Abstract
The Russo-Japanese War in 1905 was interpreted throughout the world as the first victory of an Asian nation belonging to the yellow race against a major white and Christian Western empire.1 In fact, the world-historical significance of the Japanese victory over Russia was noted by a wide array of contemporary observers, writing in the immediate aftermath of the war.2 This interpretation of the Japanese military victory transformed the character of reformist thought, perceptions of the Western Civilization and the critiques of international order in the major centers of the non-Western world, from Egypt, Iran, and Turkey to India, Vietnam, and China.3 However, the celebration by Asian and African intellectuals of the Russo-Japanese War as a turning point in their critique of the Eurocentric world order was highly paradoxical. Japan fought the war with Russia over the control of Korea and Manchuria. It achieved its military victory partly due to the support it received from the Western superpower of the time, Great Britain, and partly due to the borrowing of huge sums of money from American banks. The Japanese elite was proud of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which symbolized the civilized status of their nation.4
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Notes
Oka Yoshitake, “The First Anglo-Japanese Alliance in Japanese Public Opinion,” in J.P. Lehmann, ed., Themes and Theories in Japanese History ( London: Athlone Press, 1988 ), pp. 185–93.
For the African American reactions to the Russo-Japanese War, see Marc Gallicchio, Black Internationalism in Asia, 1895–1945: The African American Encounter with Japan & China (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), pp. 6–15.
Henry Dyer, Dai Nippon, The Britain of the East: A Study in National Evolution ( London: Blackie & Son Limited, 1904 ).
Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 16. See also
Jawaharlal Nehru, Toward Freedom ( Boston: Beacon Press, 1967 ), pp. 29–30.
Prasenjit Duara, “Transnationalism and the Predicament of Sovereignty: China, 1900–1945,” American Historical Review 102, no. 4 (1997): 1030–52, 1038.
Phan Bôi Châu, Reflections from Captivity: Prison Notes, trans. D. Marr (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1978), pp. 23, 129.
Ba Maw, Breakthrough in Burma: Memoirs of a Revolution, 1939–1946 ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968 ), pp. 47–48.
Hugh Tinker, Race, Conflict and the International Order ( New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977 ), p. 39.
Uükrü Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1995 ), p. 210.
William Cleveland, The Making of an Arab Nationalist: Ottomanism and Arabism in the Life and Thought of Sati’ Al-Husri ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971 ), pp. 37–38.
Münif Pala, “Mukayese-i ilm ve Cehl,” Mecmua-i Fünün 1 (1862): 28.
James Hevia, “Looting Beijing: 1860, 1900,” in Tokens of Exchange: The Problem of Translation in Global Circulations, Lydia H. Liu, ed. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 192–213. During the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, Japan joined the Western coalition, composed of soldiers from the United States, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.
Uükrü Hanioglu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 304.
Selçuk Esenbel, “Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945,” The American Historical Review 109, no. 4 (2004): 1140–70.
Yamamura Shinichi, “Nihon Gaikô to Ajia Shugi no Kôsaku,” in Seiji Gaku Nenpô (Tokyo, 1998), pp. 26–27. Taken from
Tsurumi Yflsuke, Gotô Shinpei, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Keisô Shôbo, 1965–1967), pp. 960–61.
David Marr, Vietnamese Anti-Colonialism, 1885–1925 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 146, 154–55.
Nitobe Inazô, Bushido: The Soul of Japan: An Exposition of Japanese Thought (Tokyo: Kôdansha International, 1998), p. 188. Earliest version: Philadelphia: Leeds & Biddle, 1900.
On the Eastern Study Movement that sent students to Japan from Vietnam, see also Vuong Tri Nham, ed., Phan Boi Chau and the Dong-DuMovement ( New Haven, Conn.: Yale Southeast Asia Studies, 1988 ).
For the derivative modernity concept, see Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse ( Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986 ).
Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998 ).
Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 ( Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 1962 ), p. 205.
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© 2007 Sebastian Conrad and Dominic Sachsenmaier
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Aydin, C. (2007). A Global Anti-Western Moment? The Russo-Japanese War, Decolonization, and Asian Modernity. In: Conrad, S., Sachsenmaier, D. (eds) Competing Visions of World Order. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604285_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230604285_8
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