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Subjects

Japanese colonialism -- 1895-1945, East Asia -- Politics and government, Japan -- Colonies -- History, Japan -- Colonies -- Asia -- Administration -- History

Abstract

Japan's seizure and early governance of Taiwan and Korea, both of which would become its most important subject territories, is widely understood by historians as being informed by the context of late nineteenth century "new" imperialism. The belief, widely held in the West at the time, that the measure of a nation's strength was dependent on the reality of its political control over territories outside of the metropole, was accepted by Meiji era Japanese elites. Believing that they had, in large part, successfully navigated the inaugural decades of a wide ranging policy of promoting economic modernization, these elites could more confidently hope that their nation's recent technological, educational, and economic strides would translate into a capacity to project power outwards. Based on such confidence that, owing to it's growing modernization, Japan had truly escaped the lot of the colonized in Asia and, moreover, could enter the ranks of the colonizing nations, rhetoric justifying colonialism on nation-strengthening grounds was more attractive near the century's close. This paper compares Japan's colonial policy in Taiwan and Korea during 1895-1945.

Faculty Mentor: Linda Walton

DOI

10.15760/mcnair.2005.11

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/8714

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