From: miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman )
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan,soc.culture.china,soc.history
Subject: Re: US colonializing (Was: An open letter to the Emperor Akihito of Japan)
Date: 2 Sep 92 15:07:44 GMT
Organization: Acuson; Mountain View, California

miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:

>jwb@capek.rdt.monash.edu.au (Jim Breen) writes:

>>miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:

>>>	In fact, the Russo-Japanese War was largely fought with war ships
>>>	made in the US and the UK to order of the combatants.  

	I was wrong.  The Japanese ships were most often of British manufacture
	except for the 5 submarines that were laid down in Quincy, near Boston
	Massachusetts and shipped in peices to Japan, where 2 copies were made
	with the aid of the American designer who went to Japan.

>>From my reading, all the Russian ships were made in Germany or Russia, and all the
>>Japanese ships were made in the UK or Japan. Do you have any information on ships
>>made in the US?

	Aside from the above mentioned submarines, the Russian battleship _Varyag_
	was built in the US.  There may have been some others, but the thrust
	of my statement was incorrect.  My point was that Japan did not have
	much in the way of naval ship-building capability but was able to
	defeat China in 1894, so I still maintain that the US could have.

>>>       If Japan could get terrtorial
>>>	concessions from China in the 1890s certainly the US could have as well
>>>	had she wanted them.  That she chose not to could be due to a number
>>>	of reasons, but military inability seems hard to credit.

>>It was busy at the time snatching colonies off Spain: (Philipines, Cuba, ...)

	Cuba was never made a colony of the US.  The war was fought by the
	US to aid the insurgents who were trying to free Cuba from Spain.
	Spain was putting all rural potential supporters in concentration
	camps ("reconcentrado") where they were dying by the thousand.  The
	descriptions of the dead sounds eerily like what we would see in
	the skeleton-like bodies in the Nazi camps.  The US people were
	outraged, Roosevelt (secretary of the Navy) called it extermination,
	and the food and supplies that were sent to aid the victims were
	held up by the Spanish.  The peace treaty created an independent
	Cuba, though one could argue excessive US influence in its affairs.

>	This seems to support my thesis.  I.e., if the US could successfully
>	send a fleet to the Philipines in 1898, she equally could have sent
>	one to China ca. 1894 when Japan found some parts of China unclaimed
>	by other powers.  Defeating China was terribly easy, due largely to
>	the corrupt and decadent Dowager Empress's court - if Japan could do
>	it, certainly the US could have as well.

	In fact, the US Asiatic Squadron was based in Asia and cruised
	between Yokohama, Hong Kong, Shanghai, etc. to try and keep the
	peace and protect Americans.  My cursory reading so far is that
	the 1898 US fleet was roughly equal to the Japanese Navy of 1904
	in numbers of large battle cruisers.

	In the beginning of 1865, the US Navy had 530 vessels, with 2,000
	guns, 51,500 military personnel, 16,900 Navy personnel in Navy
	shipyards, and there were another 17,000 civilians in other shipyards
	working on Navy ships.  Your turn - what was the British Navy size at
	that time?  And the Union Army was over 1 Million men.

	Regardless of whether the US was the best at any particular military
	feat, I still think she could have defeated China as easily as she
	defeated Spain.  I will pursue the matter further.

	- Michael Goldman

-- 
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have
exhausted all other alternatives." - Abba Eban
	Disclaimer:  All views are solely my own & not the views of Acuson.
	<sun!sono!miklg>  or  [miklg@acuson.com]
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan