American sociologist historian Carole Cameron Shaw has just published a book through Seoul National University Press that claims the United States actively intervened in Japan’s annexation of Korea [Kukmin Ilbo, Korean] and provided astronomical amount of financial support to Tokyo during the process, reports the Kukmin Ilbo.
The book, The Foreign Destruction of Korean Independence [Seoul Selection], describes in detail how the administration of Theodore Roosevelt gave tacit consent to Japan’s occupation of Korea. It provides materials found in Harvard University Library and the Library of Congress, including letters between U.S. consuls in Korea, China and Japan and Roosevelt and Secretary of State discussing Korea policy, documents and new reports.
In particular, it reveals for the first time (?) that Japan received loans—through the good offices of Roosevelt—from large U.S. and British corporations just prior to the 1904 Russo-Japanese War to finance its war budget. Citing a letter by Andrew Carnegie, Shaw said through major U.S. businessmen like Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, Roosevelt provided Japan with some 700 million yen to pay its war costs. She also showed that the United States employed a strategy to exclude Korea and China from the Portsmouth Peace Treaty [Wikipedia], which ended the Russo-Japanese War, citing the personal documents of those who participated in the treaty.
Academics say Shaw’s work is the first to use original materials from the United States to show how the U.S. government was deeply involved in Japan’s annexation of Korea. Japan has been claiming that the United States and Great Britain OK’s Japanese control of the Korean Peninsula. Thanks to Shaw’s research results, it is now possible to refute those claims by showing that Japanese control of the peninsula, acknowledged by the United States, was immoral and illegal.
Or so the Kukmin Ilbo says.
Lee Tae=jin, the dean of SNU’s liberal arts school and the leader of a team re-examining the historical and legal circumstances surrounding Japan’s annexation of Japan, said that since they found it difficult to get a hold of U.S. materials, Korean scholars have till now been unable to formulate a proper response to Japanese claims. He said Shaw’s research would go a long way in resolving the history battles between Korea and Japan.
Shaw, who majored in Korean Language and Modern Chinese History at Harvard University, came to Korea in 1959 with her missionary parents. She finished high school in Seoul. She said (and I’m translating), “Think about what the United States did to the sovereignty of a small nation 100 years ago in the name of the ‘public good’… I wrote this book because I wanted to express my apologies as an American.”
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110 Comments
The fact that Japan got a lot of loans from American bankers is now a new discovery. This is the first time I’ve heard it used in a way that twists things to make it sound like America was a central force “in helping” Japan annex Korea, though.
Wow! I’ll have to read the book before I make any judgements, though the idea that Korea and China were interested parties in any peace treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War has already activated my “WTF” meter. I sincerely hope the facts she lays out speak for themselves.
By that reasoning China and other countries in East Asia are supporting the US in their invasion of Iraq by buying US government bonds.
Although James and Shak make good points, as does Lirelou, I’m joining the latter on the fence until I’ve read this. But in the meantime, the needle on my BS meter is already quivering considering that this book wasn’t issued by a US academic (or even trade) publisher.
“The fact that Japan got a lot of loans from American bankers is now a new discovery.”
oops, I meant to type “not” instead of “now.”
Well, I’d use the term “scholar” guardedly. I hate to get all credentialistic, but someone with an undergraduate degree from the 1950s, no higher degrees, no other major (or even minor, from what I could find), and publishing through a non-academic house that specializes in promoting Koprean national interests (and receives partial funding from the government) – I think just about any academic worth their salt would already be looking at this book edgewise.
I’m curious to see what the book has to say, but I wonder if all this politicking and finger-pointing (and offering “apologies as an American”) will get to the heart of the historical matter, which will not just look at Korea vs. Japan vs. the US, but at the geopolitical context of the times.
If America bears any “responsibility” for Korea’s inability to defend itself and be annexed by Japan, that assumes that the US had the power/resources to dictate terms to Japan. And it simply didn’t.
The point is that around the time the agreement was being made, Japan’s military had grown immensely, it was just about to get busy trouncing the Russians in the first instance of a non-European power defeated a European power in a war, 10 years after Japan had trounced China; and the US was busy consolidating its power and control (for better or worse) over the Phillipines, and had just finished a war with Spain.
And the geopolitical situation in 1904-05 was much different than it had been in 1883, when the US had even less power to do anything but express its interests in Korea (along with pretty much everyone else in the region), but lacked the muscle to really do much about it. And Japan at that point was not nearly the formidable player it would be even in 1894, or in 1904.
It was a totally different ballgame. But to look at the historical agent of “the US” as this all-powerful historical agent that remains unchanged over history (”all-powerful America is screwing us now, screwed us when it split the peninsula, and even screwed us when it didn’t do anything to help us, which it agreed to do back before America had even established a navy worth speaking of!”). That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
If some rich financiers and other interests were trying to get rich in the process of the looming annexation of Korea, that’s not necessarily proof that “the US” assisted in that, especially when it looked inevitable at that point anyway. The point is, America couldn’t have saved Korea even if it had WANTED to, or even had an INTEREST in doing so.
Frankly, the Japanese were a good bet, the US had interests in playing the Japanese against the Russians in that bet (remember, it’s not just about Korea, but the other players as well), and would put Japan in better graces so as not to interfere with American interests in Phillipines.
You certainly don’t need a Ph.D to figure this out (but even a masters or some major previous publications in a peer-reviewd journal would help).
I’m curious to see what’s there, but I doubt any new specifics will be that revealing, given the obvious context of the geopolitical situation.
In the end, two countries bear guilt/responsibility for subjugation/colonization, and those are Korea and Japan. Japan invaded, and Korea, for whatever reasons, wasn’t able to defend itself. And those reasons, whatever you want to argue they are, certainly can’t be pinned on the US.
But I’m sure this will make good copy, the newspapers will grind up more grist for the anti-American mill, and few will actually read the book even as they cite it as “proof” that the US is now responsible for JAPANESE colonization as well.
America’s done some bad shit, but you can’t really pin JAPANESE colonization on the US. Come on.
By the way, I blogged about this already, but forgot to put the link in the comment. Sorry!
Grr. And I meant “no other major (or minor, from what I could find) PUBLICATIONS,
Sorry - could you consolidate these 3 comments?
What Metro said. Also, sociologists rarely get sociology right, let alone history.
I would need to read this one as well to tell if it were garbage or not. The author might be like David Bergamini, whose book “Japanese Imperial conspiracy” was criticized, because of his scholastic credentials, nevertheless, his work had merit.
The timing of this book is quite auspicious (if not suspicious) however and I will need to crack it open and compare.
‘Well, I’d use the term “scholar” guardedly. I hate to get all credentialistic, but someone with an undergraduate degree from the 1950s, no higher degrees, no other major (or even minor, from what I could find), and publishing through a non-academic house that specializes in promoting Koprean national interests (and receives partial funding from the government) – I think just about any academic worth their salt would already be looking at this book edgewise.’ poster
what are YOUR credentials? should we take what you say about korea with a grain of salt? do you have any books published? what makes your critique of a book any more valid than the author’s critique on us behavior?
the only thing you’ve done here with your post is assasinate the author of a book you haven’t even read.
‘..published through a house that promotes korean national interests.’ poster
‘a tale of two mouths’ by pawi kirogi
‘hey it says here in the ‘chosun ilbo’ that america is the number one producer of mass murderers.’ barney
‘yeah, anything published by koreans is a lie. i never beieve anything they write.’ donald
‘it also says here that korean men are the number one rapists in he world.’ barney
‘i always knew it.’ donald
“Well, I’d use the term “scholar” guardedly. I hate to get all credentialistic, but someone with an undergraduate degree from the 1950s, no higher degrees, no other major (or even minor, from what I could find), and publishing through a non-academic house that specializes in promoting Koprean national interests (and receives partial funding from the government) – I think just about any academic worth their salt would already be looking at this book edgewise.”
Sure, my thoughts exactly. It’s not the reason I won’t bother reading the book, though. I’m far more interested in post Korean War events.
PS. “You certainly don’t need a Ph.D to figure this out (but even a masters or some major previous publications in a peer-reviewd journal would help).”
Sorry, but this does make you sound a bit like a snob (’credentialistic’ maybe be a lexical device that is sometimes found in academia…but it isn’t a real word, you know. Don’t need a PhD in linguistics to know that.)
Carole Cameron Shaw on the US in Iraq [http://www.pierretristam.com/B.....062006.htm]:
What a finely-honed instrument of historical discrimination her mind is.
I thank Sperwer for saving me the trouble…”demote the terrorists to a subhuman status”…classic…and she even gets nazis in there….
Well, nulji, her academic credentials appear to be limited to proofreading the English of medical journal articles written by Korean speakers.
Just a correction in the post—I meant historian, not sociologist.
There is, I believe, a reasonable argument that the triple intervention by France, Germany and Russia in the peace talks at the end of the Sino Japanese war was a major reason for the Russo-Japan war and hence for much of the badness that happened after it. Had the triple intervention not occured, Japan probably wouldn’t have needed to fight the Russians - and they would have had a broader economy to do so if they did need to fight. As it was Japan nearly went bust fighting Russia in 1904/5 so yes possibly had evil money men in the UK and US not bought some Japanese debt then yes the Japanese could have lost.
But what goog woud that have done Korea? If Japan had lost Korea would have been ruled by Russia. That would have been preferable? Its hard to draw parallels between the two regimes but I think it is fair to say that the Baltic states, not to mention Eastern Europe didn’t appreciate being ruled by the Soviets and I’m not particularly convinced that imperial Russia was much better than its Soviet successor.
I’ll of course have to reserve judgment until reading it, but it does sound something like Shorrock’s take on U.S. involvement in Kwangju; everything taken out of context (State cables, which he does not even reference specifically) to produce a provocative but ultimately false picture (drivel, actually). Or like to old “South Korea started the war” claim by Cumings.
“Lee Tae=jin, the dean of SNU’s liberal arts school and the leader of a team re-examining the historical and legal circumstances surrounding Japan’s annexation of Japan, said that since they found it difficult to get a hold of U.S. materials…”
Freedom of Information Act
To Pawikirogi -
I don’t take responsibility for what other people have said, so don’t lump me in there with them. And as for having had to pay my dues, pass my masters exam and also advance to candidacy under the supervision of actual scholars who put my ass over the fire for 7 years, and actually participated in conferences and published academic papers, I’m more qualified to write that book than she is – and I still wouldn’t do it, because I’m still wet behind the ears and have yet to finish MY doctoral dissertation. But academic credentials (by the way, I was being slangy, since scholars generally don’t say “hate to ‘get all’” when they say things, either, on topo of me already knowing that “jiggy,” like the word “credentialistic,” isn’t a real word) DO count for something, even if they don’t define the basis of one’s authority.
So yes, people in graduate school do actually do things besides sounding “snobbish,” which I cold care less about sounding.
I’m suspicious of someone with no formal academic training beyond undergraduate, and whose training ended in the 50’s, and has not worked as an active academic, writing as a historian and being treated with the same authority as say, an Andre Schmid.
Did I say I dismissed her point? No - I just said it made me suspicious. I’ll read her book. Maybe I’ll be surprised. But I doubt it.
nulji’s implied endorsement has to count for something — AGAINST this book.
pawikirogi
I fully agree with you on this. I think that several of the esteemed readers of Marmot’s Hole - especially those in academia - need to wake up and smell the coffee. You are condemning the book and the author without having read it. Pompous and assinine. History is not rocket science - by this I mean that anyone can become a historian if they have the passion, love and dedication to dig for information that has been lost or overlooked.
Mrs. Shaw’s family is a well-established family in Korea’s past and she does have a great interest and love for this country. Can anyone explain to me why she is not fit to write about Korea’s history? She spent hours and days going through old archives that have not been examined in a great many years and she believes that she has found something that others have overlooked. How can you judge her ability if you have not even looked at the material?
As for the PhD - Bill Gates didn’t need one - and I am sure that we all respect his knowledge of computers and of making money.
Read the book before making an ass out of yourselves - that way you can at least point out where, is she has, gone wrong.
That last line should have been:
Read the book before making an ass out of yourselves - that way you can at least point out where, if she has, gone wrong.
‘Or like to old “South Korea started the war” claim by Cumings.’
Haha, agreed Richardson. Well we know of SOMEONE who finds Cumings appealing since that certain someone is always quoting him to support the argument that Japan’s colonization was GOOD for Korea and improved Korea.
As for this lady’s book…..I reserve judgment since I haven’t read it. But one thing I WILL say is that just because it is potentially critical of my country, the US, does not mean I will be biased against it automatically. I hope we can all keep an open mind about this, especially those of us who have not read it (which sounds like all of us).
A good place for some reading on the Russo-Japanese war is, of course, the Russian Japanese War Society. Members of this body have certainly been aware of the loans to the Japanese for a number of years.
Incidentally, I am surprised that the American purchase of Alaska in 1867 from the Russians was not added to all this new information to prove that the Americans engineered the war from both sides.
“But academic credentials (by the way, I was being slangy, since scholars generally don’t say “hate to ‘get all’” when they say things, either, on topo of me already knowing that “jiggy,” like the word “credentialistic,” isn’t a real word) DO count for something, even if they don’t define the basis of one’s authority.”
Apparently, you don’t get sarcasm. I guess what the Brits say about you Americans is true.
“Or like to old “South Korea started the war” claim by Cumings.”
I don’t think that’s what he was saying. I was under the impression that he was aiming more along the lines that its difficult to say who really started it because it was a civil war. I thought that he made the very pertinent point that civil wars grow over a period of time out of civil unrest, they do not occur spontaneously out of a single event. I remember that to drive his point, he mentioned how a foreign observer who remarked seeing evidence of artillery exchanges over the border in 1948. He also made mention of instances of armed exchanges and incursions that originated from both sides prior to the war.
This is nothing new she had to discover. I have no problem pissing on the book just from the highlights of the main claims.
I don’t know if these are the same two people, but I got a chance to see a conference on the Legality of the 1910 Annexation of Korea a few years ago, and a SNU prof (he was fairly old and again I don’t know if it was this guy above) who was leading the conference spent most or at least half of his presentation talking about Roosevelt and how the US had deserted Korea and exchanged it for the Philippines - yada yada yada. He even paused a moment after reading a quote from Roosevelt’s letter where he rhetorically asked why the US should defend Korea when Korea didn’t lift a finger to defend itself —- and he took off his glasses and said that he knew he was a historian and needed to be academic, but hearing words like that just made his blood boil as a Korean - yada yada yada…
At the end of the 2 or 3 days of presentations by South and North Korean scholars, the American scholars there to observe the conference got a chance to voice an opinion, and this female American scholar started out with a long spiel concerning the 1910 Annexation treaty by noting a more recent “failed document” —– the recently published US government findings the Nogunri Massacre.
Depressing….
Again, I don’t know if this woman is that woman. I looked for a photo of her with no luck after reading this post.
But, I did find this gem:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.....mments.php
I don’t have to read her book to get a good clue she’s a twit.
There are a good number of freely available books via Google book search section on this period. I’ve been reading some of them since I have time and this is a period I was interested in but did not study in detail before.
All of these books were published around the time of the events we’re talking about.
Korea’s Fight for Freedom
Contemporary Politics in the Far East
Korean in transition
Problems in the Far East
The Mastery of the Far East
The New Far East
The Passing of Korea
The Peoples and Politics of the Far East
The Russo-Japanese Conflict
The West in the East from an American Point of View
International Law and the Russo-Japanese War
Japanese Expansion and American Policies
The Russo-Japanese War
America’s Stake in the Far East
Asia at a Crossroads
Again, nothing stated as a main theme in her book is new. At the time, when these big events were unfolding, like with today, there were people - especially media and intellectuals and politicans - who became heatedly concerned about the flow of events. There were major claims against US police in the Far East and major defenses of it.
“US police” = US policy —- is that what we call a Freudian slip?…
“The fact that Japan got a lot of loans from American bankers is not a new discovery.”
True. Not only the U.S., but also Great Britain. And Russia was backed by French bankers.
The key person was Takahashi Korekiyo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takahashi_Korekiyo
“For his success in raising the foreign loans critical to the Japanese government during and after the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, he was appointed to the House of Peers in 1905.”
And an American banker Jacob Schiff.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Schiff
“Thanks to Shaw’s research results, it is now possible to refute those claims by showing that Japanese control of the peninsula, acknowledged by the United States, was immoral and illegal.”
Wait. Where is this conclusion coming from? I don’t understand this logic. I guess I need to read it, but there is no way of buying it here.
If you look at history, there were many cases where a neutral country offered a loan to a country at a war. And it was not illegal at all.
PS. If you read Japanese, here is an interesting story about Takahashi Korekiyo and his mission.
http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~ni.....og291.html
“….Citing a letter by Andrew Carnegie, Shaw said through major U.S. businessmen like Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, Roosevelt provided Japan with some 700 million yen to pay its war costs…”
In fact the key diplomatic event of the period for Japan — what gave her the confidence to take on Russia in Feb 1904 — was the Anglo Japanese alliance concluded in Jan of 1902:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....e_Alliance
Relatively ignored now by those who have a current political agenda, since the UK is no longer a major factor in war and diplomacy in NE Asia. US wouldn’t have been a factor either at the time, except for its acquisition of the Phillippines, which as metropol reminds us was the major motivation for the US interest in events in NE Asia.
I’ll be interested to see if Ms. Shaw acknowledges any of that in her work. US Congress did not want to undergo the enormous (for that time) expense of having to build/improve coastal defense fortifications in the Phillippines against a hypothetical Japanese opponent — not that the US public of the time would have been willing to do anything about a possible Japanese invasion/annexation of Korea anyway. The watchword was “No entangling foreign alliances”, based as I recall on George Washington’s farewell address. It’s fantastic for anyone who has any knowledge of the US politics of that period to imagine that the US could ever have risked a war for Korean independence.
I’m pretty sure that both Carnegie (a native-born Scotsman) and JP Morgan were Anglophiles; I think Morgan’s second wife was an Englishwoman (maybe a titled one? I seem to recall that, but the wiki article doesn’t say).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan
It would be interesting to track the details of what actual investments were made in Japanese government bonds by these two US financiers in the early 1900’s, as opposed to what somebody merely said or proposed in a surviving letter. I’ll be impressed if this author has actually done this.
As the wiki article on Carnegie indicates, Carnegie had sold out his major steel business interests in 1901 to Morgan and had begun his philanthropic career. It’s not entirely clear to me from the wiki article in exactly what manner Carnegie then held his assets, as he began dispersing them.
I suppose he wouldn’t have lost his eye for a good investment, but whether either of these two rather hard-headed businessmen would have made large investments in risky Japanese war bonds simply on the say-so of a US politician seems to me rather far-fetched. Maybe if the rate was high enough, and their confidential agents overseas were reporting back to them on the relative efficiency of the Japanese military vs that of Czarist Russia, they might have done so.
However, I think the general consenus amongst the continental European financiers at that time was that it was unimaginable that a European military could ever be matched by by an Asian one. I recall a sentence in a book I read long ago about the Russo-Japanese war, about how the price of Russian govt bonds trading on the Bourse in Paris fell on news of the battle of Tsushima, while that of previously cheap Japanese war bonds rose enormously.
Of course if she has done some detailed financial forensics on the actual movement of funds by Carnegie and Morgan, that would prove most interesting. However, I can’t imagine that President T. Roosevelt would have been able to provide any sort of US govt guarantee to private financiers for such a risky investment; it would be interesting to know if His Britannic Majesty’s government was willing to do so privately.
Don’t know how one would determine all this a century later, assunming any records survive. No US income tax at that time if I’m not mistaken so I don’t know if there would have been any public records kept by US govt.
If the quotes from Sperwer and USinK are from the same Shaw who wrote this book, there’s good reason to be dismissive of her. It’s shallow, quasi-academic tripe like “demote the terrorists to a subhuman status”that turns me off to anything else she might write. Also the way she Godwins her own arguments with references to national socialists and the final solution when talking about the U.S. administration and Israel.
My background is probably farther to the left than her even, and this kind of morally absolutist rhetoric annoys the hell out me–it negates any relevant criticism she has. It also does not bode well for the book she wrote on Korea.
toru,
Thank you for the Wiki link on Jacob Schiff. I hadn’t heard of him before, but he seems quite interesting, and his influence was remarkable.
If anyone can recommend a book on Schiff that’s not too dry, I’d appreciate it.
gbnhj:
Naomi Coehn’s biography is quite good, and is probably the only current account (there’s an older one from the teens or 20’s):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ.....mp;s=books
One and the same.
Basically, the Great Powers were playing poker and smoking fat cigars. Korea was a bargaining chip on the table. Not hard to believe at all.
“Korea was a bargaining chip on the table.”
Or maybe a dead fish in the pond?
http://photoimg.enjoyjapan.nav.....571400.jpg
by “Georges Ferdinand Bigot”
Some great posts there……
While I agree with a lot of what you have posted, I do believe that it is not only reasonable, but intelligent, to read the book before being so dismissive. Even if most of the book does not meet your expectations and you later dismiss her information, at least you will understand her thinking process. I never agreed with Bruce Cummins’ theories on the Korean War, but I had to respect what he wrote and honor the fact that the information that he had at the time supported his claims. History is always changing as new information comes to light. To lightly dismiss something, without reviewing it, just because it does not agree with your thinking is wrong.
Mr. Neff, true, one shouldn’t shoot the messenger, and if Shaw has anything worthy to contribute by way of historical evidence it should stand on its own, hopefully not negated by the insufferable rhetoric she has deployed elsewhere.
By the way, really enjoy your articles at OhMyNews.
Yes, Neff’s Late Chosun articles were very nice.
I wonder why the Korea Times no longer prints them.
Concur with the first part of this sentence, with the qualification that it should stand or fall on its own. And obviously, if she’s got the evidence then her preposterous rhetoric on other subjects is beside the point.
BUT, I’ve now waded through a couple hundred (turgid) pages of the book and (so far)
1. despite recourse to some unofficial correspondence of one Morgan, later US Consul to Korea after 1904, penned before he had any official position, she doesn’t have anything remotely like conclusive new evidence, let alone a smoking gun, (just a lot of portentous posturing about conspiracies of the Old Money, the New Money and the No-Money, mostly rehashed from a forty-five year old secondary source, psycho-slander (mostly of TR) and a very tendentious account of Morgan’s correspondence;
2. in the absence thereof she is given to just the sorts of unbridled speculation, driven by misplaced moralism and a penchant for conspiracy theories - balanced on lotsa “must have” allegations that it would be polite to call inferences - that would make Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn, let alone the architects of the Patriot Act blush, that you’d expect from her pronouncements elsewhere on other subjects.
She’s also got a taste for prose of a purplish tint that itself is a measure of the rather shallow grasp she has of the way things work, e.g.,
The New Yorker’s stop that metaphor department would need an entire railroad marshalling yard for that collection.
Sperwer: Thanks for taking one for the team.
Sperwer, thanks for the heads-up - I’ll check it out.
On that topic, Cumings ignored information contrary to his opinion, and dramatically overemphasized that which supported it, flimsy though it was and is. He was just out to make a name for himself, and that’s exactly what he did. I don’t find anything to respect in any of that.
The only good thing about this thread is that it has made me want to read a good book on T. Roosevelt and his tenure.
I also think Robert Neff is being way to generous with Cumings. He was full of crap before the Soviet archives became available, it just took material from those archives to convince some others of the truth.
Like with Sherrock on Kwangju, and apparently this woman in her book, from the outset of Cumings work, you could understand from the text itself he was twisting things beyond supportable limits.
I found the stuff on the people’s committees of 1945 particularly forced.
And the fact that he was pointing to those committees in the southern end of the peninsula as what should have happened if the US had left it alone - and clear knowledge of what North Korea had accomplished through the same things up North and clear knowledge of what “people’s democracy” was like in the North for decades before Mr. Cumings began writing ——- is enough to want to take his book pre-Russian archives opening, and wack him over the head with it.
As I said yesterday —- if he had just been born 10 to 20 years earlier, Cumings could have at least come off more honest because he could have just dropped most of the pretense and been a clear, direct advocate of communism over the ills of capitalism without having to water it down.
On prejudging this woman’s book — I don’t have to bend down, scoop up a pile of brown mushy stuff that smells like crap and shove it in my mouth before I have a right to say it is crap.
If the Marmot is accurage in the info he put in the post, I can get an idea of what the woman is saying in her work, and if I have information from elsewhere about the topic(s) at hand, I can prejudge the book.
Of course, if subsequent information comes up, like reading the book, that shows where my prejudgement was off base, I can say that.
I don’t have to hold my tounge until I have read her book to make some basic points.
I again recommend anybody remotely interested in her claims and this time period to take advantage of the Google Book search.
There is a LOT of material up now written during and soon after this time period specifically on US policy and the situation in Korea with Japan.
usinkorea wrote:
“Like with Sherrock on Kwangju, and apparently this woman in her book, from the outset of Cumings work, you could understand from the text itself he was twisting things beyond supportable limits.”
Why do you imply “this woman in her book” as being in the category of a questionable source? Have you read the book yet? Or it merely that she wrote something potentially critical of the US that makes you question her? I have no opinion yet as I haven’t read the book…..but I don’t know why others are so quick dismiss her who also haven’t read the book.
And don’t threaten to shoot me again because I disagree with you.
JK wrote:
“Why do you imply “this woman in her book” as being in the category of a questionable source? Have you read the book yet? Or it merely that she wrote something potentially critical of the US that makes you question her? I have no opinion yet as I haven’t read the book…..but I don’t know why others are so quick dismiss her who also haven’t read the book.”
It is presumptuous to accuse commenters of being critical of the book because it is “potentially critical of the US.” Commenters have specifically mentioned the author’s weak credentials and previous works as grounds for being skeptical of the book’s claims, as presented in the linked article. One cannot say “This book is crap” without having read it, but one can say, “Based on the description of the content, excerpts, and author’s reputation, I am doubtful of the claims made.”
I think Sperwer can save us all W14,000 by posting a book review when he’s finished.
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WHO CARES!!! It’s all in the past. I ain’t no academic, nor have I delved into various archives or research, but me finks, the problem Korea had back then was.. IT HAD NO POWERFUL FRIENDS.
So, over 100 years later, and guess what? Korea is isolating and pushing away any powerful friends it may have. Yep, history repeats itself.
Let’s see who are Korea’s friends…….
Mmmmm, there’s China-NOT!
Japan-NOT!
USA-Soon to be NOT!
Russia-NOT!
Not even their brothers to the North who they kiss ass
Thanks Sperwer for sparing the rest of us. I was never a history buff and already read far too many books like this trying to plumb the depths of “han,” which I now realize is bottomless….
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I may. In the meantime, here are a couple more howlers that further demonstrate the quality of Ms. Shaw’s historical judgment:
In September 1905, shortly after the conclusion of the Portsmouth Peace Conference that ended the Russo-Japanese War, President Roosevelt’s daughter Alice traveled to Seoul, after having stayed in Japan in August. Her visit is described in the Korea Review, whose editor Homer Hulbert is a particular favorite of Shaw’s because of his championing the cause of Korea, in a passage that Shaw quotes at length:
I have quoted this passage in its entirety, as it appears in Shaw’s book, in order to enable readers to appreciate the full effect of Shaw’s characterization of it, i.e.,
I guess Ms. Shaw must be a Macdonald.
In the interests of fairness, I also note that Shaw later tries to climb down from this bit of preposterous hyperbole but, figuratively-speaking, doesn’t quite get her feet on terra firma:
Ach, laddie, that’s a wee bit of a stretch.
Shaw’s definitely imbibed the kimchi Kool-Aid. Also her writing edges way to close to the Dan Brown school of prose to take seriously.
“too” close, dammit
So, doing something “for” a nation is limited to that generation who did it or more specifically those members of that generation who actually did it….but…..doing something “to” a nation is a cross-generationally thing….I guess…
Sperwer,
You must have an iron stomach to wade through that muck. I’ll admit I don’t know much about Alice Roosevelt, but it seems that she was an unconventional and spirited young woman who was along for the ride when then-Secretary of War Howard Taft went to Japan to finalize the treaty. The press, in fact, scorned Alice’s junket as “Alice in Plunderland.” Young Alice brought back sumptuous silks from China but no royal heads, not even figuratively.
When the book starts revealing all those smoking guns from dusty archives, please let us know.
I guess it is time for me to wade into this too. OMNI has asked me to do a book review on the book and like Sperwer have been reading it over the last couple of days.
In response to Sperwer - I agree at time the prose is very heavy-handed but it is her style as has been demonstrated by some of the earlier posts. It tends to be difficult to read at times but to be honest reminds of Bruce Cummins writing style.
There are several subjects that she presents on the subject that I do not agree with, but they are her opinion - I fully agree with Sperwer on the Alice Roosevelt part….I don’t think it was a deliberate act to erase an embarrassing visit from the annals of history…because it was not an embarrassing visit. There is a great deal more to the story that she could have added including (have to check this - I am completely doing this without notes) other commentators who made comments about the incident and stated that the Japanese tried to prevent certain flags from being displayed - again I need to check my citations on that. The point is - I think she should have gone into much more detail on a subject that she broaches and then quickly dismisses.
There is one thing that does really get my attention with this book - and it is not academic - and that is the cover. I think the cover looks cheap and looks like the old publications put out by the Korean universities in the 70s and 80s. It is a shame….
Positive things about the book - if you are relatively new to the period it does provide you with a lot of information that is not found in other books such as Frank Cowan and (first name I forgot) Stout who assaulted the Korean Prince in the United States (shameless plug here - but that story in much great detail will be up on OMNI in about four days).
There is information in the book that deserves to be looked at….and while I have obviously not read as far as Sperwer has I still think that the 16,000 I paid for the book is not bad.
Wow - talk about a poorly worded posting….apologies to all…just woke up and ask that you over look errors and missing words.
Sonagi:
I think Alice comes in for it from Shaw, the daughter of missionaries and an elder of the Presbyterian Church, at least in part because of the former’s well-known disdain for Christianity as “voodoo”, cited by Shaw.
It’s also worth noting that while Secretary of War Taft, with whose party Roosevelt was traveling, visited Japan for a month and then went on to China, as part of the Progressives’ policy of “Open Door” diplomacy, the official delegation skipped Seoul. That fact alone negatives Shaw’s innuendo about Alice’s visit constituting a fraudulent gesture of friendship by the USGOV on Korea, and is further reinforced by both the official messages conveyed by Minister Morgan regarding the US position on Korean participation in the Portsmouth peace process and the prospect of American interference with Japanese designs and the advice to Emperor Kojang of Senator Newlands (Nevada), who was a member of Roosevelt’s party, that the Emperor retain the services of a good international lawyer to plead the case for Korean independence.
I agree with Neff that there is material in the book that is worth looking at, but it is a trial to sift through the dross of Shaw’s awful prose, artless innuendo the portentousness of which is inversely proportional to the slenderness and often the sheer impertinence of the matronly gossip she adduces as evidence therefor and her pervasive and usually misplaced moralism.
Here’s another howler:
Shaw reprints a substantial portion of a letter from one Lawrence Abbot, the son of the editor of Outlook and a member of its editorial staff to George Kennan, a writer for the journal (NOT the much younger diplomat). Abbot’s letter rehearses all the issues raised by the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War, in particular the question whether Japan will create a modern Oriental Empire to replace China’s and act as the gateway through which the currents of modern civilization will flow into China and thus unleash social forces that will profoundly affect the entire world. He then goes on to to say to Kennan:
Shaw mentions that this letter is cited in an American academic monograph on US foreign policy as an example of TR’s growing anxiety about Japanese hegemony in Asia - (I guess we have to take her word for that, though it’s hardly clear how a letter by a young editor of a journal of opinion can be construed as representing the thinking of the President.)
But Shaw doesn’t find this convincing:
I think it will come as news to many that the expression “Yellow Peril” is not an expression of alarm; but let Shaw finish:
This passage reeks even before it slides into the abyss of assimilating early 20th century Korea into the Jewish holocaust. First of all, it’s curious indeed that an article so allegedly demeaning of Korea is NOT quoted, so that the reader is invited to elide Abbot’s description of Japan as the “Yellow Peril” with Korea. Moreover, Shaw manages thus surreptitiously to attribute this view to TR himself.
Please excuse these periodic acts of bulimia; it’s the only way I can keep reading and annotating this dreck.
“Mr. Kennan would indeed deliver on his first assignment in October, but it would be along the theme of Korea’s danger to the civilized world, much like a cancer virus is a danger to the human body”
Does she provide any primary sources to support this statement? Speeches? Letters between high ranking officials? On what basis did she determine that Kennan viewed Korea as a “danger to the civilized world”?
And one more question:
“As Hulbert would later write, there was nothing like it in all of literature; well, not until Nazi literature flooded Germany demoting Jews to a subhuman category.”
What exactly does “it” refer to?
Presumbably, “it” refers to Kennan’s alleged “theme of Korea’s danger to the civilized world, much like a cancer virus is a danger to the human body”.
And, no, she references nothing to support this rather incendiary allegation - which also is very central to the main argument - other than his article for Outlook, of which she provides no supporting excerpt - although the book is filled with long extracts of other material of no real interest except to an antiquarian.
I am guessing that Shaw is drawing heavily on writings by Homer Hulbert, the foreign missionary whose efforts to help Korea remain independent have earned him a place in the panthenon of modern Korean heroes. The allegation that Kennan viewed Korea as a “threat to the civilized world” probably came not from any speeches or writings by Kennan himself but from Hulbert.
There is no doubt that Shaw has been heavily influenced by Hulbert. She states quite unambiguously, though, that her source for the view of Korea as a virus is Kennan’s first article of the the series in Outlook suggested by Abbot.
But this is all a side show. The real issue remains the quality of the historical judgment of someone who would make make the sort of claims and in the intellectually dishonest manner that she does.
At least Shaw is consistent in that she invokes nazism as a counterpoint to U.S. foreign policy from Roosevelt to Bush. WTF.
Ah, in this case consistency truly is the hobgoblin of her little mind.
The links provided by toru, esp the one about Jacob Schiff, stimulated me to look further into the subject of Imperial Japanese war finance of the period.
Found a detailed article in English (2005) by a Japanese economist — general subject: Japanese use of govt bonds to raise funds 100 years ago! Can’t get more “on topic” than that.
Tough reading for those of you who have pronounced a judgement of “dullsville”. I just skimmed it, looking to find out any details on the alleged Carnegie and Morgan financing of the Japanese war effort at the behest of Roosevelt.
Nothing specific on the exact identity of private purchasers, but my impression from this article is that UK/other European purchase (not US) of Japanese war bonds was the decisive factor. 5 million English pounds in bonds offered in NY under auspices of Schiff, out of a total of 82 million English pounds in foreign bonds offered during the war by Japan.
The wiki article on Schiff says he raised about 200 million dollars (presumably, all by the sale of bonds) for Japanese govt. Not sure where this number comes from; maybe it includes non-wartime sales.
From pp.16-17 of the pdf (link below at bottom):
Expenses of 1.72 billion yen were spent for the Russo-Japanese War (February 1904 – September 1905). This amount equaled 11.7 times the tax revenues for fiscal 1903, and the government had to issue government
bonds for a large part of the expenses.
As it may be assumed from the fact that the total deposit balance of all banks throughout the country was only 760 million yen as of the end of 1903, the issue of government bonds within the country faced limitation. Furthermore, in light of the fact that approximately one-third of the war expenditure for the Sino-Japanese War flowed out of the country, it was predicted that an outflow of a vast amount of funds was inevitable. Accordingly, Japan had to begin the war on the assumption of financing a major amount of war expenses with foreign bonds.
Actually, foreign bonds were used to finance about 40 percent of the expenses for the Russo-Japanese War. As indicated in Table 2, foreign bonds worth a total face value of 82 million pounds were issued and a total of 685.95 million yen was raised through two issues of 6-percent interest-bearing government bonds in pounds and two issues of 4.5-percent interest-bearing government bonds in pounds for the period from May 1904 to July 1905.
Full authority was given to Korekiyo Takahashi, the deputy governor of the Bank of Japan, who was appointed as a financial officer of the Embassy of Japan in England and later as a financial representative of a special mission dispatched by the government to conduct negotiations to issue these foreign bonds. Before his appointment, Takahashi proposed that the free movement of capital should be maintained even during the war. This proposal was based on his concern that the
prestige of Japan overseas might suffer if an embargo of the export of gold were implemented, which might make it difficult for Japan to offer foreign bonds.
The minister of finance issued a letter of proxy and a written directive to Takahashi with respect to the offering of public bonds worth 10 million pounds in London or, if such an offer was not possible, the sale of existing
5-percent interest-bearing government bonds of 100 million yen.
Takahashi went to London in February 1904 to
carry out this directive. In May 1904, 6-percent interest bearing government bonds worth 10 million pounds were issued at an issue price of 93.5 percent of face value. The offering statement specified that this was a 7-
year bond with maturity in 1911, redemption was possible at any time after 1907 with six month’s prior notice, and that the coupon and instrument could be used for the payment of tariffs to the Japanese government at the
fixed conversion rate of 1 yen = 2 shillings 0.5 pence.
The principal points of the negotiations with the bank group in England to issue these bonds were the issue interest rate, net proceeds of the government and the handling of security. The net proceeds of the government, which were initially set at 88 percent of face value, were increased to 90 percent. During the negotiations, the requirement arose that security would have to be paid if the payment of principal were delayed 14 days or more. However, the actual offering statement indicated that the “principal and interest payments are secured by customs revenues of Imperial Japan on a priority basis; the Japanese Imperial government shall pay
monthly one-12th of the amount required annually for interest of these public bonds to the HSBC and the Yokohama Shokin Bank.”
In this way, pound-denominated government bonds
worth 10 million pounds were underwritten by the Parsee Bank, HSBC and the Yokohama Shokin Bank in London. Half of