Make The Far-East Theatre In WW2 More Clearly A Fight Between Imperialists.

A Marxist friend of mine describes the European war theatre during WW2 as clearly a fight for civilisation, however he sees the Far-Eastern theatre as clearly a fight between Imperialist powers. How clear/deluded is this view?
I'm thinking of the Opium war, when the British Establishment and foot soildiers did horrific damage in China, is this any worse than the Japanese savagery in Asia during WW2?
Also, one anecdote, the British Imperialist army came to burn down the house belonging to a close relative of Irish freedom fighter, Michael Collins during the Anglo-Irish war, the officer in charge Purcival was told there was an old woman inside dying and not to do it at that time. They left but said they would come back to do it after she had passed on and they kept their word! Later in the early 1940s, the same Imperialist, elevated to general, Purcival was forced to give the surrender of The British Imperialist forces in Singapore! This is a story from Nora Owens, ex Irish Minister for Justice and her sister ex MEP Mary Banotti, who were grandnieces of Mickey Collins!
 
In my opinion it's a pretty clear view, between two conflicting visions of imperialism over China. The Japanese version of direct rule and more direct economic domination and the US concept of the Open Door, which was always geared to US interests, not anyone else's. The US version was relatively less prone to cruelty and terror to maintain itself (excepting in Latin America and the conquest of the Philippines) while the Japanese version was simply the European version done by an Asian power.
 
A Marxist friend of mine describes the European war theatre during WW2 as clearly a fight for civilisation, however he sees the Far-Eastern theatre as clearly a fight between Imperialist powers. How clear/deluded is this view?

Does he use this specific terminology? 'Cos whether he realises it or not it's actually borderline racist to suggest that the war in Europe was obviously a fight to liberate mankind while the Asian/Pacific theatre was obviously not.

Anyhow, Australian Leftists pretty much lump the Japanese Empire in with European fascism as being interchangeable. The only ideological streams in this country who don't think it was worth waging war against Japan tend to be folk out in conspiratorial land, obsessed with Jews etc.

I'm thinking of the Opium war, when the British Establishment and foot soildiers did horrific damage in China, is this any worse than the Japanese savagery in Asia during WW2?
Also, one anecdote, the British Imperialist army came to burn down the house belonging to a close relative of Irish freedom fighter, Michael Collins during the Anglo-Irish war, the officer in charge Purcival was told there was an old woman inside dying and not to do it at that time. They left but said they would come back to do it after she had passed on and they kept their word! Later in the early 1940s, the same Imperialist, elevated to general, Purcival was forced to give the surrender of The British Imperialist forces in Singapore! This is a story from Nora Owens, ex Irish Minister for Justice and her sister ex MEP Mary Banotti, who were grandnieces of Mickey Collins!

Okaaay.
 
the Japanese version was simply the European version done by an Asian power.

What is this 'European version' of imperialism?

The Japanese acts of conquest we think of as WWII-related begin in either '32 or '37.

There is no broad, 'clasical' European model of colonial aggression that is comparable to what the Japanese did on the road to Nanking after those dates, or to the way the imperial government was run by an increasingly paranoid military junta.

The Japanese Empire of WWII is best compared to the institutionalised terror of outlier European imperial states, like King Leopold's Congo or Mussolini in Ethiopia and Libya. Maybe the Imperial German eradication of the Herero. Even those are pretty imperfect analogies.
 
What is this 'European version' of imperialism?

The Japanese acts of conquest we think of as WWII-related begin in either '32 or '37.

There is no broad, 'clasical' European model of colonial aggression that is comparable to what the Japanese did on the road to Nanking after those dates, or to the way the imperial government was run by an increasingly paranoid military junta.

The Japanese Empire of WWII is best compared to the institutionalised terror of outlier European imperial states, like King Leopold's Congo or Mussolini in Ethiopia and Libya. Maybe the Imperial German eradication of the Herero. Even those are pretty imperfect analogies.

Direct rule imposed by mass slaughter of anyone who so much as looks meanly in the eyes of the colonial occupiers.
 
Direct rule imposed by mass slaughter of anyone who so much as looks meanly in the eyes of the colonial occupiers.

Well, in your above post you allude to the US colonial campaigns in the PI as being similarly extreme. In which case I don't see the sense in differentiating between European and American imperialism, at least by that standard.

Personally I go with the idea that '30s Japanese imperialism is quite different than their earlier methods in Korea, Manchuria and Formosa.
 
I think the difference between the European and Far East conflicts referred to in the OP is that the Nazis were bent on a war of extermination of people they considered subhuman. Despite the horrors of Japanese occupation I don't think that was really their policy or the aim of the Japanese govt. Therefore Europe in WW2 was a war to defend humanity.

However given the extreme brutality of the Japanese empire which eclipses any British atrocity immensely I'm inclined not to think of it as a mere clash of empires.

www.reverbnation.com/billypryce
 
One alternative event to support the thread's title: "Make the Far East Theatre more clealry a fight between Imperealists" would be to have the United States, fearing the speread of communism, declare that the restoration of the French, British and Dutch colonial empires in asia was an official U.S. policy or war goal.
 
Well, in your above post you allude to the US colonial campaigns in the PI as being similarly extreme. In which case I don't see the sense in differentiating between European and American imperialism, at least by that standard.

Personally I go with the idea that '30s Japanese imperialism is quite different than their earlier methods in Korea, Manchuria and Formosa.

The reason I distinguish them in this case is the USA wanted indirect imperialism where Japan wanted the old-fashioned sort. The Open Door couldn't be reconciled either with Japan's already having a virtual monopoly on China or with Japan's extension of its military power into China.
 
The reason I distinguish them in this case is the USA wanted indirect imperialism where Japan wanted the old-fashioned sort. The Open Door couldn't be reconciled either with Japan's already having a virtual monopoly on China or with Japan's extension of its military power into China.

Yes, with regards to these two powers in China. But the Europeans (particularly the Brits) also claimed to have a non-interventionist policy in the Middle Kingdom, they also expressed a moral differentiation between their own actions and that of 1930s Japan.

For China in the interwar/WWII period it's really Japanese versus non-Japanese foreign meddling, not Euro/Japanese versus American colonial aggression.
 
I suppose, judging by their atrocities in China and elsewhere in Asia during WW2, the Imperialist Japanese army faced with the prospect of taking revenge on someone the equivalent of Michael Collins would probably have burned an entire town down, killed all the males and raped all the females and possibly killed them also subsequently. There would be no polite pussyfooting around ala Captain Purcival and the lads!
Also, my Marxist mate points out relative to what the Nazis would have done in Ireland, if they invaded, British Imperialism as practised here would have been virtually a 'laugh a minute' in relative terms even under 'Black And Tans' barbarity!
I think the European theatre could be more accurately described as the war for civilisation though, of course you have to caveat that statement given that there were Stallinists on the victorious side who at least in the Soviet Union would have massacred more people than the Nazis did for sure and of course their Chinese fellow travellers killed even more again though very often through sheer incompetence!
Ironically of course far more in around 500 Japanes war criminals were convicted and executed in post WW2 trials, than the Nazis very few of whom were executed!
 
The post WWII informal US empire had the same relationship to 19th cent. imperialism as debt peonage or sharecropping did to slavery-half a step up.
 
One way to have the U.S. sink to the moral level of the Empire of Japan would if it was stated policy that in reprisal for Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, etc., the U.S. intended to replicate the Manifest Destiny on the Home Islands, only with the killing of most of the native population with diseases done on purpose (biological weapons) instead of by accident and then deliberate dispossession and maltreatment of the survivors and settlement of their territory with American citizens.

The United States was planning on giving the Phillippines independence in 1944, so that's already an improvement over anything in the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, however dickish the Filipino War was.

(And lest anyone accuse me of being a "bigot," I know the Japanese victory plans weren't that psychotically genocidal, but considering the much larger populations of China, SE Asia, the East Indies, etc., the body count in absolute numbers in subduing China alone would probably have been higher than the destruction of the Native Americans. There were only 10 million Indians north of Mexico in 1492 after all.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Japanese_war_crimes

The victims of the Japanese OTL range as high as 30 million, although that does seem a little high.
 
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The above post is the "crazy U.S." version, although War Without Mercy does describe how some American soldiers viewed the Pacific War as something like a latter-day Indian War and there is the whole "Japanese language will be spoken only in hell" thing.

Something a bit more realistic and still morally-equivalent would be if the U.S. converted the entirety of the Japanese Empire into puppet states and exploited the hell out of them for the U.S.'s benefit at an absolutely ludicrous human cost to the conquered people--IIRC one million Vietnamese starved to death during the Japanese occupation--and squashed any uprisings with a truly psychotic display of violence.

(And lest anyone claim the U.S. actually did this OTL, the U.S. is a giant market for East Asia's cars, to the point domestic auto producers are pitching a fit. Hardly an exploitative empire.)

And all the while, the United States would be piously talking about how it was uplifting the people. Maybe something resembling OTL's Filipino War minus the annexation and legitimate efforts to improve the country--although if OTL's war provoked Vietnam-esque opposition, I doubt the U.S. government would get away with this.
 
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