On U.S. Policy Towards Puppet Manchukuo (1931-1941)

Picking the period from the Mukden Incident to the severance of diplomatic relations between the United States and Puppet Manchukuo after the Pearl Harbor Incident as the research limit, this dissertation made a thorough investigation of the United States policy towards Puppet Manchukuo by the use of Foreign relations of the United States, Maxwell M. Hamilton Papers and Stanley K. Hornbeck Papers stored in Hoover Institution Archive, and important historical materials such as Manchukuo Government Gazette, Shengjing Times and so on. On the basis of studying the U.S. political attitudes on the one hand and analyzing the economic links on the other, the dissertation focused on the elucidation of subtle issues from broad angles by putting the whole process in the grand background of the U.S. Far East policy, striving for profundity in argument presentations and accuracy in discussions.The dissertation consists of three parts: introduction, body and conclusion, and the body is divided into five chapters.Chapter I, the introduction, introduced the current state of researches on the U.S. policy towards Puppet Manchukuo, summarized relating academic achievements and pointed out their deficiencies and problems, hereupon explained the reasons of the topic selection of this dissertation, its academic values and practical meanings, and introduced the researching methodology and logical frame of this dissertation.Chapter II reviewed the origin and evolution of American northeast China policy. At the end of the 19th century, the U.S. put forward the Open Door Policy toward China. Later, either the policy"to aid Japan to contain Russia", or the contest against Japan, in the final analysis, was to defend the Open Door Policy and realize its national interests. In 1920's, although apparently not, actually there were numerous contradictions between the U.S. and Japan. Peace under the Washington System was transient and could not bind up Japan.Chapter III discussed the initial establishment of the U.S. policy towards Puppet Manchukuo. After the Mukden Incident, American attitude towards the incident experienced three stages from negative wait-and-see and pass-the-buck to cooperation with League of Nations but without practical actions, and then to the announcement of Stimson Doctrine of Non-Recognition. During the policy-making process, there were often violent arguments because of different opinions between President Hoover and Secretary of State Stimson, of which the biggest may be their disparate ideas about the harm that the incident could bring to America. There are rich materials for this chapter. Besides the incident archives at home, there were also accounts in The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover and in Stimson's writings, which can be used to very each other together with Foreign relations of the United States. In addition, this chapter made a comment on the Stimson Doctrine and carried out an analysis of the Non-Recognition Doctrine in the light of internal law theories.Chapter IV mainly discussed the revaluation of the Unites States on its policy towards Puppet Manchukuo. In 1933, when Roosevelt became the new American president in place of Hoover, it was widely talked in international and American opinion that the United States would change its Manchukuo and Far East policies. Starting from January 1933 when Stimson met Roosevelt to discuss the policy towards Puppet Manchukuo, this chapter on the one hand described Roosevelt's China views, and on the other hand analyzed the roles of officials from the States Council and relating American diplomats in the making of policy towards Puppet Manchukuo. More importantly, after consulting a large number of historical materials, the author found that in the 1933-1934 American-Puppet Manchukuo relations, a significant historical fact has be neglected all the time, that is Hamilton's trip to Far East. Through a textual research on Maxwell M. Hamilton Papers and Stanley K. Hornbeck Papers stored in Hoover Institution Archive, this chapter made a thorough analysis on Far East Division's reevaluation in making the policy towards Puppet Manchukuo.Chapter V mainly discussed the 1935-1936 adjustments of the U.S. policy towards Puppet Manchukuo. Because Puppet Manchukuo issued the Oil Monopoly Law on Japan's instructions to monopolize oil products, America's economic interest in northeast China suffered heavy blows. U.S. companies represented by the Standard-Vacuum Oil Company exerted pressures on the State Department policy makers to safeguard their business interests in Puppet Manchukuo. On the basis of an analysis of America's business interest in Puppet Manchukuo, and a comparison by putting it into America's whole economic interest in east Asia, this chapter analyzed the reasons of the U.S. policies.Chapter VI discussed the process of the U.S. withdrawal from Puppet Manchukuo. In 1936, a not-too-big-nor-too-small controversy was provoked about whether the U.S. consulates in Harbin and Mukden (Shenyang) should retreat. In 1937, the launch of Japan's all-around aggression against china diverted America's attention to Puppet Manchukuo. While great administration reorganizations were conducted in Puppet Manchukuo in order to support Japan's invading strategies against China, there were also personnel changes in American Far East Division. It was not until autumn 1941 that the U.S. and Japan held a senior meeting in Washington, but when the war was coming quietly without declaration. On Japan's instructions Puppet Manchukuo issued the rescript On the Current Situation, which declared the end of the U.S. policy towards Puppet Manchukuo.Relations between the U.S. and Puppet Manchukuo lasted ten years, and the U.S. policy towards Puppet Manchukuo constituted a significant part of the wartime U.S. Far East policies. In the light of theories, the making of such policy reflected the double needs of American diplomacy for both idealism and realism, while in the light of practice, the making of such policy was deeply influenced by multiple forces as interest groups and big companies, which reflected the multiple considerations in the process of policy makings, during which the Far East Division played key roles.