The Kowshing, From The Perspective Of Modern International Law

The end of nineteenth century, at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, theKowshing ship was bombarded by the Japanese warship-Naniwa on the way toYashan(in the south of South Korea) in the Fengdao naval battle. The Kowshing wasa ship of Britain and it was employed by Qing Dynasty for transporting the soldiers.At the time, there is a contradiction in sharp between China and Japan on the KoreanPeninsula, and western states intervened on the issue in East Asia increasingly. TheBritish Government got a conclusion after the investigation, and the government saidthat Japan was not to blame on this one. According to the result, Qing governmentcould not accept and rejected the claim many times. Finally, China paid plenty ofmoney on reparations under the unfavorable international situation.Britain, Japan and China showed different ways to use the international law inthe process of handling the event. Japan expanded active investigation to avoidconfrontation with British after sinking the Kowshing. China forced open to acceptthe wester affairs after the Opium War. And at the same time, the modern internationallaw propagated to China and Japan. To dealing the international issues was based onthe modern international law as the criterion. Wanguo Gongfa was introduced earlieras a authoritative book of modern international law. In the text, considering within themodern international law and according to Wanguo Gongfa, to analyze the event ofKowshing and to point out which country should take the blame.To explore the responsible parties of Kowshing needs to sort out the full processby modern international law. To do it in this way will not only help to clear the truthof the event and liability issues, but also have some implications on applyinginternational law and handling international affairs.