Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to reconsider the nature and the formation of the ‘International Order of Asia’ in the 1930s in the light of new historiographical revisions in Great Britain as well as in Japan. Recently several Japanese economic historians have offered a new perspective on Asian economic history.1 They argue that the economic growth of Asian countries was led by the phenomenon of intra-Asian trade which began to grow rapidly around the turn of the 19th–20th centuries. On the other side, the British imperial historians, P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins have presented their own provocative interpretation, ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas’, in which they emphasize the leading role of the service sector rather than that of British industry in assessing the nature of British expansion overseas.2 We will attempt here to integrate these new perspectives3 and to present a fresh interpretation of the international order of Asia in the 1930s. In this chapter, ‘Asia’ is taken to mean East Asia and Southeast and South Asia. The former includes Japan, the most industrialized country in Asia, the rising sovereign state of China and the then Japanese colony of Taiwan (Formosa). The latter consists mainly of the colonies of the European Powers, including British India and the Dutch East Indies.
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Notes
Kaoru Sugihara, Ajiakan Boeki no Keisei to Kozo [The Formation and Structure of Intra-Asian Trade] (Kyoto, 1996);
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Shigeru Akita, Igirisu Teikoku to Ajia Kokusai-Chitsujo [The British Empire and International Order of Asia] (Nagoya, 2002).
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (2nd edition, London and New York, 2001).
As for the debate on Gentlemanly Capitalism and East Asia, see ibid., ‘Forward: the Continuing Debate on Empire’, pp. 16–17; Shigeru Akita, ‘British Informal Empire in East Asia, 1880–1939: a Japanese perspective’, in Raymond E. Dumett (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: the New Debate on Empire (London and New York, 1999), ch. 6.
Shigeru Akita and Naoto Kagotani (eds), 1930-nendai Ajia Kokusai Chitujo [International Order of Asia in the 1930s] (Hiroshima, 2000) [Thereafter, 1930 nendai Ajia].
Yoichi Kibata, ‘Kiki to Senso no Nijyu-nen’ [The Twenty Years during the Crises and Wars], in Iwanami Koza Sekai-Rekishi [Iwanami Series of World History] 24: Kaiho no Hikari to Kage [The Light and Shadow of the Liberalization] (Tokyo, 1998).
Nawa Touitsu, Nihon Bouseki-gyo to Genmen-mondai Kenkyu [A Study of the Japanese Cotton Spinning Industry and the Problem of Raw Cotton] (Osaka, 1937).
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Alex J. Robertson ‘Lancashire and the Rise of Japan’, in Mary B. Rose (ed.), International Competition and Strategic Response in the Textile Industries since 1890 (London, 1991).
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Yasuo Tawa, Nichi-Ran Kaisho no Keika [The Process of Dutch Japanese Cotton Trade Negotiations, 1934] (The Japan Cotton Spinners Association, March 1935). These documents are kept in the Library of the Japan Cotton Spinners’ Association (Osaka).
Kagotani, Ajia Kokusai Tsusho Chitujyo to Kindai Nihon, ch. 8; G.C. Allen and Audrey G. Donnithorne, Western Enterprise in Indonesia and Malaya (London, 1957), ch. 14.
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Akita, S., Kagotani, N. (2002). The International Order of Asia in the 1930s. In: Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919403_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403919403_8
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