.
61 As it was, the Foreign Office was aware of the contacts established at Stockholm between the Japanese minister and various German emissaries: for the Japanese Government the contacts were useful as a safeguard against allied defeat and useful as a means of quietly reminding Great Britain of the realities of the situation. See Iklé, F.W., ‘Japanese—German peace negotiations during World War I’, American Historical Review, LXXI, no. 1 (10 1965), 62–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fischer, Fritz, Germany's Aims in the First World War (London, 1967), pp. 228–36.Google Scholar
62 P.R.O. F.O. 371/2646, Jordan to Grey, 12 June 1916. In an article written after his retirement, Jordan said of Yuan that he was ‘the Chinese of all others for whom I had the greatest admiration, and he is the only high Chinese official whom I can claim to have known intimately in private life’, Jordan, Sir John, ‘Some Chinese I have known’, Nineteenth Century and After, LXXXVIII (12 1920), 953.Google ScholarThe Times paused on 7 June to pay its tribute to Yuan: ‘Though President Yuan tried to restore the monarchical principle, he was no mere reactionary. He was far more enlightened and progressive than many of his associates, with the further difference that his reforms always took a practical shape. He had great strength of mind, and much courage and determination, and he was a patriot in a land where patriotism in the Western sense is at a discount. He was an intense believer in the Chinese race and in China, and never lost faith in his country's destinies.’