The Setting in the Far East, I

Abstract

The crisis of 1931–3 occurred at a time when the power and influence of the West in the Far East were in decline. Resisted by some, unrecognised by others, the process was more clearly revealed by the harsh events of those twenty months, and was hastened by the upsurge of Japanese power to which those same events testified. In both tangible and intangible ways, this decline had already set some of the major limits to what various Western states could achieve in the area. In turn, differences of recognition and response to this setting lay at the root of many ensuing conflicts of opinion and policies within and between those states.