[lit-ideas] Re: China and Africa
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 04 Oct 2005 16:35:48 -0700
Andy wrote:
Last bit of pessimism before I mend my ways, one more reason to think Iraq
was not such a good idea and to look for peace with honor asap: it was the
Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor that gave small Asian countries like
Vietnam the idea that they, too, didn't have to knuckle under to
imperialist powers like France.
For the record, Japan did not, of course, invade Pearl Harbor. But
before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japan had been at war with China,
beginning with the trumped up 'Manchurian Incident,' for nearly ten years.
In 1940, Japan, now an ally of Germany and Italy, invaded and occupied
the northern part of French Indo China. (When they moved into the
southern part the next year, the US cut off exports to them.) The
Japanese conquest of Indo China, the Philippines, and Burma, were
ostensibly to liberate them, but in fact, they would have become
Japanese colonies.
Ho Chi Minh became a Communist some time in the early 1920's. At the end
of World War II, he was the head of a government opposed to French rule.
In 1946, fighting broke out between the French and Ho Chi Minh's
Vietminh, which ended with the French defeat at Dienbienphu.
It's pretty unlikely that the devastation of Japan inspired confidence
in many Southeast Asian countries, given that Japan had not only lost,
but had earlier occupied some and planned to occupy others. Japan was
nobody's inspiration or model. The successful anti-Imperialist movements
were all, as far as I know, Communist led.
See: Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, etc.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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