The East Asian Journal of British History, Vol
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ISSN 2185-8527 THE EAST ASIAN JOURNAL OF BRITISH HISTORY Vol. 4 March 2014 Articles Race and Pan-Asianism reactions against the White superiority network- attempted racial solidarity and its failure ・・・ Saho Matsumoto-Best Colonial Welfare and Women’s Voluntary Groups in the Decolonization Era: A Perspective from the Women’s Institute during the 1950s ・・・ Hiromi Mizokami-Okamoto ‘The Politics of Exhibiting Fine Art in the Soviet Union: the British Council’s activities 1955-1960’ ・・・ Aiko Watanabe The Conservative Party’s Opposition to the ‘Voluntarist’ Approach towards Trade Unions under the Macmillan and Home Administrations 1957-1964 ・・・ Tae-Joon Won Scottish Propaganda at the End of Empire ・・・ Bryan S. Glass Building an Invisible Border?: Refugee Acts of the John Major Government ・・・ Youngjoo Jung Book Reviews David Brown, Palmerston: A Biography New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010 ・・・ Rebecca Spann Evgeny Sergeev, The Great Game 1856-1907 Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2013 ・・・ Frank Jacob Kiyotaka Sato, Life Story of Mr Terry Harrison, MBE: His Identity as a Person of Mixed Heritage RCHRCD, Meiji University, 2013 ・・・ Yumiko Hamai ○C Contributors 2014 Standing Committee AKITA Shigeru, Osaka University CHO Seung-Rae, Cheongju University KIM Joong-Lak, Kyungpook National University LEE Young-Suk, Gwangju University NAKAMURA Takeshi, Hirosaki University TSURUSHIMA Hirokazu, Kumamoto University Editorial Board AKITA Shigeru, Osaka University HAMAI Yumiko, Hokkaido University INAI Taro, Hiroshima University KIM Joong-Lak, Kyungpook National University LEE Young -Suk, Gwangju University TAYLOR Miles, Institute of Historical Research TSURUSHIMA Hirokazu, Kumamoto University YOON Young Hwi, Seoul National University Place of Issue Kanade Library 326-5-103 Kiyama, Mashiki Kumamoto-ken, Japan Post Code 861-2242 +81 096)202-2529 Department of History Education Kyungpook National University 80 Daehakro, Bukgu, Daegu, 702-701, Korea +82 053) 950-5850 This Issue is supported by The Institute of Historical Research (University of London) & The Korean Society of British History ISSN 2185-8527 THE EAST ASIAN JOURNAL OF BRITISH HISTORY CONTENTS Articles Page Race and Pan-Asianism reactions against the White superiority network: attempted racial solidarity and its failure Saho Matsumoto-Best 1 Colonial Welfare and Women’s Voluntary Groups in the Decolonization Era: A Perspective from the Women’s Institute during the 1950s Hiromi Mizokami-Okamoto 27 ‘The Politics of Exhibiting Fine Art in the Soviet Union: the British Council’s activities 1955-1960’ Aiko Watanabe 61 The Conservative Party’s Opposition to the ‘Voluntarist’ Approach towards Trade Unions under the Macmillan and Home Administrations 1957-1964 Tae-Joon Won 91 Scottish Propaganda at the End of Empire Bryan S. Glass 127 Building an Invisible Border?: Refugee Acts of the John Major Government Youngjoo Jung 163 Book Reviews David Brown, Palmerston: A Biography (New Haven, CT: Yale U. P., 2010) Rebecca Spann 193 Evgeny Sergeev, The Great Game 1856-1907 (Baltimore: John Hopkins U. P., 2013) Frank Jacob 197 Kiyotaka Sato, Life Story of Mr Terry Harrison, MBE: His Identity as a Person of Mixed Heritage (RCHRCD, Tokyo: Meiji University, 2013) Yumiko Hamai 201 Vol. 4 March 2014 Race and Pan-Asianism reactions against the White superiority network -attempted racial solidarity and its failure Saho Matsumoto-Best* Abstract This article focuses on the racial aspect of Pan-Asianism and argues that Pan-Asianism movements were radicalized as a reaction against the White superiority network which was created by excluding Japanese and other Asian immigrants from the British White Dominions and United States. Particularly for a country like Australia, it was important to form national solidarity under the name of White superiority in order to fill the gap between Anglo-Saxons and Celts (Irish), which appeared following the Easter Uprising in 1916. The Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, was thus responsible for rejecting the racial equality clause presented by Japanese government during the Paris Peace conference of 1919. Since the Triple Intervention of 1895, the 'Yellow Peril' outcry during and after the Russo-Japanese War, the rejection of the racial equality clause, the dissolving of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1922, and ultimately the anti-Japanese immigration laws passed by the United States government in 1924 and the Canadian government in 1928, Japan felt racially humiliated and started to seek racial solidarity with other Asian peoples under the name of * Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nagoya City University, Japan 2 East Asian Journal of British History, Vol. 4 (2014) Pan-Asianism. It took another ten years to form an overtly pan-Asianism foreign policy namely the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.' For the British Empire this White superiority policy was a problem as India was the most important colony and the Indian soldiers were the largest number to be mobilized during the First World War. Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, suggested using the Natal law, an English-language writing test, in order to exclude any coloured people (including the Indian people) from Australia, thus pretending that Australia was not racist country. Jan Smuts, the South African political leader, also stepped in after Gandhi was racially assaulted during his period in South Africa and formed a pact setting a quota for the admission of Indian immigrants. Lionel Curtis and Philip Kerr, the prominent members of the Round Table, which advocated turning the British Imperial ruling body into more democratic Commonwealth organization, were behind the adoption of the Diarchy ruling system in India by giving limited autonomy to India. All of these British race-conscious policies worked in a way in order to counter Japanese pan-Asianism racial solidarity with India. Although Subhas Chandra Bose led the Indian National Army and collaborated with the Japanese Army in order to fight against the British Empire and the United States, the Japanese did not sincerely believe in racial solidarity with the Indians but wanted to take advantage of them. Japan's mistreatment of Indian POW and its brutal behaviour towards the other Asian people was soon revealed and the illusion of Asian race brotherhood and racial Pan-Asianism started to fade away. The Japanese were originally reluctant to be a part of the Asian race as they saw this identity as consigning themselves to a position of inferiority. Japan therefore treated other Asians as inferior and attempted to place itself on top of the Asian hierarchy under the name of Greater Easter Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Britain was in a way far more conscious and cautious about racial questions, and thus attempted to mediate between the White Dominions' White superiority policy and the Indians. Britain and British Empire were Race and Pan-Asianism reactions 3 therefore well prepared to fight the race war while Japan had a great chance to win the race war but it failed. Introduction The origins of Pan-Asianismas a concept is a matter of debate but probably began in Japan around the time of the Meiji Restoration in the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, it was not an entirely unique phenomenon for Japan, for similarly in the case of Germany and Russia we can see the Pan-Germanic and Pan-Slavic movements respectively as basing themselves on perceived racial groups. These nationalistic racial ideas were an important ideology for both forming a national state and justifying imperial expansionist policies. There are quite a few works written on the subject of Pan-Asianism, but those that focus on race seem mainly to concentrate on intellectual history, including studies of thinkers such as Soho Tokutomi, Shigetaka Shiga, Koukichi Taguchi, Tokiti Tarui, Jyugo Sugiura, Tenshin Okakura and Fumimaro Konoe.1 There are works written by some historians such as Kimitada Miwa and Cemil Aydin2, dealing with the Asian race as a brotherhood, but they do not address how the racial issue influenced the development of Pan-Asianism during its different phases. In this essay an attempt is made to address race from a more concrete approach. In other words, it looks at how the racial question, as a reaction against the White nations, influenced Japan’s foreign policy, and how the latter attempted to mobilize other Asian peoples during the Second World War to fight against the British Empire. There are mainly two categories of works regarding the racial aspects of 1 S. Yamamoto, Shisokadai to Asia [Asia and Its ideological Theme], Tokyo 2001. 2 K. Miwa,“Pan-Asianism in modern Japan: nationalism, regionalism and universalism”, Pan-Asianism in Modern Japanese History, Colonialism, Regionalism and Borders, ed. S. Saaler, London 2007, 21-33. 4 East Asian Journal of British History, Vol. 4 (2014) pan-Asianism: the former has treated the Second World War as a race war, and the latter has dealt with the immigration issue. One of the former works, Gerald Horne’s Race War: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire, is significant and designed to be controversial.3 However, by exaggerating the extent to which the Japanese army was welcomed all over Asia during the initial campaigns in the Pacific War, it gives a misleading impression. The latter issue of immigration is important as a means of identifying the racial issue as a concrete element in international relations. However, in most of the existing literature it has been treated as a matter of domestic policy. The immigration issue though, as Lake and Reynolds have demonstrated, is inherently transnational in scope and should be approached from a more international stance. 4 For example, the anti-Japanese immigration legislation that the US Congress passed in 1924 was one of the elements which contributed to damaging diplomatic relations between Japan and the United States in the interwar period.5 In addition, while there are many works written on this topic regarding relations between the United States and Japan, there is not enough research on how this issue affected the ties between the British Empire and Japan.