The Opening Of Corea To The Treaty Powers Did Not
Put An End To The Old Rivalry Of China And Japan In That Country, Of Which
History Contains So Many Examples; And, Before The Corean Question Was
Definitely Settled, It Again Became Obtrusive.
Such evidence as is
obtainable points to the conclusion that Chinese influence was gradually
getting the better of Japanese
In the country, and the attack on the
Japanese legation in 1884 was a striking revelation of popular antipathy
or of an elaborate anti-Japanese plot headed by the released Chinese
prisoner, Tai Wang Kun.
At the opposite point of the frontier China was brought face to face with
a danger which threatened to develop into a peril of the first magnitude,
and in meeting which she was undoubtedly hampered by her treaties with the
general body of foreign powers and her own peculiar place in the family of
nations. It is the special misfortune of China that she cannot engage in
any, even a defensive, war with a maritime power without incurring the
grave risk, or indeed the practical certainty, that if such a war be
continued for any length of time she must find herself involved with every
other foreign country through the impossibility of confining the hostility
of her own subjects to one race of foreigners in particular. In
considering the last war with a European country in which China was
engaged, due allowance must be made for these facts, and also for the
anomalous character of that contest, when active hostilities were carried
on without any formal declaration of war - a state of things which gave the
French many advantages. Toward the end of the year 1882, the French
government came to the decision to establish a "definite protectorate"
over Tonquin. Events had for some time been shaping themselves in this
direction, and the colonial ambition of France had long fixed on Indo-
China as a field in which it might aggrandize itself with comparatively
little risk and a wide margin of advantage. The weakness of the kingdom of
Annam was a strong enough temptation in itself to assert the protectorate
over it which France had, more or less, claimed for forty years; but when
the reports of several French explorers came to promote the conviction
that France might acquire the control of a convenient and perhaps the best
route into some of the richest provinces of interior China without much
difficulty, the temptation became irresistible. French activity in Indo-
China was heightened by the declaration of Garnier, Rocher, and others,
that the Songcoi, or Red River, furnished the best means of communicating
with Yunnan, and tapping the wealth of the richest mineral province in
China. The apathy of England in her relations with Burmah, which
presented, under its arrogant and obstructive rulers, what may have seemed
an insuperable obstacle to trade intercourse between India and China,
afforded additional inducement to the French to act quickly; and, as they
felt confident of their ability and power to coerce the court of Hue, the
initial difficulties of their undertaking did not seem very formidable.
That undertaking was, in the first place, defined to be a protectorate of
Annam, and, as the first step in the enterprise, the town of Hanoi, in the
delta of the Red River, and the nominal capital of Tonquin, was captured
before the end of the year 1882.
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