(iPoster) Competing Visions of Equality: Race and Empire in Interwar Asia

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics; European Politics and Society; & International History and Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: International History and Politics

Abstract

In East Asian international relations, the Paris Peace Conference (1919-20) represents a crucial moment of both protest against and promotion of existing inequalities – based on racial and power stratification – in the early twentieth century international order. The Japanese government’s proposal to include a “racial equality” clause in the Treaty of Versailles sought to acknowledge and reverse global discrimination against Asian immigrants – and Asian nations more broadly. At the same time, delegates from China campaigned against imperialism and militarism and focused their efforts on regaining territorial sovereignty from German and Japanese claims. Inspired by global mobilizations of anti-colonial self-determination movements during this period, which Erez Manela has dubbed the “Wilsonian moment,” Korean and Filipino communities at home and abroad led petitions and protests demanding the end of colonial rule and asserting their right to self-rule. These Chinese, Korean, and Filipino visions of equality were fiercely opposed by the Japanese government and press but aided by other segments of Japanese society, such as liberal intellectuals, organized labor, and student activists. This paper examines this period of failed liberalism, seen from the perspective of the East Asian region, and the different types of political responses – often competing with one another – to the shared rhetoric of creating a more just, egalitarian international order.

Author

• Seo-Hyun Park, Lafayette College