Newsgroups: soc.culture.china,soc.culture.japan,soc.history
From: liuyh@vis.toronto.edu (Yuanhui Liu)
Subject: Re: US colonializing (Was: An open letter to the Emperor Akihito of Japan)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Date: 2 Sep 92 19:25:06 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.150744.9759@acuson.com> miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:
>miklg@acuson.com (Michael Goldman ) writes:
>
>
[......] 
>	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.
>
Cuba was virturally an US colony, doesn't matter if it's nominally
independent, the US Controlled everything, and that's why the people
were pissed and supported Castro.  As for the Philippines, they could
have got rid off the Spainards themselves -- they almost did, guess what?
on the verge of victory the US navy sailed in, sank the antique Spanish
ships and declare it an US colony, and went on to kill all the Philippino
Independence fighters(To Christianize the country as the predecessor of
T Roosevelt-- Mckinney said it, the US president of course was unware
that the Philippinos are mainly Roman Catholic).   

>>	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.
>
	Any industrial country could defeat the decaying Qing Dynasty
in the late 19th century, that's not the point, the objective of defeat
China is to get benefits, by the time the US comes into the picture,
Russia, Japan, Great Britain, France, and Germany pretty much carved China
into different interest zones.  If the US were to create its own, there
was going to be a conflict of interest between imperial colonial powers,
the US has to deal with perhaps more than one European power and/or
Japan, just like Japan and Russia fought control over Northeast China
in 1904-1905.  This surely is not worth it and doesn't make any business
sense, and to avoid the "dog eat dog" situation, the US suggested 
"Open Door" policy, so it can get its share of meat in any other 
"interest" zones dominated by other colonial powers without spend 
a bundle of money and warships to get it.  


>	- 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.china