Chapter XX: Section II: India and the Far East

[Sidenote: India]

Already we have seen something of the way in which the burden of India came to be borne--the British East India Company, which was purely a trading concern, being forced to take military measures, for the defence of its trading stations and for the maintenance of good order, at one time against the French who were aiming at the establishment of an empire and at another against the native rulers, or rather the mis-rulers, of the Indian States.

It was thus that the Company came to have an army in its pay and to hold the control over extensive lands and many peoples. It was a position never contemplated when the Company was formed, nor was it a position entirely welcome to its directors. Continual additions had been made to the territories over which its control spread. The most notable perhaps were the addition of Cashmere in 1846, of the Punjab in 1849, and of Oudh in 1856. Farther east even than India, to the Straits Settlements and even to China itself, the authority reached of this vastly overgrown trading concern. Obviously it involved a control which could far better be undertaken directly by the British Government than by a Company acting under its charter. But with that typically British tendency to let things go on as they are going until it is impossible so to let them go any longer, nothing was done to transfer the Company's power to the Crown until the crisis came in the shape of the most formidable rising of a coloured people which the white man ever has {226} been called on to meet in the whole course of taking up his burden. It is that known as the Indian Mutiny--"mutiny," because it was mainly the affair of the native soldiers in the Company's pay. This was in the years 1857 and 1858. It threatened the very existence of the white man in the East, and only a splendid heroism in resistance to heavy odds, and heroic efforts and forced marches to relieve a situation nearly desperate, saved the principal, though scanty, British force from being annihilated. Once more the British wonderfully won through to a final victory, but the events of the war had brought into clear light the long known fact that the government of British India was an affair which demanded the most direct attention of British statesmen, with all the resources at their disposal. The East India Company were relieved of their far too heavy burdens. The Crown took over their responsibilities both in India and in the farther East.

The responsibilities of India were not only those which arose from the troubles incidental to a rule over peoples of different race and of religions--the Moslem and the Hindu--which brought them often into collision with each other. There was another trouble which began to menace like a dark cloud on the north-eastern boundary of the country, where lay the independent State of Afghanistan bordering with Persia on its east and with Russia on its north.

Russia had taken no part in that overseas colonisation by the other great powers of Europe. She had vast spaces enough, contiguous to her own bounds, over which she spread. Gradually she had annexed all Turkestan, which brought her into direct contact with Afghanistan, and she had been at frequent war with Persia over the question of the Russo-Persian boundary on Persia's north-west. Both Persia and Russia had ambitions to absorb that independent {227} Afghanistan which lay in the corner where they joined, and where, but for Afghanistan, they would join British India also. It was Britain's policy to maintain Afghanistan independent, as a buffer between her and those others, especially against Russia.

But it was to Persia, in the first place, that she had to say "hands off," when Persia advanced to the important position of Herat, within Afghan territory, in 1852. The result of campaigning and fighting lasting over some five years was that a friendly agreement was reached with Persia, which settled boundaries and left Herat to the Afghans.

[Sidenote: Russia's menace to India]

But in 1887 Russia, from the north, pushed down, and was across the Afghan boundary and advancing to that same Herat, when she was checked only by very forcible representations made to her by Great Britain. Britain herself had pushed her own Indian frontier forward by the acquisition of Beluchistan in 1878. Russia withdrew her forces for the time being, but all through that century and for some years of the present, the dread that she would come down upon India was always in the minds of British statesmen. There was more than one moment when war seemed imminent. Possibly it was nothing but Russia's own doubt of her effective fighting power which averted it. No suspicion of her internal weakness was entertained in Europe generally until it was revealed by the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and yet more clearly by the Great War of 1914-1918. But there is little doubt that this small State of Afghanistan, which arose out of the Moslem spread towards the East many centuries before, saved Britain and Russia from disastrous collision. She had played the game that a small State thus situated was likely to play, intriguing with the great powers on either side of her and taking advantage of their rivalry. More than once there has been war between her and Great Britain. But she {228} remains an independent State and Britain's friend to-day.

On India's north-eastern side Britain extended her Empire by the acquisition of Assam in 1826, and later by that of Burma in 1886. The French had taken to themselves Annam and Tongking in 1884, and thus the British Burmese territory marched with French Indo-China, as it was called, and both were bounded on their northern side by the great Chinese Empire which stretched right up to Siberia.

[Sidenote: Affairs in China]

For the last hundred years or so, the story of China has been largely the story of her efforts to prevent the foreigner from coming into China and playing any part in her story.

Nevertheless we find the white man pushing on, in his eternal quest for trade, not to be denied, founding trading stations at Chinese ports. Generally it is only in submission to a show of force, or to its active application, that these trading facilities, warehouses and so on, are permitted to him. He is obliged to fight to be allowed to establish them, and further, we find him fighting again to punish the native people who have disregarded the agreements they have made with him and who sometimes have killed the peaceful traders.

Out of the troubles thus arising came war between Britain and China as early as 1840. The Chinese were quite incapable of seriously opposing the large British force which was sent out. The result was the conclusion of a commercial treaty which opened five principal ports of China to British trading vessels and gave Britain possession of the island of Hongkong. In 1854 Shanghai, one of the five ports above named, was opened to the trade of all nations.

But still the attitude of the people and of the Government was hostile to the foreigner. At any moment an uprising and a general massacre might {229} happen. A few white missionaries, chiefly of British and American nationality, penetrated into the country, preaching Christianity at constant risk of their lives.

The year 1860 saw a great change in the relations of the white men and the Chinese. Hitherto any fighting between them had been near the coast and the great ports. Now, as a protest against the ill-treatment of which the foreign traders were the victims and the bad faith with which the Chinese broke the treaties, and also to insist on the establishment of legations of the European Powers to protect the interests of their nations, a strong combined force of British and French marched on Pekin, the capital city, and looted and burnt the sacred Summer Palace from which the Emperor had fled.

The really important result of the campaign was the shock which it gave the Chinese and the conviction which it brought home to them of the strength and determination of the white men. Thereafter they treated the foreign traders with a consideration never paid them before, and ministers representing foreign powers had their appointed residences in Pekin.

It is true that as lately as 1900 a combined foreign force was obliged to march in extreme haste on Pekin in order to save those ministers, who were in great peril there. But it was peril arising out of an insurrection against the Government, rather than immediately from the Government's own action. Nevertheless it is also true that the very clever old Empress, who was then ruler of China, deliberately contrived to convert the activities of the revolutionaries into an attack upon the foreigners, rather than upon the Government itself. And it is to be noted that in co-operation with that combined army, which thus again invaded China's once sacred capital, was a force of the other branch of the yellow race, the island branch, the Japanese.

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The story of that island branch is certainly no less interesting than that of the continental. At what point far back in the story they branched off from a common stock we do not know, but it is more than probable that they came from the same original source. We found Kublai Khan, when master of China and of an immense part of the world besides, sending out from China an expedition against the islanders, of which the fate was much like that of the Grand Armada which the masterful power of Spain launched against our own islands. Japan kept her independence then, and has fought for it again and asserted it conclusively far later.

[Sidenote: The awakening of Japan]

She too, in her story, seems to have repeated, as did China, something very like the series of changes through which society passed in Europe, with its feudalism and the rest of it. But whereas in modern China this feudalism seems to belong to some era very, very far back in her story, so that she has almost lost all memory of it, with Japan, on the contrary, it is a very recent chapter--later even than with us of Europe. It is a condition from which she has indeed only just shaken herself free. 1867 is generally given as the date at which Japanese feudalism passed. And it passed in a fashion for which there is certainly no parallel in Western story. The Daimios, who were the feudal lords, of their own accord agreed, as the only means of ending their mutual fighting, to give up their local powers into the hands of the Mikado.

The white men knew very little about Japan until the sixteenth century. No overland travellers, like Marco Polo, had been there to bring back news to the West. About the middle of the sixteenth century a few Portuguese trading vessels touched it, and the very famous Jesuit missionary Xavier introduced Christianity. Here, however, as elsewhere, the Jesuits seem to have caused trouble by interfering with politics, {231} and the exclusion of the foreigners was enforced more strictly than ever. Gradually, especially towards the end of the eighteenth century, trade with foreigners began to grow, chiefly with the Dutch, the Russians, and the Americans.

But still Japan continued, like China, to hold aloof as much as possible from all intercourse with the West, and with its science and progress. America at length took the decided step of sending a strong naval force and demanding the opening of a port to American ships of trade. This was in 1850, but the real opening up of the country did not begin until after the end of feudalism and the establishment of the Mikado's single power in 1867. And then a most extraordinary change did happen--a change perhaps more extraordinary than any other of which we find record in the whole history of mankind.

We may describe the story of China for many centuries as the story of a people buried in a profound sleep. She shows but little immediate sign of awaking from that slumber even to-day. The story of Japan in the latter half of the nineteenth century we may designate as the most astonishing awakening of a nation out of slumber that the world has ever known.

Even now the part played by great China is only a passive, a negative part (except, of course, so far as her own people are concerned), but the part played by little Japan, though perfectly passive until some two-thirds of the nineteenth century had gone, has been startlingly vigorous and effective. The truth is that beneath the slumbering surface the spirit of the people had always been active, inquiring, ready for any novelty that struck them as valuable--in great contrast to the indifference of the Chinese. Their seclusion had been forced upon them by their rulers. When that enforcement ceased, they welcomed with very keen intelligence all the progress in science and thought which steam {233} and evolution had given to the West. In religion and in art they seem to have been satisfied to follow their own traditions, but they took every possible opportunity to learn lessons that might be of practical use. Military experts were called from Germany and naval experts from Great Britain to teach the art of war by land and sea. Scientific, educational, and legal advisers were engaged. The nation set itself with astonishing quickness to learn all that the West could teach it, and within a few years the efficiency of both army and navy were very thoroughly proved.

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[Sidenote: Korea]

On the coast of China, just opposite Japan, lay the independent State of Korea. Its people were of the yellow race--not great fighters, but they had successfully resisted some rather half-hearted efforts of the Chinese to subdue them. Against the Chinese they invoked Japanese help--and not in vain. Japan had an interest in this country which lay just opposite her own islands, across a narrow sea, and which gave an outlet for her own surplus population. Over the Korean question, then, Japan and China came to war in 1894. The Japanese armies met and repeatedly defeated the Chinese, in the north of Korea and in the Chinese province of Manchuria just northward again. At sea, it was evident that Japan still had much to learn, for the Chinese for a while had rather the better of the naval engagements. Finally the Japanese prevailed there also.

One result of that war was that Korea was formally declared independent, but the Government was so feeble that the Japanese, in the years that followed, gained more and more power over it. By the terms of peace, the large island of Formosa was ceded to Japan. But the war's most important result was to reveal to the Western powers the weakness of China. Russia, thwarted in her advances towards India, was pushing but eastward into Manchuria, and now {234} encouraged China to resist some of the demands of the victorious Japanese. In compensation, she obtained for herself certain advantages, as the friend of China. China handed to her Manchuria, partly as the result of pressure, partly of friendly persuasion. What was of still more importance for her was that she acquired the ice-free harbour of Port Arthur; for hitherto her only Pacific port had been Vladivostock, farther north and often ice-bound.

It mattered comparatively little to Japan that Great Britain and Germany, to balance these gains of Russia, demanded and took for themselves, from the enfeebled hands of the Chinese, ports in the same neighbourhood. What did matter was that the menace of Russian power, and Russia's insatiable desire to expand, became more and more formidable to her. But among the peace terms which she had not failed to extort from China was a large money indemnity, and that money she spent in buying ships of war.

So then, in 1904, as Russia grew more and more aggressive in her eastward push, Japan, confident in her German-instructed army and her British-instructed and greatly enlarged fleet, ventured on a kind of David and Goliath contest. She declared war on the vast power.

[Sidenote: The Russo-Japanese War]

And, just as, through the test applied by this surprising little island power in the Pacific, had been revealed the essential weakness of great China, so now, to the astonishment of the world, was revealed by the very same test the weakness of great Russia. The Russian fleet, sailing from the Gulf of Finland, circumnavigated the world to come into touch with the Japanese fleet awaiting it in Japan's home waters; and at the very first touch that sea-worn fleet of Russia was sent to the bottom, save for such inconsiderable remnants as the Japanese allowed to remain afloat or to run ashore.

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On land the fighting was hard. Port Arthur, strongly fortified, held out bravely, but was invested and forced to yield. The Japanese armies were victorious, driving the Russians back, but at price of a continually lengthening line of communications as the battle rolled north. The victories had cost Japan the very utmost that she could afford. She consented to terms of peace which surprised Europe by their moderation. But the details were of little importance compared with the astonishing achievement. This little island State, scarcely emerged out of its feudal era, had become, at a stroke, a great modern power, the naval ruler of the Pacific, Great Britain's counterpart in the East, and her ally on equal terms.

She might now gratify her wish about Korea, and formally declared it a Japanese protectorate in 1910. The Russian menace was rolled back, by the restoration of Manchuria in the same year.

In the Great War Japan more than confirmed her claim to high place among the nations. She was active in scouring the sea for German marauders of commerce, and very early in the war captured the port which Germany had occupied in the Pacific, and so eliminated any threat to her authority with which that occupation might threaten her.

Within so few years did Japan thus pass, from taking no part whatever in the Great Story, to be one of the foremost actors.

Southward of the Japanese islands, the next most important group is that of the Philippines, transferred, as we saw, from the sovereignty of Spain to that of the United States as a result of the Spanish-American war of 1897-8. Southward again, we come to those islands of the Malay Archipelago chiefly dominated by the Dutch, although Britain also has important possessions there and on the Malay Peninsula itself.

And so, working yet farther southward through {237} innumerable islands, we arrive at the huge British colonial territory of Australia, with the two islands of New Zealand some twelve hundred miles away towards the south-east.

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