The imperial cruise: a secret history of empire and war by James Bradley

Author:James Bradley [James Bradley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Histoire
ISBN: 9780316014007
Published: 2010-09-15T09:34:19+00:00

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IN 1873, EMULATING COMMODORE PERRY’S mission, Japanese diplomats sailed west in an American-made warship across the Yellow Sea to open uncivilized Korea to Western ways. They brought along an American-style treaty of friendship.

The shocked Koreans could hardly believe their eyes and ears. For centuries Japanese diplomats had come to Korea dressed similarly to the Koreans, in Chinese-style robes; now they came ashore in tight Western suits, wearing shiny, stiff top hats.

The two countries had enjoyed peace between them for hundreds of years, so the sudden need for a treaty of friendship made little sense to the Koreans. And when Japan described the terms, the Koreans wondered if the Japanese had lost their minds. From time immemorial the two small countries had recognized the Son of Heaven in Beijing as an emperor and agreed that lesser kings ruled Japan and Korea. Now the outrageously dressed Japanese explained that Meiji was godlike and that he was also an emperor. The Koreans were dumbfounded. How could there be two suns in the sky?

Japan’s Perry-like attempt at opening Korea was an embarrassing flop. The Koreans shamed the Japanese, calling them traitors to the Confucian order. They refused to respond to a treaty based upon the “emperor versus king” nonsense, questioned the legitimacy of the new Meiji regime, and even ridiculed the Japanese for wearing Western woolen suits. When the Koreans accused them of going back upon Confucian tradition, it infuriated the Japanese, reminding them that by dealing with westerners they had betrayed their own history. As Hilary Conroy observes in The Japanese Seizure of Korea, “As with the man who curses his wife for reminding him of something of which he himself is ashamed, the wrath that consumed [Japan] over the Korean issue was fierce beyond all proportion to the question at hand.”40

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