Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1 Modern mobilities
- Part 2 Discursive frameworks
- Part 3 Transnational solidarities
- Part 4 Challenge and consolidation
- 10 International conferences: cosmopolitan amity or racial enmity?
- 11 Japanese alienation and imperial ambition
- 12 Racial equality? The Paris Peace Conference, 1919
- 13 Immigration restriction in the 1920s: ‘segregation on a large scale’
- Part 5 Towards universal human rights
- Index
12 - Racial equality? The Paris Peace Conference, 1919
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part 1 Modern mobilities
- Part 2 Discursive frameworks
- Part 3 Transnational solidarities
- Part 4 Challenge and consolidation
- 10 International conferences: cosmopolitan amity or racial enmity?
- 11 Japanese alienation and imperial ambition
- 12 Racial equality? The Paris Peace Conference, 1919
- 13 Immigration restriction in the 1920s: ‘segregation on a large scale’
- Part 5 Towards universal human rights
- Index
Summary
Fleets in European seas
Japan played a minor, albeit advantageous role, in the First World War, over-running the German colonies in the Pacific Islands and the Concession on China's Shantung Peninsula. The navy patrolled the Pacific and Indian Oceans and, after much persuasion from the allies, extended its sway into the Mediterranean. Ironically, given Australian attitudes towards Japan, it was the Japanese fleet that protected the troopships conveying the Australian and New Zealand armies to the Middle East. The demands of war greatly stimulated Japanese industry and available markets expanded with the temporary eclipse of British and German competitors.
When the world's nations gathered to formalise the peace treaty and create a League of Nations, Japan was accorded the status of one of the great powers alongside the United States, Great Britain, France and Italy, each with two representatives on the Committee. Still virtually invisible to Charles Pearson in 1893, Japan had yet, in a quarter of a century, seemed to fulfil his prophesy about the challenge to the West posed by the rise of the ‘yellow races’. The Japanese Empire had been invited into alliances with European powers, was ‘represented by fleets in European seas’, ‘circumscribing the industry of Europeans’ and invited to participate as an equal in international conferences.
Japanese race discourse
The long crusade to achieve equality with the Western powers appeared to have been finally successful.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Drawing the Global Colour LineWhite Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, pp. 284 - 309Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008
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