Japanese Colonialism

This chapter attempts to explain the historical process by which Japan succeeded in becoming a leading colonial power in the Far East. It will analyze the dramatic changes that took place in Japanese foreign policy and international relations from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Changes that enabled a country with a feudal-type structure to build a national and centralist state and to achieve an unprecedented expansion in the Pacific Ocean and continental Asia. In short, it will describe the process by which Tokyo created in a few decades one of the largest and most ephemeral colonial empires in the history of mankind, supported by rampant nationalism and militarism.