Anglo-Korean Relations and the Port Hamilton Affair, 1885-1887

Anglo-Korean Relations and the Port Hamilton Affair, 1885-1887
Author: Stephen A. Royle
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2017-04-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351737864

In April 1885 the British navy seized the small archipelago of Port Hamilton (now Geomundo) off Korea, an incident dubbed the Port Hamilton Affair. This was part of a larger story of Empire and East Asian geopolitics involving China, Japan, Korea and Russia. At the time Britain and Russia seemed close to war over Afghanistan, and taking the islands, with their sheltered anchorage, would deny them to Russia while they might be useful in any blockade of the Russian fleet in Vladivostok. However, even in this imperial era, there were qualms about seizing inhabited territory belonging to a friendly nation, if only through the precedent it may set for others – particularly Russia – to do the same. Thus, Britain stressed that occupation was temporary and attempted to gain legitimate control anyway, through issuing leases. In the event, after much political posturing from East Asian nations, given that the geopolitical situation improved and there was no war with Russia, the British, after assurances that Russia would not take Port Hamilton, slipped away in February 1887. Geomundo returned to obscurity. This book, the first full-length study of the Port Hamilton Affair, is based around contemporary material varying from printed dispatches and government reports to original archival manuscripts. This enables the book’s scope to range from setting the Port Hamilton Affair into its context within the high geopolitics of East Asia through study of the life of the garrison stationed on the islands to relations between the powerless indigenous islanders and their British occupiers.

Surviving Imperial Intrigues

Surviving Imperial Intrigues
Author: Sangpil Jin
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2021-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824889118

In Surviving Imperial Intrigues, Sangpil Jin explores how successful Korean neutralization could have radically transformed the balance of power equation in East Asia. He conducted multilocational archival work, analyzing documents from the Austro-Hungarian Empire Ministry of Foreign Affairs, British Foreign Office, French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, German Foreign Office, Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Russian Foreign Office, Russian State Naval Archive, and US State Department, as well as perusing private papers and newspapers. What surfaced in these readings were disparate voices of multiple actors and their agendas concerning Korean neutrality and dynamic international relations in modern East Asia. Jin argues that although never implemented, Korean neutralization had the potential to succeed during the British occupation of Kŏmundo (1885–1887). He further points out that neutralization has recently resurfaced as a possible option for a unified Korean state to preserve its strategic flexibility amidst the US pivot to Asia and China’s re-emergence as a potential hegemon in the region. While neutralization is the focal point of the book, Jin also analyzes Korea’s complex and layered relations with China, Japan, Russia, and the United States, within the overall framework of Sino-Japanese, Anglo-Russian, and Russo-Japanese rivalries. A periphery state in the contemporary international system, Korea was forced to navigate through intricate diplomatic relations with major imperial powers. Jin skillfully directs his academic lens toward understanding the stories behind Korea’s contentious relations and the rivalries among the powers. The timespan of his study stretching from 1882 to 1907 reflects his unique periodization that offers a groundbreaking view of Korean diplomatic history from a more regional geography paradigm. In recent years, contemporary South Korea has been learning to reassess its strategic position in the emerging Sino–US bipolarity in the Asia-Pacific region. This book serves as a historical guide for both specialists and policymakers who require a nuanced grasp of the new era of geopolitical shift, likely dominated by the two powers (China and the United States) that possess a distinct understanding of the norms and structure of the international order.

Transport to Another World

Transport to Another World
Author: Stephen DAVIES
Publisher: City University of HK Press
Total Pages: 530
Release: 2022-05-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9629375931

Mementoes of HMS Tamar abound in Hong Kong, but what is really known about this troopship and her role in the maintenance of British imperial rule? Using logbooks, newspapers, and numerous other sources, this book pieces together the multifaceted and largely unknown history of the Tamar . From her launch into service to her roles as a hospital, theatre stage, and transport for military personnel, the Tamar carried not just people, but also their mundane dreams and ambitions— for friends, families, and staying alive. Any ideas or concerns about sustaining the empire seldom featured in their minds at all, but it was this empire that the Tamar served for seventy-nine years, steaming the equivalent of thirty-two times around the Earth and transporting tens of thousands of people to what would seem to them another world. In this engaging narrative, the Tamar’s exploits and the experiences of her crew and passengers parallel those of the British Empire and its subjects, bringing to life the realities of imperial life on land and at sea. As mud continues to settle over the Tamar’s forgotten remains in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, Transport to Another World will appeal to historians and readers interested in maritime history and colonial Hong Kong in general, and makes a case for conserving the memory of a past some would prefer to forget.

Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail

Islands and the British Empire in the Age of Sail
Author: Douglas Hamilton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2021-06-17
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192586556

Islands are not just geographical units or physical facts; their importance and significance arise from the human activities associated with them. The maritime routes of sailing ships, the victualling requirements of their sailors, and the strategic demands of seaborne empires in the age of sail - as well as their intrinsic value as sources of rare commodities - meant that islands across the globe played prominent parts in imperial consolidation and expansion. This volume examines the various ways in which islands (and groups of islands) contributed to the establishment, extension, and maintenance of the British Empire in the age of sail. Thematically related chapters explore the geographical, topographical, economic, and social diversity of the islands that comprised a large component of the British Empire in an era of rapid and significant expansion. Although many of these islands were isolated rocky outcrops, they acted as crucial nodal points, providing critical assistance for ships and men embarked on the long-distance voyages that characterised British overseas activities in the period. Intercontinental maritime trade, colonial settlement, and scientific exploration and experimentation would have been impossible without these oceanic islands. They also acted as sites of strategic competition, contestation, and conflict for rival European powers keen to outstrip each other in developing and maintaining overseas markets, plantations, and settlements. The importance of islands outstripped their physical size, the populations they sustained, or their individual economic contribution to the imperial balance sheet. Standing at the centre of maritime routes of global connectivity, islands offer historians of the British Empire fresh perspectives on the intercontinental communication, commercial connections, and territorial expansion that characterised that empire.

Secularism, Islam and Education in India, 1830–1910

Secularism, Islam and Education in India, 1830–1910
Author: Robert Ivermee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2015-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317317041

During the nineteenth century British officials in India decided that the education system should be exclusively secular. Drawing on sources from public and private archives, Ivermee presents a study of British/Muslim negotiations over the secularization of colonial Indian education and on the changing nature of secularism across space and time.

Demarcating Japan

Demarcating Japan
Author: Takahiro Yamamoto
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2024-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1684176719

Histories of remote islands around Japan are usually told through the prism of territorial disputes. In contrast, Takahiro Yamamoto contends that the transformation of the islands from ambiguous border zones to a territorialized space emerged out of multilateral power relations. Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, Tsushima, the Bonin Islands, and the Ryukyu Islands became the subject of inter-imperial negotiations during the formative years of modern Japan as empires nudged each other to secure their status with minimal costs rather than fighting a territorial scramble. Based on multiarchival, multilingual research, Demarcating Japan argues that the transformation of border islands should be understood as an interconnected process, where inter-local referencing played a key role in the outcome: Japan’s geographical expansion in the face of domineering Extra-Asian empires.

Liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia

Liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia
Author: Gareth Knapman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2018-10-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351622765

This collection of essays collects the leading scholars on British colonial thought in Southeast Asia to consider the question: what was the relationship between liberalism and the British Empire in Southeast Asia? The empire builders in Southeast Asia: Lord Minto, William Farquhar, John Leyden, Thomas Stamford Raffles, and John Crawfurd - to name a few - were fervent believers in a liberal free trade order in Southeast Asia. Many recent studies of British imperialism, and European imperialism more generally, have addressed how the anti-imperialist tradition of Eighteenth century liberalism was increasingly intertwined with the discourses of empire, freedom, race and economics in the nineteenth century. This collection extends those studies to look at the impact of liberalism on. British colonialism in Southeast Asia and early nineteenth century Southeast Asia we see some of the first attempts at developing multicultural democracies within the colonies, experiments in free trade and attempts to use free trade to prevent war and colonisation.

British Imperialism and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus, 1923-1939

British Imperialism and Turkish Nationalism in Cyprus, 1923-1939
Author: Ilia Xypolia
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2017-11-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1315410834

As Cyprus experienced British imperial rule between 1878 and 1960, Greek and Turkish nationalism on the island developed at different times and at different speeds. Relations between Turkish Cypriots and the British on the one hand, and Greek Cypriots and the British on the other, were often asymmetrical with the Muslim community undergoing an enormous change in terms of national/ethnic identity and class characteristics. Turkish Cypriot nationalism developed belatedly as a militant nationalist and anti-Enosis movement. This book explores the relationship between the emergence of Turkish national identity and British colonial rule in the 1920s and 1930s.

The First World War, Anticolonialism and Imperial Authority in British India, 1914-1924

The First World War, Anticolonialism and Imperial Authority in British India, 1914-1924
Author: Sharmishtha Roy Chowdhury
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 458
Release: 2019-05-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 0429798741

Between 1914, when the Great War began, and 1924, when the Ottoman Caliphate ended, British and Indian officials and activists reformulated political ideas in the context of total war in the Middle East, Gandhian mass mobilisation, and the 1919 Amritsar massacre. Using discussions on travel, spatiality, and landscape as an entry point, The First World War, Anticolonialism and Imperial Authority in British India, 1914–1924 discusses the complex politics of late colonial India and the waning of imperial enthusiasm. This book presents a multifaceted picture of Indian politics at a time when total war and resurgent anticolonial activism were reshaping assumptions about state power, culture, and resistance.

Outskirts of Empire

Outskirts of Empire
Author: John Fisher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351042688

Outskirts of Empire: Studies in British Power Projection investigates the substructure of Britain’s interests in the Near East and beyond during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Essays address themes in British power projection in a geographically wide area encompassing parts of the Ottoman Empire, Morocco and Abyssinia, illuminating interlinking elements of Britain’s power and presence through commerce, religion, consular activity, expatriates, travel and exploration and technology. Through careful investigation of the interface of these themes the book develops a deeper sense of Britain’s presence in the Near East and contiguous areas and highlights the network of Britons who were required to sustain that presence.