Imperialism, War, and Revolution, 1881–1920 537the entire subcontinent, and Siamese freedom de-
pended upon Anglo-French inability to compromise.
Most of Southeast Asia had been under the loose
suzerainty of the Manchu dynasty of China, and the
European conquests of 1882–96 exposed the vulnera-
bility of that regime. Japan’s easy military victory in the
Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95—the result of a decade
of rivalry over Korea, which Japan seized in 1894—un-
derscored that lesson. The Treaty of Shimonoseki
ended that war, with China granting independence to
Korea and ceding the province of Kwantung (west of
Korea) and the island of Formosa (Taiwan) to Japan.
Europeans could not resist exploiting the infirmity
of the Chinese Empire. Their initial intervention, how-
ever, was against the Japanese, who were obliged to re-
turn Kwantung to China. Then, in 1896, the Russians
extracted a treaty allowing them to build the Trans-
Siberian Railway across the Chinese province of
Manchuria to the port of Vladivostok. Shortly there-
after, the Russians simply occupied Manchuria. In early
1897 the Germans followed the Japanese and Russians
into China by occupying the northern port city of
Kiaochow after two German missionaries had been
killed in that region. These events launched another
imperialist scramble, this time known as “the opening
of China.” Unlike their outright annexation of land in
Africa, European governments used the genteel device
of pressing the Manchu government to sign ninety-
nine-year “leases” to “treaty ports” along the coast of
China. During 1898 the Germans extracted a lease to
Kiaochow, the Russians to the Liaodong peninsula and
Port Arthur, the French to Kwangchow in the south
(near to Indo-China), and the British to both Wei-Hai-
Wei in the north and Kowloon (near Hong Kong) in
the south.
While Europeans were extracting leases to Chinese
territory, another war shifted imperialist attention fur-
ther east, to the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The
Spanish-American War of 1898—chiefly fought in the
Caribbean, following a Cuban insurrection against
Spanish rule in 1895—completed the collapse of the
Spanish colonial empire. The victorious United States,
which had won an important naval victory against the
Spanish at Manila, claimed the Philippine archipelago
(the largest Spanish colony) and fought a three-year
war (1899–1901) to subdue Filipino nationalists. The
United States chose to follow European imperialism
and established an American government for the is-
lands. This stimulated a race to claim the remaining is-
lands of the Pacific. Germany and the United States,
both eager for bases to support global fleets, led this
rush. Between 1899 and 1914 Germany claimed dozens
of north Pacific islands (such as the Mariana Islands,
the Caroline Islands, and the Marshall Islands, which
would become famous battlegrounds of World War II).
The United States took Hawaii (1898), Guam (1898),
and Wake Island (1900), while joining Germany and
Britain in dividing the Samoan Islands (1899). By 1914
no self-governing atoll survived in the Pacific.
The Asian resistance to Western imperialism, like
the African resistance, was repeatedly expressed with
arms. The opening of China in 1898 precipitated a tur-
bulent period in Chinese history that included an
uprising against foreigners, the Boxer Rebellion
(1900–01). The Boxers, the European name for a para-
military organization of Chinese nationalists who
hoped to expel all foreigners from China, began the up-
rising by attacking Christian missionaries and their
converts. Violence spread to Beijing, culminating in the
murder of the German ambassador and a siege of West-
ern legations. A multinational expedition put down the
Boxer Rebellion and conducted punitive missions into
provincial China.
Japan provided the most successful opposition to
European imperialism in Asia. European intervention
against the Japanese in 1895, followed by provocations
such as the Russian occupation of Manchuria, lease to
Port Arthur, and penetration of Korea led to the Russo-
Japanese War of 1904–1905. The Japanese attacked
Port Arthur in February 1904, trapping the entire Russ-
ian Pacific fleet except for the ships icebound at Vladi-
vostok. A few weeks later, the Japanese army landed in
Korea, advanced into Manchuria, and defeated the
Russian army. In the spring of 1905, a Russian European
fleet reached the Orient only to be destroyed (thirty-
three of forty-five ships were sunk) in the battle of
Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea.
Resistance to European imperialism went beyond
the Indo-Chinese wars of the 1880s, the Boxer uprising
of 1900, and the Japanese victory of 1904–05. Well-
organized nationalist movements appeared in the early
twentieth century. In 1908, for example, a group of
moderate nationalists wrote a constitution for the
Indian National Congress (later, the Congress Party),
calmly stating their objective of winning self-
government by constitutional means.The African
National Congress (ANC) of South Africa originated at
a similar meeting in 1912. Many of the nationalists
who would lead the twentieth-century resistance to
Western imperialism emigrated to Europe where they
received formal and informal educations in dealing with
European governments. Ho Chi Minh, the leader of
Vietnamese armed resistance to French, Japanese, and
American imperialism, lived in France as a young man;