Korean origins of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902-1922): Tonghak Peasant Revolt and Sino-Japanese War (1894–5) from an American Perspective (Part 1)

In 1884 the Japanese-sanctioned Gapsin Coup (갑신정병) in Seoul failed resulting in the reassertion of a pro-Chinese regime in the Kingdom of Korea. For ten years between 1884 and 1894 Japan slowly and methodically restored its presence on the peninsula. This was accomplished by encouraging Japanese merchants and farmers to settle Korean lands, accelerating Japanese naval supremacy in East Asia, and effecting commercial treaties designed to slowly accumulate economic and political leverage at the expense of her East Asian neighbor. The actions of Japan during this period, in combination with a growing anti-elitist sentiment among Koreans toward their ruling class, resulted in a rebellion by peasants whose main goals included ousting foreigners from the country and fortifying it from outside influence by creating a strong and modern nation. The Tonghak Peasant Revolt, which prompted both Chinese and Japanese leaders to send troops to Korea as a pretext to protect their respective geostrategic interests, sparked the First Sino-Japanese War.[1]

Right: First Sino-Japanese War 1894/95: Soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army are firing their Murata Type 22 rifles. Source: Wikimedia.

The revolt was also used to showcase Korea on the international stage as an underdeveloped and unstable state that required reforms – a position supported by western powers justifying Japanese actions while simultaneously undermining Korean sovereignty and independence. In essence, the Tonghak Revolt was not only used as pretext for military intervention, but it also reinforced an ongoing narrative supported by powers like Great Britain that continual occupation of Korea by Japan was needed to facilitate reforms. British support for the Japanese in this regard influenced American perceptions of Korea with the result being that U.S. officials eventually supported the Anglo-Japanese position and balance-of-power outlook in East Asia.   

Anglo-Japanese Relations and ‘Corean Question’

The British were the chief western supporters of the Japanese leading up to the outbreak of war in Korea in 1894. With their commercial interests in China informing their regional outlook, the British made a strategic decision in the early 1890s to court Japan. This helped ensure their global empire had a strong East Asian partner willing to both preserve the status quo with China (i.e. unequal treaties) and check the power of Russia in Korea and Manchuria. For the British, Japan was an ideal partner to help maintain their commercial and geostrategic position in the region.[2]

One of the most important advocates of an Anglo-Japanese alliance before its formalization in 1902 was the British diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice. Posted in Japan in 1892, Spring-Rice believed the British had a vested interest in allying with the Japanese to maintain their commercial position in China and keep Russia from expanding in Manchuria. While visiting the Qing dynasty official and diplomat Li Hongzhang that year in Tientsin (Beijing), Spring-Rice wrote to his friend Ronald Munro Ferguson about how the powers advocated Korea independence. Spring-Rice observed, “Germany and England together: France and Russia together – also backed by America. These last are in favor of Corean autonomy. Japan has the same policy. All these last wish Corea to free herself from China.” More significant to the budding Anglo-Japanese entente were Spring-Rice’s comments on Japanese economic inroads into Korea, and how Russia factored into that ongoing “question.” In 1892 the “question” of Korea (spelled with a ‘C’ until the turn of the century) was still undecided, but Spring-Rice was prescient enough to see a brewing conflict over the fate of the peninsula:   

The Japanese have no desire to annex anything Corean except trade, and in that they have partially succeeded. Corea is sinking deeper and deeper into debt to Japan, and it is believed that Japan now wishes to annex the customs administration, now in the hands of China. All this… is an important branch of the great Pacific question. […] The question is, how is she [Russia] to be stopped? Japan, China, Corea and Great Britain acting in concert could stop her. The difficulty is to get China and Japan to act in concert. If we can do that… we can keep off the evil day. But if they quarrel over some Corean question, or excite a civil war in Corea, then Russia can step in at once.[3]

The same geostrategic thinking by British statesmen and diplomats gained momentum as the Sino-Japanese War loomed. British general and diplomat Sir Edmund George Barrow, appointed Commanding Officer of British soldiers in Hong Kong in 1892, believed Japan had “a supreme interest in the reversion of Corea and the western shores of the sea of Japan.” According to Barrow, both Russia and China were opposed to Japanese assertions regarding Korea and concurred that it was a matter of time before hostilities broke out. In his opinion, Korea would play a central role in that conflict and the British needed to choose sides: “The Corean question will certainly be mixed up with the larger question of Russian supremacy in the waters of the North Pacific,” London’s Guardian reported in the summer of 1893, responding to a recent article from Barrow on the Japanese Army. “England herself will be directly interested, so that there are many combinations more improbable than an alliance at some future time between England and Japan for the settlement of this question”.[4]

Right: Ukiyoe nishiki-e woodblock print by Kobayashi Kiyochika Inoue Kichijirô depicting the Naval Battle of the Yellow Sea (Yalu River) in Korea (Chôsen Hôtô kaisen no zu) in the First Sino-Japanese War, dated 1894. Source: Wikimedia.

George Curzon, the Viceroy of India who travelled with Spring-Rice to Korea and China in 1892, saw the geostrategic battle over Korea in a larger context encompassing a future “Pacific Question” – which he envisioned coming to a head sometime in the ensuing century. “In the solution of such a question Japan,” he wrote in 1894, “by virtue of her situation, should be capable of playing a considerable part.” Like most British statesmen opposed to Russian expansion, Curzon believed the growing Trans-Siberian Railway network would “generate a sharp competition with British Asiatic trade.” Curzon posited that Japan and China could work together to oppose a common Russian enemy to “preserve the balance of power in the Far East.” Within Curzon’s geostrategic vision there was little room for an independent Korea – as both Japan and China were vying for primacy there. Curzon wrote, “That that petty kingdom cannot expect for long to retain any real independence… an internal rebellion, may at any moment produce and émeute [riot] or imbroglio”.[5] Curzon’s prognostications of Korean rebellion may have appeared prophetic, but what was clear to many observers was that one way or another the Korean question was going to be settled by conflicts involving larger powers.

Korean authorities were aware of Japanese ambitions vis-à-vis their nation, but many believed that Japanese implementation of domestic reforms at home modeled along western lines would ultimately backfire and weaken them. Seoul’s weekly Hanseong Jubo, a government publication which covered global issues and politics, wrote in 1888 that “the harsh [Japanese] government… is like a tiger, moving without regard to anything”. In essence, many Koreans did not expect the question of reforms to be used against them by Japan and the British to undermine their independence when the Tonghak Rebellion brought the issue to the forefront. It was assumed Japan would not be able to export their reform programs to Korea because of their own internal problems: “Ito [Hirobumi] did not pay attention to the country’s policies and people’s livelihood, the Hanseong Jubo asserted, “but only listened to the western people’s beautiful, glamorous, wealthy, and powerful things, and made them enjoy and use their luxury as well. If he does not abdicate, the party will gather a crowd and rebel.”[6]

US Policy Formation on Korea

The United States’ entrance into the imperial club in the late nineteenth century affected the balance-of-power equation in East Asia. Looking at affairs on the Korean peninsula somewhat indifferently, the U.S. had a growing interest in establishing itself as a Pacific power – particularly after the Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 and brought closer towards an expanding U.S.-Pacific orbit. Although most Americans were far from knowledgeable about Korea during the period, interest in that nation by U.S. officials increased following the 1882 treaty formalizing relations between the two states. From that point forward – as Korean sovereignty was continually threatened by China, Russia, and Japan, many Koreans considered the United States as an alternative ally to balance the regional powers constantly contesting one another over primacy in that country.[7]

Right: Ōishi Masami(大石正巳) was a Japanese statesman in Meiji era. Source: Wikimedia.

In September of 1894, several months after serious revolting broke out in southwestern Korea, and one month after Japan declared war on China after sending soldiers at the request of the Korean king to put down the rebellion, former Consul General Heard co-authored an article which appeared in the North American Review outlining East Asian affairs. Heard noted from the beginning of his essay that opinion in the U.S. was “strongly in favor of Japan, and against China”. He also proffered his view on the Tonghak Revolt by presenting an uncommon critique of the Japanese treatment of the Koreans: “Her present attitude reminds me of the lamb in the fable. ‘You are disturbing my water,’ says the wolf, standing up stream, and proceeds to devour the innocent. ‘You are interfering with my trade,’ says Japan, ‘I must put down these rebellions,’ and takes Korea by the throat.”[8]

Heard harbored suspicions that a stronger Japanese stance towards Korea may have been contrived. In his view the assertion was supported by the appointment of Oishi Masami as minister to Korea in 1892. “It was a common remark in Seoul that Mr. Oishi would be delighted to have a pretext to interfere by force in Korea”. According to Heard, it was “perhaps strange that the opinion was held by more than one person in Seoul that the whole Tong Hak movement was engineered in the Japanese legation.” Heard did not believe the rumors to be true, but did believe “that the whole Tong Hak were playing the Japanese game, though they did not know it”.[9]

Contrasting Heard’s sympathetic portrayal of the Koreans in the North American Review was Durham Stevens. Stevens spent time in Japan as a secretary of the U.S. Legation in Tokyo as an appointee of President Grant, and by the early 1890s was working as a counselor for the Japanese Legation in Washington D.C. Like Cecil Spring-Rice, Stevens was promoter of Japanese activity in Korea and understood better than anyone that he ran the “risk of being considered a prejudiced witness” since he was being paid by them. Nevertheless, Stevens’ essay was a complete reversal of Heard’s implied conspiracy. While painting the Japanese as the victims, Stevens blamed the Tonghak Revolt on “oppressive” Korean officials and the wider war on the Chinese. Although it is undisputed that King Gojong’s call for Chinese assistance in putting down the Tonghak rebellion sparked the Sino-Japanese War, Stevens believed that the call for assistance “was rendered with a precipitancy which smacked of preconcerted arrangement.”[10] Stevens remained a staunch advocate for Japan, which drew the wrath of nationalist-inspired Koreans in the United States to the point that he was later gunned down in San Francisco in 1908.[11]

Regardless of their views on how the revolt began, the dueling accounts of events in Korea by informed Americans with somewhat divergent perspectives was indicative of the general indifference (or unawareness) of Americans of East Asian affairs. Compounding this indifference was a serious economic depression that hit the United States in 1893. For the most part, the foreign policy under President Grover Cleveland regarding Korea, China, and Japan, remained neutral and far from proactive while his administration deferred to a growing international consensus prompted by Anglo-Japanese interests pushing for Korean “reform.” Adding to this deferment was an obvious lack of official Korean representation in Washington D.C. Because of this, most Korean affairs were already being interpreted from a Japanese point of view. In other words, a new generation of Japanese diplomats had astutely learned how to play the diplomatic game according to western rules. One of hundreds of examples in 1894 was press coverage of the newly arrived secretary of the Japanese Legation in Washington, Minister Matsui Keishiro: “Mr. Matsui is one of the keen young men speaking English fluently,” Washington DC’s Evening Star reported, “distinguishing Japan for her diplomacy as well as military powers. He talks interestingly of Corean affairs, the reforms inaugurated by Japan… the Tong Hak rebellion and other events.”[12]  

Right: Photo shows English diplomat Sir Cecil Arthur Spring-Rice (1859-1918), who was the British Ambassador to the United States from 1913 to 1918. (Source: Flickr Commons project, 2009). Source: Wikimedia.

American Reverend William M. Junkin, a presbyterian missionary and publisher of the Korean Repository who later worked in the Gimje area of North Jeolla Province, reported on events in the troubled country in 1895. “‘In conversation with a Japanese friend, not long ago,’” Junkin was quoted in one American newspaper as saying, “‘I remarked that the Tong Haks were the occasion of the Chinese-Japanese war. He showed good appreciation of the word by replying: ‘Yes, the relations of China and Japan had become petroleum, and the Tong Hak the match.’”[13]

Notes

[1] Cho Jae-gon, “The Connection of the Sino-Japanese War and the Peasant War of 1894,” Korea Journal 34, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 45-58; Carl F. Young, Eastern Learning and the Heavenly Way: The Tonghak and Chondogyo Movements and the Twilight of Korean Independence (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2014); Sarah C.M. Paine, The Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895: Perceptions, Power, and Primacy (Cambridge University Press, 2003); Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). Peter Duus and Ramon H. Myers, (ed.), The Japanese Informal Empire in China, 1895-1937 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). For traditional Korean diplomacy, see: Takemichi Hara, “Korea, China, and Western Barbarians: Diplomacy in Early Nineteenth-Century Korea,” Modern Asian Studies 32, no. 2 (1998): 389-430.  

[2] Phillips Payson O’Brien (ed.), The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922 (New York and London: Routledge Curzon, 2004). See: Yu Suzuki, Britain, Japan and China, 1876-1895: East Asian International Relations Before the First Sino-Japanese War (London: Routledge Curzon, 2020); Anthony Best, British Engagement with Japan, 1854-1922: The Origins and Course of an Unlikely Alliance (London: Routledge Curzon, 2020).

[3] Stephen Gwynn (ed.), The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice: a Record, Vol. 1 (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1929), 137. Letter dated October 24, 1892. Both Cecil Spring-Rice and Ronald Munro Ferguson were good friends of Theodore Roosevelt before becoming the 26^th president. See: David H. Burton, Theodore Roosevelt and hi English Correspondents (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1973). See: William Francis Mannix (ed.), Memoirs of Li Hung Chang (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company), 1913), 105-118, 249-260.   

[4] The Guardian, London, August 29, 1893. “The Military Strength of Japan”

[5] George Nathaniel Curzon, Problems of the Far East: Japan – Korea – China (London and New York: Longman, Greens, & Co., 1894), 397, 279, 398.

[6] “民心蠢動”, 한성주보 [漢城周報], 1888/01/3. 국립중앙도서관: 대한민국 신문 아카이브: [Hanseong Jubo, January 30, 1888. “People’s Spiritual Movement”. National Library of Korea: Korean Newspaper Archive (NLK: KNA), http://www.nl.go.kr/newspaper/]

[7] See: William Michael Morgan, Pacific Gibraltar: U.S.-Japanese Rivalry Over the Annexation of Hawaii, 1885-1898 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011).

[8] Augustine F. Heard Jr., Durham W. Stevens, and Howard Martin, “China and Japan in Korea,” The North American Review 159, no. 454 (Sept. 1894): 301-2.

[9] See: Kyu Hyun Kim, “The Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895): Japanese National Integration and Construction of the Korean ‘Other’,” International Journal of Korean History 17, no. 1 (Feb. 2012), 8. “In March 1894, Kim Ok-kyun [Gapsin Coup] was assassinated in Shanghai. Characterizing his death as a tragic fall of an honorable activist… Japanese newspapers used it to attack the passivity and incompetence of the [Korean] government. …and called for a stronger policy towards Korea by the Japanese government.”  

[10]  Augustine F. Heard Jr., Durham W. Stevens, and Howard Martin, “China and Japan in Korea,” 304-6.

[11] For a look at a eulogy of Stevens from Japan’s Ambassador to the U.S., see: Kogoro Takahira, “Durham White Stevens,” The North American Review 188, no. 632 (July):13-20.

[12] Evening Star, Washington D.C., March 7, 1895 “Corean Affairs”; The Detroit Free Press, March 7, 1905. “The Condition of Corea: Some of the Reforms Inaugurated by Japan”; Saint-Joseph News-Press, St. Louis, March 7, 1895. “To Modernize Korea”; The Baltimore Sun, March 8, 1895; Pittsburgh Daily Post, March 8, 1895.    

[13] Democrat and Chronicle, Rochester, New York. June 2, 1895. “Religious Strife: Trouble in Korea Over the Establishment of a New Sect.” Quoted in an “article by W.M. Junkin in The Korean Repository”. Gratitude is extended to scholar Dr. An Son-Jae (Brother Anthony), professor emeritus at Sogang University, who, on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society Korea (RAS) and Academy of Korean Studies (AKS), compiled the Korean Repository material originally published by the Trilingual Press in Seoul in 1892, and from 1895 to 1898. The Tonghak Peasant Revolt has a few names, such as the ‘Tonghak Peasant Revolution’ (동학 농민 혁명) and ‘Tonghak Movement’ (동학운동). ‘Tonghak’ means ‘Eastern Learning.’