Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

It might seem strange to lump together the Roosevelt administration's relations with China and India, but the East Asian and South Asian countries exhibit many similarities and historical confluences. The National Origins Act of 1924 and different Supreme Court rulings prohibited nationals from either country from immigrating to the United States. In addition, foreigners lived, work, and governed parts of both countries, with India under the control of Great Britain's empire and China faced with foreigners immune to Chinese law (extraterritoriality) in many port cities, especially Shanghai, by the combination of American, Japanese, French, and British expats. Foreign armed forces operated freely in both, with British empire forces placed throughout India and American, Japanese, French, and British forces entrenched in Shanghai, engaged in patrolling the Yangtze and Xi Rivers by gunboat, and stationed along the railroads between Beijing and Tianjin in North China as part of the Boxer Protocol – not to mention the Japanese army seizing Manchurian provinces. Both had strong nationalist movements eager to achieve total independence from the imperialists – although that idea fell by the wayside periodically as far as the Chinese Nationalists (Guomintang) under Jiang Jieshi (known sometimes as Chiang Kai-shek) were concerned, based on fear of the splinter Nationalist groups, warlords, ... log in or subscribe to read full text