Cycles of History

In 1895, the Chinese scholar Kang Youwei was on his way to Beijing on a Chinese steamer when his ship was abruptly boarded and searched by a party of Japanese soldiers on the North China Sea. "I was enraged when the Japanese came and searched our ship," he later wrote. "If the court had listened to my advice earlier, we would not have to endure such humiliations." But following China's defeat by Japan in the 1894-5 Sino-Japanese War, this was just the sort of humiliation that China was now forced to endure. That war had been fought over influence in Korea and it marked the end of Korea's tributary relationship with China. It was the beginning of China's decline and Japan's ascendancy in East Asian affairs. For the first time since the founding of the Chos⊖n dynasty in 1392, China would have little influence over the Korean peninsula

Ancient history · Archaeology · China · Geography · Political science · History · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies