Leading British periodicals on East Asia: 1870--1911 (China, Japan, Korea)

Historians have often dismissed nineteenth-century British elites as racist or imperialist without attempting to understand what they meant by race or empire. This is evident in recent post-colonial and area studies, especially those that focus on gender, class, and culture in the British Empire. By taking into account the British use of “race” and “empire,” late-Victorian and Edwardian assumptions and imperial preoccupations become clearer. Analyzing what was written in leading British periodicals about East Asia from 1870 to 1911 helps reveal a good deal about these assumptions. This dissertation looks at six leading periodicals covering the British political spectrum from right to left for the period, namely Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, The Quarterly Review, The Edinburgh Review, The Fortnightly Review, The Nineteenth Century, and The Westminster Review. Also examined are The Asiatic Quarterly Review, The China Review, and The Japan Weekly Mail. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of hundreds of articles and thousands of references about East Asia, appearing in six leading periodicals published in Britain and three focusing on Asia, demonstrate the remoteness of the “Far East” to the British Empire, and the marginal strategic and commercial importance East Asia held as Britain's global hegemony was challenged throughout the world. Analyzing these periodicals shows how British writings about the crumbling Chinese Empire, the rising Japanese Empire, and the occupation of the Korean peninsula are much too complex to be reduced to mere racism and imperialism.; The upheaval in India of the 1850s challenged Victorian thinking about formal empire, while events in East Asia upset Edwardian thinking of informal empire. The Sino-Japanese War, the riots in China that culminated in the uprising of the Boxers, and the decrease of British influence throughout East Asia eventually led some Edwardians to question their previous insistence on others following in their footsteps. Such discernment recognized that it was possible to be modern without being British or Western. Japan found its own path to modernity by adapting European methods to its own traditions. Japan's defeat of Russia in 1905 made that point emphatically. Even before Britain focused its attention on Europe during World War I, China, Japan, and Korea sought modernity increasingly on their own terms.