What is the difference between spheres of influence and colonies

Before the Meiji Restoration, the emperor wielded no political power and was viewed simply as a symbol of the Japanese culture. Westerners of that time knew him only as a shadowy figure somewhat like a pope. The people were not allowed to look at the emperor, or even to speak his name; patriotism had been raised to the unassailable level of sacredness.

It is sometimes difficult to comprehend the extreme sacrifices the Japanese made in the name of the emperor. This can perhaps best be viewed, however, as extreme patriotism — Japanese were taught to give their lives, if necessary, for their emperor. But this was not entirely different from the Americans who gave their lives in the same war for their country and the "American" way.

The kamikaze pilots, who were named for the "divine wind" kami kaze that destroyed the Mongol fleet in the thirteenth century and saved Japan from invasion, might be compared to the young Iranian soldiers fighting in suicide squadrons in the Iran-Iraq war of the s, or even to fanatical Shiites responsible for the truck bombing of the U.

Lebanese embassy in The Japanese were proud of their many accomplishments and resented racial slurs they met with in some Western nations. Their attempt to establish a statement of racial equality in the Covenant of the League of Nations was vetoed by the United States because of opposition in California and Great Britain Australian resistance.

The Japanese greatly resented this. The Japanese military was convinced of the willingness of its people to go to any sacrifice for their nation, and it was contemptuous of the "softness" of the U. The military's overconfidence in its own abilities and underestimation of the will of these other nations were thus rooted in its own misleading ethnic and racial stereotypes.

While Asians, the Japanese saw themselves as less representatives of Asia than Asia's champion. They sought to liberate Asian colonies from the Westerners, whom they disdained. But although the Japanese were initially welcomed in some Asian colonies by the indigenous populations whom they "liberated" from European domination, the arrogance and racial prejudice displayed by the Japanese military governments in these nations created great resentment.

This resentment is still evident in some Southeast Asian nations. The World at War: Discussion Questions. Today Japan and the United States are close allies. But between and , they fought a bitter and bloody war, which many people remember well today.

Why did they fight this war? The answer on the American side is simple: the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Americans were angry at the Japanese for their invasions of first Manchuria , then China , and later French Indochina After the Japanese moved into Indochina, President Roosevelt ordered a trade embargo on American scrap steel and oil, on which the Japanese military depended.

But the American people felt that Asia was far away, and a large majority of voters did not want to go to war to stop Japan. The surprise attack on the Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor on December 7, changed this, outraging the whole U. Why did Japan attack the United States? This is a more complicated question. Japan knew the United States was economically and military powerful, but it was not afraid of any American attack on its islands. Japan did worry however, that the Americans might help the Chinese resist the Japanese invasion of their country.

When President Roosevelt stopped U. Without imports of steel and oil, the Japanese military could not fight for long. Without oil, the navy would not be able to move after it had exhausted its six-month reserve.

Roosevelt hoped that this economic pressure would force Japan to end its military expansion in East Asia. The Japanese military saw another solution to the problem: if it could quickly conquer the British and Dutch colonies in Southeast Asia and gain complete control of the oil, rubber, and other raw materials it needed, then it could defend its interests in China and Indochina against those Europeans who were now busy fighting a major war in Europe against the Germans and Italians.

The major exception to this trend was the peaceful transfer of dominance in Latin America from Britain to the United States in the late 19th century. In this case, two potentially rival hegemons remained open to trade and avoided the economic and, then, geopolitical competition found in other cases of great power transition.

This suggests that economic closure is a necessary if not sufficient condition for great power competition and that geopolitical conflict is not inevitable. Rather, competition is a choice made by the great powers at least in part through their economic policies.

Second, this international competition is driven, in turn, by domestic, rent-seeking groups and their economic interests. In all countries, including autocracies, scarce factors of production, import competing sectors, and domestically oriented firms have concentrated and intense preferences for market-restricting policies, including tariffs and the formation of exclusive economic zones.

These intensive interests give protectionists stronger incentives to press for favorable policies regardless of regime type. Consumers and free trade-oriented groups have diffuse preferences for market enhancing policies and, thus, tend to have less influence in the making of national policy. This inequality in preference intensity does not mean protectionists always win; after , the United States insulated itself by shifting authority to the executive and negotiating reductions through broad, multiproduct international agreements.

Rent-seeking is a central tendency, not an inevitable success. Contemporary great power relations are at a critical juncture. In pursuit of stability, political support, or private gains, the government will always be tempted to create economic policies and, in turn, exclusive economic zones that favor its nationals. In this way, China will be no different than the majority of great powers before it. But, given the expansive role of the state in the Chinese economy, especially its backing of outward foreign investments by its state-owned enterprises SOEs , and the close ties between business elites and its authoritarian political leaders, however, it will be even harder for China to resist biasing any future economic zone to benefit its own firms.

Although China has gained greatly from economic openness, its domestic political system will be prone to rent-seeking demands by important constituents in areas of future influence. Critically, the United States is also moving toward economic closure with the election of President Trump on a platform of economic nationalism. Demands for protection against Chinese goods have been growing over time. President Trump has clearly adopted a more hostile and protectionist stance toward China—as well as calling for the repeal of NAFTA and even questioning the utility of the European Union.

He has imposed tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, steel, and aluminum, dangerously declaring the latter two issues of national security. The threat to the liberal international economy is not only that China might seek an economic bloc in the future but also that the United States itself is turning more protectionist. For each great power to fear that the other might seek to exclude it from its economic zone is not unreasonable. If so, great power competition could break out in the 21st century not because of bipolarity or any inevitable tendency toward conflict but because neither great power can control its own protectionist forces nor signal to the other that it would not exclude it from its economic zone.

The British—United States case, again, suggests that exclusion and competition are not inevitable but the current danger of economic closure is real and increasing. This article is synthetic in its theory and merely suggestive in its use of historical evidence. The theory aims to integrate current work on political economy and national security, not to develop a completely original take on this relationship. In turn, rather than testing the theory in any rigorous sense or delving into particular cases to show the theoretical mechanisms at work, so to speak, it surveys selected historical episodes to illustrate central tendencies.

It is the recurring pattern across multiple cases which suggests why we should worry today. The rest of this article is divided in three primary sections. Section I briefly outlines the analytics of economic openness and great power competition.

Section II focuses on historical instances of great power competition, highlighting the role of economic openness as a central cleavage in international politics. The conclusion suggests ways that the potential for conflict may be mitigated. All states have a tendency toward protectionism at home and exclusive economic zones abroad.

Yet, a tendency is not an inevitability. The pursuit of protection and economic zones by domestic interests is conditioned by the political coalition in power at any given time and institutions that aggregate and bias the articulation of social groups. Protectionism can sour great power relations, but it is the desire for exclusive economic zones that drives great power competition and, given the possibility of coercion, influences grand strategy.

Thus, the theory sketched here integrates insights from international political economy see further , the literature on domestic politics and grand strategy, 13 and systemic theories of international relations. The political economy of protectionism within countries is well understood. In league with consumers, free trade-oriented industries can win, but their victory is by no means guaranteed and is, in fact, historically rare.

Some states have sustained coalitions of free traders, especially in small economies that must be open to trade. Even at the height of free trade, for example, industries in the United States such as shoes, textiles, steel, and automobiles, lobbied successfully for international agreements e.

Trade policy has dynamic, long-term implications for political coalitions. Free trade increases the returns to the winners, leading to new investments in those industries and firms, expanding their weight in the national economy, and increasing their political importance and influence. Increased trade has the opposite effect on the losers, eroding their economic presence and political clout.

Free trade, in the absence of technological change, leads to a virtuous cycle in which the losers are purged from the economy and, eventually, lose political influence. In turn, the openness of foreign markets has a similar effect. When foreign markets are open, free traders benefit more and increase their political clout; when foreign markets are closed, free traders do not gain additional exports nor expand production at home for sale abroad, preserving the current distribution of political power within the society.

This is important today in appreciating that free trade in either the United States or China expands support for free trade in the other, while protectionism will beget greater protectionism. Less well understood is the desire to create economic zones in which great powers can use their influence to gain favorable trade and investment policies from subordinate states. The purpose of international power here is to gain privileged access to markets or, failing that, at least prevent others from gaining such access.

When the great power and target country differ in comparative advantage—likely when countries differ in income—even import-competing firms in the great power can benefit from privileged market access for their otherwise comparatively disadvantaged goods. If the great power and target markets are sufficiently insulated from one another such that price differentials are not arbitraged away, even consumers in the former may not lose from higher prices; firms can still sell at cheaper prices in their domestic market but markup goods sold in the external economic zone.

Here too, the benefits of restrictionist policies are concentrated in the less competitive factors, industries, and firms, creating intense interests in favor of and, thus, a central tendency toward exclusive economic zones. The economic gains for firms, in turn, may even offset the costs of establishing control over the target in a form of direct or indirect hierarchy. As explained further, even Britain—the most liberal and democratic country in Europe during the 19th century—led the most aggressive and successful empire in world history.

Exclusive economic zones also affect the constellation of political forces within the home state. Free traders benefit from the opportunity to sell abroad in the exclusive zone but not as much as they might in a wholly open global market.

To the extent competitors are excluded from the zone, protectionists may be able to increase exports as well, especially if domestic producers in the zone do not have a comparative advantage in the relevant sectors. This opportunity sustains the protectionists at home relative to a world of freer trade, maintaining a constituency in favor of expansion. This does not imply that countries always prefer exclusive economic zones.

If free traders predominate in the political coalition, countries will eschew protectionism at home and exclusivity abroad for opportunities to trade widely with everyone, and when protectionists dominate at home, they will adopt restrictionist policies everywhere. But, in general, exclusive economic zones can be considered an extension of protection at home. Because exclusive economic zones can benefit domestic constituents, and an exclusive economic zone by definition excludes or at least limits other great powers from trading with the countries of that zone, great powers will compete for these spheres of influence.

Between the great powers and their peripheries, at least, trade ceases to be a multisum game and becomes a zero-sum competition. Indeed, given fears of exclusion, great powers may be tempted to preventively seize and close economic zones for their own benefit or to preclude them from being seized by others.

This can have the effect of transforming the world into increasingly exclusive economic blocs, as happened in the s. The most famous case, of course, was the European scramble for Africa in the late 19th century see further. Although capitalist states that limit rent-seeking may be somewhat less prone to expansionism, as argued by Patrick McDonald, they are not immune from competitive rivalries, as the case of Africa attests. Once ignited, the formation of exclusive economic zones exacerbates all other dimensions of great power competition.

Great powers compete for many reasons, including geopolitical influence beyond any economic motivation. My claim here is not that other sources of great power rivalry do not exist or that competition is driven entirely by the desire for exclusive economic zones. Rather, economic competition is a cause, an accelerant, and, perhaps, even a product of great power rivalry.

As Jacob Viner posited seven decades ago, power and plenty are irreducibly linked. It is through the pursuit of exclusive economic zones, however, that economic interests influence grand strategy. Economic competition influences grand strategy and motivates the militarization of great power relations in three related ways.

First, to create an exclusive economic zone requires concessions from subordinate countries. Target states will always want to diversity their economic partners, especially across the great powers.

The monopoly rents earned by a great power through its exclusive economic zone come at the expense of the subordinate society. At the very least, the target country benefits by being able to play one great power off against others, giving it outside options that diminish the power imbalance at the negotiating table.

Second, in addition to establishing control over local governments, a great power must actively exclude other great powers from the same region. It is not enough just to establish a special relationship with a state from which the great power seeks exclusive access, that power must also displace and deter potential rivals who seek entry.

Sometimes, these economic zones are negotiated among the great powers, as in Africa at the Berlin Conference of or in Europe at the Yalta summit of Thus, the great power must be prepared to project power into the region and defend its privileges in the exclusive zone. Without this ability, either the target state will slip from its grasp, as mentioned earlier, or be taken from it by a rival.

Third, a lack of clarity in the boundaries of economic zones and challenges to these boundaries as power and influence evolve make great power competition fraught and potentially dangerous. As theories of war tell us, uncertainty over capabilities, commitment, and resolve can lead to bargaining failures and uses of force. This is an interesting type of conflict where the home government itself might not be fully aware of its stakes in a target until it is challenged, and its domestic firms and investors then lobby the leadership about the extent of their ties.

In virtually all historical cases, economic competition has escalated into military competition and crises, if not necessarily to war. With the exception of the current period of unipolarity—now waning—there have always been multiple great powers seeking exclusive spheres of influence and privileged access to goods and markets.

This section takes up illustrative cases not to test an inexorable law of international politics but to highlight the dangers and risks of economic closure. The focus is not only on the domestic sources of protectionism, documented in detailed histories elsewhere, but also on great power competition for exclusive economic zones. The first era of overseas expansion, the so-called Age of Discovery, colonized nearly all of the Western Hemisphere, South and Southeast Asia, and ports along the African coast.

This era ended with the American Revolution of , which threw off the yoke of the British Empire, and the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America between and The drivers of empire are, of course, much debated. The aggregate costs of empire far exceeded the gains. For particular groups of investors and traders, however, it provided clear benefits which were then shared among the well-connected political elites. In the second half of the 19th century, a second wave of overseas expansion swept the globe.

France, Germany after unification, tiny Belgium, and, later, Italy, all joined Britain in the race for empire that played out mostly in the previously unclaimed areas of Africa. Although estimates are imprecise, especially for the earliest dates, the British empire grew from roughly 9 million square kilometers and million people in to 22 million square kilometers and million people in and to nearly 32 million square kilometers and million people in , on the eve of World War I.

With no colonies at all in , Germany acquired nearly 3 million square kilometers and 12 million people, Belgium seized almost 3 million square kilometers and 7 million people, and Italy grabbed 1. The decades before World War I were the most economically interdependent in history, with trade, capital, and people moving across international borders at rates unrivaled until the s.

As interdependence expanded, the European powers also sought formal empires with exclusive economic control. This exclusivity, in turn, led to preemptive imperialism. Areas previously ignored by the Europeans because they were not suitable for settlement or lacked easily exploited natural resources or strategic locations were now seized by one state in fear that they would otherwise be grabbed by another.

Thus, Europeans ran hard to seize largely worthless territories that would be drains on their national treasuries to prevent others from possibly benefitting in the future from some as yet undiscovered value. As part of these exclusive realms of control, the European powers created monopolies or quasi-monopolies for trade and investment. In part, this process of monopolization was a natural by-product of colonial control.

A French entrepreneur, say, could invest in a French colony knowing that the investment was covered under French law: in cases of dispute, any claim would be heard in a French court and—if things went badly—political access to the power of the French state might be used to defend the claim. Even if the colony was in principle open to investors from all countries, national investors still enjoyed special privileges not available to others.

This biased investment toward each national empire and, especially, the type of investments that were made. Where a uniform tariff might have been implemented, colonies increasingly favored their metropole with lower duties on goods, especially if carried on ships from the home country navigation laws. As suggested by the theory, the empire became the only site where British manufacturers prospered; everywhere else, they were overwhelmed by competition from more efficient producers in the United States and Germany.

Its ostensible policy of free trade clearly did not prevent a strong imperial bias from emerging in trade flows. The Europeans did try to limit or at least regulate the competition for empire. As noted earlier, the Berlin Conference was called to divide up the unclaimed areas of Africa and elsewhere and to fix borders where they were unstated or ambiguous in these cases, borders were typically drawn as straight lines on the map.

This would, it was hoped, avoid conflict and misunderstandings as the Europeans moved further into the interior of the continent. Britain and France nearly came to blows at Fashoda at the headwaters of the Nile in but eventually pulled back.

In the rapprochement that followed, Britain ceded Morocco to France in exchange for dominance in Sudan. This series of bilateral concessions began the reconciliation that eventually led to them to fight together against Germany in Driven by their own rent-seeking groups, famously the coalition of Iron and Rye in the former, both had to squeeze their territorial ambitions into the few remaining vacancies between established claims by Britain and France. As a worrisome preview of our possible future, high interdependence did not prevent economic competition from pulling the world apart and driving the great powers to global war.

Germany, in particular, posed the greatest threat to stability in the core of the international system since Napoleon. Although defeated in World War I, Germany never entirely gave up its imperial ambitions and, especially, its concerns over access to essential raw materials. World War II is clearly overdetermined, with too many sufficient causes to sort out the effect of any one factor.

Equally, however, the war was also the product of great power competition for economic privilege, and especially fears of economic exclusion. Early in the Nazi regime, Hitler not only called for lebensraum in the East but also began systematically redirecting trade and investment in Central Europe to its own interests and advantage. Without an ability to export to depressed and closed markets, the free traders lost whatever political influence they might have had in Berlin.

In the Four-Year Plan of , imports were restricted to only those essential items that could not be produced within Germany, an important first step toward greater autarky. In broad strokes, however, Japan was also a late entrant into the race for empire, seizing control of Taiwan in the first Sino-Japanese War — and Korea in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War — —formally annexing the peninsula in Japan initially kept markets within its sphere relatively open.

Indeed, in the struggle between Russia and Japan for dominance in Manchuria in the early years of the 20th century, Moscow more eagerly sought monopoly control of the region than did Tokyo. Improving economic conditions in the s kept the peace in Asia, but the fragile equilibrium quickly broke down in the Great Depression with the passage of the highly protectionist Smoot—Hawley Act of in the United States and the retaliation that ensued. With its loss of US markets, Japan retreated into mercantilism, closing the previously open door in its areas of control and seeking out new exclusive markets in its Greater East Asian Coprosperity Sphere—a propaganda tool announced only in June but which reflected a policy in place from at least A downward spiral of mutual hostility accelerated, with Japan blocking free navigation up the Yangtze River, establishing a new currency in northern China that favored Japanese imports, and creating new monopolies in China.

Fear of closure was as important as closure itself. These vicious spirals playing out on both ends of Eurasia ultimately ended in a catastrophic global war. Given the multiple causes, war may have been inevitable. Economic closure contributed to the war, but we cannot say for sure that war would have been avoided in its absence.

The important lesson, however, is how economic closure both contributes to and accelerates great power competition. Once started, vicious cycles are extremely hard to stop. Each bloc was tightly closed to trade with the other. Together, exclusivity and closure contributed to a Cold War that raged for decades.

What are your main concerns? What are different ways you could look out for your interests? In your textbook, in the library, or on the Internet, locate maps which show the increase over time of treaty ports by there were more than and the "spheres of influence" claimed by foreign powers in China. When did the greatest number of concessions occur? What else occurred at this time to explain how greater demands could be made by foreigners?

Which parts of China were most heavily involved? Least involved? Was the effect of foreign presence and power in China the same everywhere? Locate copies of the treaties China concluded with foreign powers from until , including the entire Treaty of Nanjing, the Treaty of the Bogue and Treaty of Wanghui in , the Treaty of Tianjin of and Beijing Convention of , the Zhefu Convention in , the Tianjin Convention of , the Treaty of Tianjin of , the Treaty of Shimonoseki in , the Boxer Protocol of , and Japan's Twenty-One Demands of Trace the evolution over time of greater concessions and indemnities imposed upon China.

Given what you know of China's situation and foreign powers, evaluate these treaties. Were they "fair," "just," or defensible? Research the long-term effects of the different foreigners active in China at this time. For example, trace the long-term impact of the missionaries, charting the number of Christian converts from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, by , and on into the s.

Where are the largest communities of Christians located? What does this say about long-term cultural contact and the effects of imperialism? Also, look at the long-range economic impact of imperialism in China by tracing the nineteenth and twentieth century histories of tea, porcelain, sugar, tobacco, and textiles. Reading for Students: The Opium War and Foreign Encroachment Two things happened in the eighteenth century that made it difficult for England to balance its trade with the East.

What sort of rights did the Chinese give to the British that they previously refused to give? If the word "imperialism" is defined as "the policy of seeking to dominate the affairs of weaker countries," do you think Chinese today are justified in saying that China suffered from Western "imperialism" begun by the British?