Introduction
Aglaia De Angeli and Peter Robinson
Section I: Definitions and Aims: Period and Geographical Scope
“Competing imperialism(s)” is the concept around which this collection of essays revolves, tying together research spanning a range of different topics, perspectives, and specialisms. The rationale for this book is best understood by looking at how the concept has been framed and developed over time, producing unique variations (hence the pluralism) in different parts of Northeast Asia which, nevertheless, share some common threads and intellectual genealogy. Through the principles of collaboration and interdisciplinarity, this project1 has hosted three conferences: in Tokyo (April 2019), Belfast (September 2019), and St. Petersburg (September 2021) and an online exhibition, which have brought together a range of insights and methods of analysis that help us to better understand this often-marginalised geopolitical sphere and its legacies.
The volume covers the period from the start of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, through the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), the First World War, the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945); the Second World War in the Pacific, the Chinese Civil War (1945–1949); and the Korean War up until the Korean Armistice in 1953. This period was one of intense imperial competition in Northeast Asia, involving Britain and the United States, as well as the Northeast Asian powers, and it had enduring implications.
Northeast Asia is a vital geostrategic and economic location, and the legacy of conflict during the period of this project remains keenly felt and continues to influence international relations. While there is some debate around what constitutes Northeast Asia, in this volume, it includes China, Korea, Japan, and Russia: the four principal actors which share either land borders or sea borders, or both.
To understand historical Northeast Asia in a regional and global context, the research presented in this volume uses innovative methods employing cross-cutting interpretative frameworks. Using methodologies belonging to history, political science, historical geography, and history of art, it presents analysis of the drivers and structures of imperialisms in Northeast Asia, imperial rivalries and territoriality, the impact of imperialism on society and individuals, and the visualities produced by a long period of contestation.
Aglaia De Angeli and Peter Robinson
Context: Competing Imperialism(s) a Concept
The concept of “competing imperialism” is rooted at the very beginning of the twentieth century, when it was deployed by left-wing intellectuals and politicians in their discussions of colonialism and expansionism. As this historiographical excursus presents, the concept came to fruition, developed, and disappeared before World War Two, but then reappeared with a different set of connotations in the 1990s. Since then, it has been used in its singular and plural form by historians in contemporary literature to define a realm composed of confrontation, resistance, and connectivity. It is with this wider meaning that the term is used in the present volume.
According to Kenneth Anderson (2000, p. 102), for John A. Hobson, Vladimir I. Lenin, and Rudolf Hilferding, “Imperialism depends neither upon consent of the governed nor upon democratic assent for its assertion of political legitimacy; it can depend upon numerous other principles of legitimacy, ranging from economic necessity to the ‘white man’s burden’”. Specifically, Lenin affirmed: “Imperialism is capitalism in the stage of development” and explained its features as a realm controlled by monopolies and finance capital, in which the role of capital export is essential, imposing on the world division among international actors. A world “in which the division of all territories of the globe among the great capitalist powers has been completed.” (1939, p. 89 in Anderson, 2000, p. 102, note 34)
The last reference to the partition of the globe among great capitalist powers, or just “Great Powers” as they were defined at the time of our project, is the most striking and pertinent to this project. But it was not Lenin who invented the concept. Most historians agree that it dates back to John A. Hobson and Karl Kautsky. Hobson in his book Imperialism: A Study (1902, p. 311) wrote,
Far more reasonable is it to suppose that capitalism, having failed to gain its way by national separatist policies issuing in strife of Western peoples, may learn the art of combination, and that the power of international capitalism, which has been growing apace, may make its great crucial experiment in the exploitation of China. The driving force of the competing Imperialism of Western nations has been traced to the interest of certain small financial and industrial groups within each nation, usurping the power of the nation and employing the public force and money for their private business ends.
This passage is worthy of attention for two reasons: first, it associates China with the “competing Imperialism of Western nations” and the interests of business, and secondly, the expression only appeared once in a work of 377 pages. The timing of the book and its contents was not accidental either, published in 1902 on the heels of the signing of the Boxer Protocol, through which the Western Powers imposed another round of massive war indemnities
on China, payable to countries damaged by the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, and which also forced the opening of more treaty ports for the Great Powers (the West plus Japan).
Thereafter, the concept of “competing imperialism” remained nascent and unattended until, in 1907, the German Marxist Karl Kautsky discussed imperialism in his Socialism and Colonial Policy written between the Stuttgart International Congress and the German Party’s Congress at Essen. In this work, Kautsky anticipated that imperialism would cause a full-scale world war, well before the outbreak of hostilities. His theory was further developed in Ultra-imperialism published in 1914, in which he contended that competing imperialism would provoke a European arms race and lead to the outbreak of World War One. He foresaw that the era in which several competing imperialisms coalesced could not last because of the “inherent instability of the “colonial” structure” (De Riencourt, 1968, p. xiii).
It is within this pre-existing – albeit relatively lean – discursive context, that the debate about “competing imperialism” really gained importance and further intensified during World War One, with a slew of important publications in 1917 and 1918 treating the concept. In 1917, Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism and John Hobson’s Democracy After the War appeared, followed by Louis Boudianoff Boudin’s lesser-known The Class Struggle, and Lewis Corey’s, Revolutionary Socialism: A Study in Socialist Reconstruction in 1918. Let us unpack what this important cluster of works affirmed and see where certain divergences of opinion are located.
According to the editors of the “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Reflections”, Lenin accounted for this apparent contradiction in Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1917), where he showed how imperialist power at a global level could be used to explain the concept of areas of influence, zones of control and so on. He aimed to distinguish his own theories from the “super imperialism” of Kautsky, which did not differentiate between various imperialist camps. Whereas Kautsky considered imperialism as a single hegemony, an aspect of global capitalism, Lenin conceived of capitalist imperialism as a global projection of bourgeoisie power, and as such, an imperialist project that was not solely unified, but rather multifaceted, because the bourgeoisie was composed of capitalists who competed among themselves for the acquisition of monopolies: the very basis of imperialism. According to Lenin, the global capitalist system, which generated the competing imperialism, had an intrinsic contradiction regarding its unity as a system. The contraposition of capitalists to the masses was not made by a single group of subjects fighting together for the same cause, but rather, they competed among themselves as national groups. If on one side the masses were unified behind national borders by their common cause, on the other, capitalists were divided into national groups competing among themselves behind national borders (Tankysim, 2015).
Clearly, understandings of the relationship between capital and imperialism were changing over the period. This can be seen, for example, in the evolution of Hobson’s view of the concept of “competing imperialism” between 1902
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and 1917; by the later period, we no longer find the specification of “Western nations” in his analysis, and he condemns the self-interested actions of business organisations that act in their own, not the national interest.
Hobson’s (1902, p. 332) initial rationale suggested that “the power of international capitalism, which has been growing apace, may make its great crucial experiment in the exploitation of China. The driving force of the competing Imperialism of Western nations has been traced to the interests of certain small financial and industrial groups within each nation and employing the public force and money for their private business ends”. But by 1917, Hobson (pp. 88–9) overtly denounced:
the cosmopolitanism which is a growing characteristic of the modern business world [which] is crossed and reversed by business antagonisms masquerading as “national” whenever these group forces find it profitable to control and use their respective Governments. The competing Imperialism of the last forty years has been quite manifestly directed by this motif. It has been a struggle for markets, loan, concessions, and opportunities for profitable exploitation in weak or backward countries, in which the Governments of the Great powers have schemed and fought in connivance with or at the behest of strong business organizations.
During World War One, Hobson no longer associated competing imperialism with the power of international capitalism as he had done back in 1902, but rather connected it to cosmopolitanism: a “growing characteristic of the modern world” (Hobson, 1917, p. 88) directly linked with the growing assertiveness of national governments.
The debate about Lenin and Hobson’s contributions to the theory of what might be termed economic imperialism is well known and ongoing, but let us briefly rearticulate the main point of contention: Was this new form of imperialism primarily the product of economic forces or a necessary attribute of the capitalist system as a whole? Hobson (1902, p. 66) located the answer in the financial interests of the capitalist class as “the governor of the imperial engine.” Lenin, instead, placed the issue of economic imperialism in the broader context of systematic structural forces. Its economic essence is the replacement of competitive capitalism by monopoly capitalism, and it is the resulting rivalry generated among monopoly capitalist nations that fosters imperialism; in turn, the processes of imperialism stimulate the further development of monopoly capital and its influence over the whole of society.
More recently Heikki Patomäki (2008, pp. 52–3) has commented on Lenin’s position that “competing imperialism” was the inevitable outcome of the process by which the capitalistic market economy produced economic concentration and monopolies, and the dominance of finance over production. Lenin also distinguished between old and new forms of imperialism, which explained the competing imperialism between rival states. Patomäki further elucidated the difficulties that Lenin encountered when attempting to
substantiate his definition according to the principles of Marxist economic theory, and so he resorted to mentioning geopolitical facts. Patomäki’s suggests that Lenin drew the inevitable conclusion that economy was an aspect that must in any case be inserted into a temporal and spatial framework.
Finally, Louis Boudin and Lewis Corey, who published with the Socialist Publication Society and the Communist Press, respectively, associated “competing imperialism” with antagonism and struggle, and capitalism itself. Boudin (1918, 2 vol., p. 417) affirmed that to doom any competing imperialism intended as the interest of an imperial power could be achieved only by a direct struggle against imperialism itself. Corey (1918, p. 13), a contemporary of Boudin, held similar views, affirming that the inevitable fate of any competing imperialism is to clash because of the single national interests driven by the ultimate goal of capitalism to surpass all others.
In the aftermath of World War One, the plural form “competing imperialisms” was used for the first time. In 1922, Noel Buxton and T. P. Conwell-Evans (pp. 53–4) wrote about the establishment of the League of Nations and the vital role such an institution would play in determining the fate of “oppressed people”. They reflected on the role played by competing imperialism during the just-concluded conflict, suggesting that it was induced by a potent infusion of competing imperialism among the powers in Europe, with repercussions all over the world, led by a spirit of “conquest, re-conquest and war between Imperial peoples”. The ultimate result was a clash of civilisations of a magnitude never before seen, leaving Europe in tatters, and to reflect upon an “organised massacre” which should have imposed a re-evaluation of the international policy, “if civilization was to survive”. Unfortunately, their suggestions did not find a ready following, and the pursuit of hegemony between imperialist powers intensified. The context of the discussion about competing imperialism had nevertheless changed significantly from the initial China-based articulation by Hobson in 1902 and was now applied either to the whole family of nations or, specifically to the “massacre of Europe”, yet it returned to one of the very first consequences foreseen by Hobson and Kautsky: the recrudescence of militarism. In fact, Hobson (1902, p. 118) stated,
In the earlier stage of development, where the grouping of these forces is still distinctively national, this policy makes for wars in pursuit of “national” markets for investments and trade. But the modern science of militarism renders wars between “civilized” Powers too costly, and the rapid growth of effective internationalism in the financial and great industrial magnates, who seem destined more and more to control national politics, may in the future render such wars impossible. Militarism may long survive, for that, as has been shown, is serviceable in many ways to the maintenance of a plutocracy. Its expenditure furnishes a profitable support to certain strong vested interests, it is a decorative element in social life, and above all it is necessary to keep down the pressure of the forces of internal reform.
Aglaia De Angeli and Peter Robinson
As we have already affirmed, Kautsky had anticipated the arms race leading to the Great War. During the inter-war period, the expression curiously disappeared from important studies, with only one remarkable resurgence of the term used in association with peace propaganda before World War Two. In terms that sounded a warning against imperialism and domination, as well as a plea for preserving world peace, in My Pilgrimage for Peace (1938, p. 12) George Lansbury lamented, “It is not possible to establish peace in a world of competing imperialism”.2 Competing imperialism was an issue of global concern, and at this stage, no longer identified as merely an enemy of the masses and proletariat, but the enemy of world peace – a contest that affected everybody in equal measure – masses and capitalists alike. The tendency to see imperialism exclusively through the lens of economics was steadily replaced by a preoccupation with its importance to world security. Since the end of World War One, competing imperialism has been associated with conflict, territorial conquest, and acquisition of resources; the lust for capital tied to militarism is the last aggressive stage in which state actors defend and above all promote national interests.
However, it was only a temporary reprieve, and the expression soon slipped into oblivion.3 Yet, the expression was not dead and has recently reappeared both in its singular and plural forms.
Modern Usage of “Competing Imperialism(s)” in Scholarship
So far, we have looked at the evolution of the term “competing imperialism” as it was used within a contemporary context when the very forces it was used to describe were actively shaping the world. Today’s usage of the term, however, has shifted towards a category of cultural-economic-historical analysis and a means of understanding and incorporating complex scholarly perspectives. The following is a summative overview of its use in modern scholarship, providing a “state of the field” analysis, and showing where it has been adopted and where it offers research frames and comparative methodological perspectives for this and future projects.
In 2004, the editors of Imperialisms: Historical and Literary Investigations, 1500–1900 (Sauer and Rajan, 2004, pp. 1–2) contextualised research on imperialism, relating it to specific cultural histories. “Imperial powers construct not only subjected sites but competing imperialisms in order to arrive at images of themselves … coexisting or competing imperialisms, thus bringing out the varieties and nuances of dominance”. This contemporary vision of the concept has extended the field of research to include the events concerning the earlier authors, from Hobson to Lenin and all the aforementioned, seeing imperialism not only as a confrontation of economic national interest and colonisation, or through the vector of global peace and security, but as a species of dominance present from pre-modern times to the most recent colonial past. Imperialism may now be associated with other concepts such as the spread of civilisation, race discourse, cultural differences, empires versus dominions,
religious expansion, and so on. This affirmation suggests that for contemporary historians, imperialism is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, which represents different cultures and forms of imperial power, and that mostly, those different shades of imperialisms have not only been competing but also coexisting, an aspect not previously conceived or conceded in the past.
New trends in research concerning competing imperialism, according to Patomäki (2008, p. 182) are also associated with a general liberal globalisation invested in modern movements concerning liberalist, socialist, and feminist discourses. These groups related themselves to state powers and promoted a new form of cosmopolitan and multilateral society. In this case, it is the societal and not the economical aspect that is, once again, acting as a master. This particular social history approach stresses the importance of the people’s transformative ethico-political responses to economic crises and conflicts, as they reconsider their daily practices and demonstrate how overlapping factors can drive responses such as collective action or mass movements.
In recent years, the 2010s, the concept of competing imperialism(s), singular or plural, has been adopted by other disciplines such as socio-biology, or attached explicitly to a defined country, such as Korea, or a historical period such as the Cold War era. As per the historical definition of Hobson and others, which associated imperialism with capitalism and militarism, in the same way, socio-biology, a scientific field studying the biological, or ecological and evolutionary, aspects of the social behaviours of animals and humans has pushed the field of economics into the realm of other social sciences since the mid-1970s. As a result of this trend, socio-biology has become interested in the concept of competing imperialism with respect to the balance of selfish and unselfish behaviours. The most authoritative author dealing with “competing imperialism” in socio-biology, Edward O. Wilson, has urged economists to “broaden their vista” to include “desires that are variously altruistic, loyal, spiteful, and masochistic. These too, he argued, are forces that govern rational choice” (Marchionatti, and Cedrini 2017, pp. 146, 160). In fact, in this field, imperialism is strictly linked to territoriality, empire, and ecology. It is also interesting to note the direct link between competing imperialisms and Korea. As this project is on Northeast Asia per se, it includes Korea. Kirk Larsen (2016, p. 37) is the author of a chapter entitled, “Competing Imperialisms in Korea” published in the 2016 Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History. It must be left to the specialists of Korean history to assert the persuasiveness of his findings, but of particular interest is that he openly endorsed the connection between the early twentieth century and present-day geopolitics. Poignantly, Larsen (2016, p. 37) affirms that “early twenty-first-century patterns and development that closest resemble the pre-1914 world of national (if not imperial) competition and conflict, understanding the Korean peninsula in an age of competing imperialisms may become more relevant than ever”. We could not agree more with this. Larsen further explains that research on how competing imperialism impacted Korea should shed light on foreign trade, as well as the Kwangmu Emperor’s reform effort, resilience, and innovation in late-Chosen Korea.
Finally, some remarks on the interrelationship between competing imperialisms and the Cold War era. In 2012, Shigematsu (p. xxiii), as per Larsen with Korea, supported the idea that Japan is “part of a neo-imperialist alliance with the USA as its subordinate partner” (p. 24), which is a consequence of the competing imperialisms in the Cold War era after the Asia-Pacific War. There is no doubt that “World War II was, again, fundamentally a war of competing imperialisms” ( Johnson, 2017, p. 113). For Johnson (2017, p. 144), the aftermath of World War Two brought the full disintegration of the colonial system underpinned by imperialism, which in turn was substituted by a new imperialism known as “neo-liberalism”. And so, we close the circle after one century and return to square one: that the engine of imperialism is capitalism at its highest stage of development. “The rule of capital by the 1980s became consolidate through the impositions of policies, identified as ‘neo-liberalism’”, and a strategy for expansion and consolidation: “globalisation”.
Johnson speaks about globalisation in 2017, as Hobson had about cosmopolitanism ninety years before, although the former refers to the process by which businesses or other organisations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale, and the latter a political-moral philosophy that posits people as citizens of the world rather than of a particular nation-state, and so the difference is between dual or multi exchanges and relations, yet both challenged a vision of the world based on the attachments of people to place, customs, and culture.
This overview of the concept of “competing imperialism(s)”, its definition, history, and historiography provided the broad framework through which the three Competing Imperialisms Research Network conferences were organised, and allowed participants and contributors to this collection to focus with confidence on different regional aspects falling within their expertise and purview, while retaining cognisance of the “bigger picture”. A number of different methodological, statistical, and historical approaches have been employed, but all of the chapters were guided by the central concept of “competing imperialism(s)”, the geographical context of Northeast Asia, and the historical period between the First Sino-Japanese War, and the death of Stalin and the end of the Korean War.
Section II: Collection Contents
In Section I, we briefly outlined the development of the concept of “competing imperialism(s)” in the early twentieth century, demonstrating its close connection with anti-Capitalist, Marxist-leaning scholarship and the political commentary of the period. When used in its plural form, it initially referred only to multiple occurrences of a generic and near-universal concept, usually in contraposition to nationalism, anti-colonialism, and other forms of geopolitical explanation. Only in the post–World War Two period was the plural form regularly used to signify the distinctive and diverse ways in which
imperialism manifested itself in different parts of the world. This project has adopted the most recent usage to show that not only were there different imperialisms – different in form, intention, and characteristics – but that, though often competing, competition was not always the default relationship between imperial powers, with coexistence, coalescence, and at times even collaboration, just as notable. In this section, we discuss how imperialisms emerged, were developed, and sustained in Northeast Asia, a region that has attracted less scholarly attention than East and Southeast Asia.
Traditionally perceived as a region far from power centres, on the periphery of Western (and indeed Eastern) consciousness – a border area with little consequence to the big questions of the twentieth century – it has recently been the subject of seminal work in the form of the Historical Atlas by Li and Cribb published in 2014, and other scholarship by political scientists and economists. However, the region has not featured heavily in the work of historians, beyond a myopic focus on specific events, or flashpoints, such as the Boxer Uprising, or on bilateral relations between countries: China-Japan, Russia-Japan, and so on. It is a complicated region ethnically, culturally, and cartographically: ancient, vast, and remote, and historians have generally struggled to understand this diversity and “massiveness”.
The problems of historical “blindness” have been thoroughly explained by Peter Perdue (2017, p. 129), in a study which discusses the vast and complex realm of Northeast Asia, focussing on questions of approach such as whether historians should adopt a transnational or a comparative imperial model? Both approaches are representative of new scholarship in other areas; both focus on the idea of communication networks within (and between) empires, colonies, and nation-states embedded in global economic, environmental, and political processes. Both approaches have also developed theoretically since the 1990s, and use multiple archives, spanning conventional boundaries, and developing globally comparative perspectives. Critically, they differ, as transnational historians prefer an overview of the global network analysis, while comparative imperial historians incline towards a specific analysis of confrontation, resistance, and resilience, but as Perdue laments, they tend not to collaborate, or to integrate their research and outcomes.
Our volume attempts to make up for this deficit, integrating aspects of both methodologies: it deals with the narratives of the interactions between the metropole and colony (see Saitō, Szpilman, Titov, Yanchenko, Cho), inter-imperial flows of various kinds (see Tsuchiya, Kobayashi, Cho, Kovrigin, Robinson), analysis of the wars (see Muminov, Shulatov, Lin) all aspects of comparative imperial history and the study of global networks (see Tsuchiya, O’Connor, Kovrigin, De Angeli, Robinson), the frontier regions (see Yanchenko, Lin, De Angeli) and cross-border interactions (see Kobayashi, Cho, Lin, Kovrigin) all features of transnational history. Most chapters rely on multilingual sources and have been developed through a dialogue among the four sections of the volume during conference presentations.
Aglaia De Angeli and Peter Robinson
Multilingualism is an advantage for the research of Northeast Asia, as this region is a melting pot of different peoples and cultures. The rationale behind grouping together the diverse output of historians with different national identities and traditions was to help facilitate dialogue on a common thread or main theme, interweaving different historical narratives to create a macroregional history of Northeast Asia on certain aspects, such as, for instance, the impact of imperialism on society in general and on individual demographics and constituencies, as we can see in the third section through the work of Lin, Cho, O’Connor, and Kovrigin, or as in the second section where Russian and Japanese perspectives of imperial rivalries and territoriality in the region are made the subject of specific studies.
The problem of creating a “macro-regional history of Northeast Asia, rather than a medley of national histories” was raised by Matsuzato Kimitaka (2017, p. ix), who noted that work on integrating Russian and Soviet history into a transnational history of Northeast Asia is still very much ongoing, hampered not only by the issue of translation but also ideological and political patination. On this issue, the present volume makes a robust attempt to overcome these issues in Section II, plus other contributions in Sections III and IV (Lin, Kovrigin, De Angeli, and Robinson), which, if not “solving” this issue, then at least demonstrates a consciousness of it.
Our volume integrates Russian history within Northeast Asia, but it also looks at the neighbouring regions and considers the impact of geographical proximity as a pivotal aspect of competing imperialisms, justifying the collaboration (see Cho, Kovrigin) and breaking what has been – on occasion –open hostility between scholarly traditions on the grounds of ideological contrast, territorial disputes, religious differences, and complicated ethnic conflict (Lin, Saitō, Sherzod, Yaroslav, Kobayashi). By pursuing more keenly the twin objectives of overcoming the inherent biases of national interest and restrictions to understanding stemming from official censure, we have tried to expand on the work of Strel’tsov and Shimotomai (2019) in identifying parallels in the histories of Japan and Russia.
The geolocation for the project is an aggregating point, but not completely a novelty as it is the same focus as Li and Cribb’s (2014), seminal historical atlas. As we associate the concept of competing imperialisms with this region exclusively, our volume is in debt to their precise historical definition, which is based on Robert Kerner’s first articulation in the 1930s – who himself referred to Witsen in 1692 – as an area defined by vast political and social changes, in constant moto, with a turbulent history of changing borders and short-lived states. Nevertheless, as we examined certain dynamics of the region, we took a closer look at a shorter period of time (1894–1953), and our volume offers some continuation with the geographical dimension of the atlas with a chapter on maps (De Angeli).
In following Perdue’s (2017) transnational approach, our volume dovetails nicely with the work of Ben-Canaan, Grüner, and Prodhöl (2014) on entangled histories. They, like us, examine a transcultural past which is politically,
culturally, and economically contested. Only the scale differs: they focus on Northeast China, known at the time as Manchuria, and we look instead at the whole of Northeast Asia, excluding only Mongolia. Despite this, many of the protagonists of our histories are the same: Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, and Russians, their aim and ours correspond when we try, not to disentangle and therefore to simplify the complex historical and cultural genealogies, but instead to shed light on these entangled histories, as we work around the identity of whom is doing what and where (see Saitō, Titov, Kobayashi, Lin, Cho, Kovrigin).
Our approach finds support in the aspirations of He and Hundt, whose work (2012, p. 37) has proposed “a deliberative approach to history disputes and highlighting the achievement, limits, and dynamics of deliberation” as it offers the possibility of overcoming nationalist approaches and narratives, providing the opening for a more reflexive and responsive view of Northeast Asia’s rich regional history, and to foster a potential evolution of a Northeast Asian regional identity.
To transcend the national identities forged in the region after World War Two by reevaluating the history of Northeast Asia is to potentially allow civil society to forge a new, divergent vision of its past, sloughing off national narratives proposed and imposed by the elites, which have tended to state and reinforce a linear collective memory confined by determined physical and imaginary boundaries. It is an approach which contrasts deliberately with nationalist narratives, as it is based on a new dialogue about the past between regional actors that recognises each other’s perspectives and, in a sense, helps to legitimate them. The major obstacle to such an approach is the fact that state elites do not intend to lift “restrictions[s] on narrative about the sanctity of soil, borders, and history” as they wish to maintain “the maximalist interpretation of sovereignty” (He and Hundt, 2012, p. 52). What is particularly relevant to us is the dialogical dimension, so we raise questions and posit doubts about the “maximalist interpretation of sovereignty” (see Section I: Saitō, Szpilman, Tsuchiya, also Lin, Titov, and De Angeli) and debate those restrictions (see Shulatov, Yanchenko).
Some of the contributions (see Shulatov, Yanchenko, De Angeli) refer directly to one of the most important events at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russo-Japanese War, considered “World War Zero”, giving the lie to the notion that the region is peripheral. We see it as an important site of military, economic, and cultural contestation, something alluded to in the two conspicuous volumes by Wolff et al. (2005–2007). In the introduction of volume two of the collection, Iriye Akira affirms that the Russo-Japanese War was a landmark in the history of global governance, with five mechanisms at play: imperialism, nationalism, regionalism, internationalism, and transnationalism. According to Iriye (2007, p. 2), “[I]mperialism provided a system of global (or at least regional) governance”. This point is particularly evident in the chapter dealing with governmentality and different forms of state: territorial sovereign and commercial (De Angeli).
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Our volume is much more modest in the number of contributions than The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective; however, it explores a larger span of time and integrates the opinion of Western and Asian scholars, using innovative multilingual research, which touches upon the five mechanisms mentioned by Iriye. Our volume shares with Wolff’s second volume a focus on a single geographical region, the Russian Far East and the interconnected worlds of broader Northeast Asia, a large area that includes far eastern Russia, Mongolia, Manchuria/Northeast China, Korea, and Japan. It is with regret that none of the chapters pay attention to Mongolia.
In the volume introduction, Iriye argues that Northeast Asia is the least studied in relation to the series theme: Great War. The same inattention applies to the current volume, as the theme of competing imperialisms is usually associated with imperialism in Africa and Southeast Asia or India. But Northeast Asia has proved to be a critical arena for both themes: theirs and ours.
Another important focus of the Steinberg series and in particular volume two, which our project shares, is the concentration of scholarship on borderland dynamics and boundaries that were shifting like the sand in those years and in that region, before a degree of stabilisation. While all borders are, by their very nature, potential points of friction, in this part of the world, they were characterised by peculiarly intense inter-imperial rivalries and bouts of diplomacy, transnational flows, and political and social upheaval, in what has been described as “complex frontiers” (Steinberg et alii 2005–2007, p. 6). This frontier zone was full of particularities: a land of migrants and foreigners, of refugees and POWs. The majority of the region’s residents were outsiders, most of them relatively recent arrivals or even extremely recent transplants; while in major urban centres, foreigners of various countries formed the backbone of a cosmopolitan elite.
The focus on borderlands and interstices forces reconsideration of what Peter Perdue in China Marches West raised as problematic in nationalist histories which depict natural frontiers, as “territorial boundaries [which] are assumed to be natural and predetermined, and very close to contemporary state borders” (2005, p. 514). Again, our various contributions attempt to discuss all this.
Our collection also includes a section dedicated to the visualisation of imperialisms, usually an aspect that is only dealt with as a single thread, such in Mikhailova and Steele’s work on mutual images of Russia and Japan (2008, p. 1–2). Our contributors share their perspective that “[a]ny visual sources from the high art (painting) to the low art (cartoons), drawings, sculpture, architecture advertising, photo-journalism, propaganda, film and photography, all inform us about the past in ways that conventional written sources would not permit”. Indeed, as Robinson demonstrates, visual information can impart meaning, and the visual can also mould public minds by reflecting and creating images of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Images appeal to both the rational mind and the emotional self and are indispensable for the study of stereotypes of “‘others’, […] because they tend to hide the diversity of reality and contribute to the
creation of stereotypes.” This reinforces the need to analyse the problem of identity formation and perception of “others”, for which Mutual Images: Essays in Japanese-American Relations edited by Iriye Akira (1975) is a seminal work. Competing Imperialisms is divided into four sections treating, respectively, these main lines: drivers and structures of competing imperialisms, imperial rivalries and questions of territoriality, the impact of imperialism on society and individuals, and the visualisation of imperialisms. With this structure, we have been able to incorporate different methodologies and approaches while presenting the reader with not only the various shades and shapes of the competing imperialisms of regional powers between China, Russia, Japan, and those overseas – the United Kingdom and USA in Northeast Asia – but also pointed to the accommodations and coalescences which occurred along the way.
Notes
1 The project (ES/S013393/1) “Competing Imperialisms in Northeast Asia, 1894–1953: Interconnections and Resistance”, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, was launched in 2019 and completed in 2021 as a collaboration between Queen’s University Belfast and Waseda University, with the participation of St. Petersburg State University, https://blogs.qub.ac.uk/ competingimperialisms/ (20.7.2022).
2 The same text was published by the author as in My Quest for Peace, 1938.
3 The term occasionally appeared in very dissociated contexts, such as the entry for the Chinese philosopher Mencius in reprint editions of Encyclopedia Britannica: A New Survey of Universal Knowledge in the 1950s and 1960s.
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Although only a few years younger than his kinsman, Don John, he was making his first campaign as a private adventurer. During the battle the galley in which he was embarked was lying, yard arm and yard arm, alongside a Turkish galley, with which she was hotly engaged. In the midst of the fight Farnese sprang on board the enemy, hewing down with his Andrea Ferrara all who opposed him, thus opening a path for his comrades, who poured in, one after another, and after a bloody contest, captured the vessel. As Farnese’s galley lay just astern of that of Don John, the latter witnessed, with great pride and delight, the gallant deed of his nephew. Another youth was at Lepanto, who, though then unknown, was destined to win greater laurels than those of the battle field. This was Miguel de Cervantes, then twenty-four years of age, and serving as a common soldier. He had been ill of a fever, but on the morning of the battle insisted on taking a very exposed post. Here he was wounded twice in the chest, and once in the left hand, from which he lost its use. The right hand served to write one of the most remarkable books ever known, Don Quixote; and Cervantes always said that, for all his wounds, he would not have missed the glory of being present on that memorable day.
A fierce storm raged for twenty-four hours after the battle of Lepanto, but the fleet rode in safety at Petala; and it remained there four days, during which Don John visited the different vessels, providing for their repairs and for the wounded, and distributing honors among those who had earned them. His kindly and generous disposition was not only shown to his own people, but to the Turkish prisoners. Among these were two young sons of Ali, the Moslem commander-in-chief. They had not been on board his galley, and to their affliction at his death was now added the doom of imprisonment.
Don John sent for them, and they prostrated themselves before him on the deck; but he raised and embraced them, and said all he could to console them, ordering them to be treated with the consideration due to their rank. He also assigned them quarters, and gave them rich apparel and a sumptuous table. A letter came from their sister, Fatima, soliciting the freedom of her brothers and appealing to Don John’s well known humanity. He had already sent a
courier to Constantinople, to convey the assurance of their safety As was the custom then, Fatima had sent with her letter presents of enormous value.
In the division of the spoils and slaves, the young Turkish princes had been assigned to the Pope, but Don John succeeded in procuring their liberation. Unfortunately, the elder, who was about seventeen, died at Naples; but the younger, who was only thirteen, was sent home with his attendants, and with him were sent the presents received from Fatima, on the ground that the young commander-in-chief only granted free favors.
Don John also made friends with the testy old Venetian admiral, Veniero, with whom he had had a serious difficulty before the battle.
Veniero afterwards became Doge—the third of his family to reach that eminence—which office he held until his death.
Before leaving Petala a council was held, to decide upon the next operation of the fleet. Some were for an immediate attack upon Constantinople; while others considered the fleet in no condition for such an enterprise, and recommended that it be disbanded, go into winter quarters, and renew operations in the spring.
Some agreed with Don John, that, before disbanding, they should do something more. An attack upon Santa Maura was determined on; but on reconnoitering, it was found to be too strong to be captured otherwise than by siege.
A division of spoils among the Allies then took place. One-half of the captured vessels, and of the artillery and small arms, was set apart for the King of Spain. The other half was divided between the Pope and the Republic of Venice; while the money and rich goods were distributed among the officers and crews.
The fleet then dispersed; and Don John proceeded to Messina, where great joy was felt, and immense fêtes awaited him; for he had been gone from them only six weeks, and had, in the meantime, won the greatest battle of modern times. The whole population flocked to the water side to welcome the victorious fleet, which came back not without scars, but bearing the consecrated banner still proudly aloft. In their rear were the battered prizes, with their flags trailing ignominiously in the water. There were music, garlands of flowers, triumphal arches, salvos of artillery, a gorgeous canopy, and a Te
Deum in the Cathedral. A grand banquet followed, when Don John was presented with 30,000 crowns by the city, which also voted him a colossal statue in bronze. Don John accepted the money, but only for the sick and wounded; and his own share of booty from Ali’s galley he ordered to be distributed among his own crew.
The news of Lepanto caused a great sensation throughout Christendom, as the Turks had been considered invincible at sea. Upon the receipt of the intelligence the Sultan Selim covered his head with dust, and refused food for three days—while all Christendom was repeating, after the sovereign Pontiff, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”
In Venice, which might be said to have gained a new lease of life from the results of the battle, there were ceremonial rejoicings, and, by public decree, the 7th of October was set apart forever as a national anniversary.
In Naples the joy was great, as their coasts had been so often desolated by Ottoman cruisers, and their people carried off as slaves. So, when Santa Cruz returned he was welcomed as a deliverer from bondage.
But even greater honors were paid to Colonna, in Rome. He was borne in stately procession, and trophies were carried after him, with the captives following, quite in the style of the old Roman triumphs.
Of course, the rejoicing in Spain did not fall short of that in the other countries concerned.
The great Ottoman standard, the greatest trophy of the battle, was deposited in the Escorial, where it was afterwards destroyed by fire.
When the victory was announced to Philip he was at prayer, which he did not interrupt, and he pretended to receive the intelligence very coolly. But he ordered illuminations and masses; and commanded Titian, who was then in Madrid, and ninety years of age, to paint the “Victory of the League,” still in the Museum of Madrid.
The Pope made every effort, by special ambassadors, to have the King press the war, and to extend the alliance against the Turks.
But Philip was lukewarm, even cold, and said that, for his part, he feared the Turks less than he did the Christian dissenters of Belgium, England, and the Low Countries.
It has been said that Charles V would have followed his victory to the gates of Constantinople, but the Duke of Alva thought that, Don John’s force being a mixed one, he would not have succeeded unless supported by the united force of Christendom, so great was the Moslem power at that time.
The battle lost the Turks no territory, but broke the charm of invincibility which they had possessed. Venice gained confidence, and the Ottomans never again took the initiative against that State— while those who have most carefully studied the history of the Ottoman Empire date its decline from the battle of Lepanto.
THE ENGLISH FLEET FOLLOWING THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA (From the Tapestry in the House of Lords, destroyed in the fire at the Houses of Parliament )
VI.
THE INVINCIBLE ARMADA. A. D. 1588.
rmada signifies, in Spanish, a Sea Army; and Philip the Second named the great fleet which he sent forth in 1588 “invincible,” because he thought that it must prevail against the forces of the heretic Hollanders and English, who excited his disgust and anger much more than the Moslem enemies with whom we have seen him last engaged.
Philip II, son of Charles V, was born at Valladolid, in 1527, and, by the abdication of his father, became King of Spain in 1556. His first wife was Maria, of Portugal, and his second was Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII.
Philip was the most powerful prince of his time. Spain, Naples, Sicily, the Milanais, Franche Comté, the Low Countries, Tunis, Oran, the Cape Verdes, Canaries, and a great part of the Americas owned his sway.
Always a fanatic, as he advanced in years the extermination of heretics became his one passion. He sent the pitiless Duke of Alva to the Low Countries, where, however, all his cruelties and persecutions could not prevent the spread of the Reformed religion. Fortunately for England, as we shall see, the Low Countries secured their independence in 1581.
In Spain, Philip was employing the Inquisition against Moors and heretics; and executions were depopulating the Peninsula and ruining the country. It was only by serious insurrections that the Milanese resisted the establishment of the Inquisition there; but to make up for that, and for his loss of the Low Countries, Philip had made the conquest of Portugal, and had extended to that country the practices of Spain.
Elizabeth of England had not only established heretical practices in her realm, but had executed Mary Stuart, and also added to her offences, in his eyes, by sending sympathy and assistance to the persecuted Flemings.
Brooding over these things, in his secret, silent way, Philip determined to invade England, reëstablish Catholicism, and avenge the Queen of Scots.
To this end he devoted some years to the assembling of the most tremendous fleet which the world, up to that time, had seen.
The Spanish nobility were encouraged to join in this new crusade, and responded to the invitation in crowds. The ships, collectively, were to carry more than three thousand guns. A Vicar-General of the Inquisition was to accompany the fleet, and establish the Inquisition in England; and it has been affirmed that complete sets of instruments of torture were also taken.
The Duke of Parma, with a large army, was to join the Armada from Belgium, and insure the conquest. This, we shall see, was prevented by the noble and faithful conduct of Holland, which, in spite of legitimate cause of complaint against England, in the recent design of the Earl of Leicester, came nobly to the rescue, and blockaded Parma, so that he and his troops were rendered unavailable. But for this, and some mistakes of the naval commanders, in all probability English history would have been very different. Many reports of the expedition had reached England, but just about the time it was ready Elizabeth’s fears had been lulled by the prospect of successful negotiations, and many of her advisers thought the threatened expedition would never approach English shores.
Elizabeth, fortunately for England, had revived the navy, as well as the merchant service, which had been so greatly neglected between the death of her father and her own accession.
The wealthier nobles and citizens, encouraged by the queen, built many men-of-war, and the Royal navy was soon able to take the sea with 20,000 fighting men.
The prudence and foresight of the queen in these measures was rewarded by the success of her seamen in disposing of a force such as had hardly ever been arrayed against any country, by sea. Philip,
“who from his closet in Madrid aspired to govern the world,” and who hated Protestantism with so great a hatred that he declared “if his own son was a heretic he would carry wood to burn him,” had good and devoted soldiers to carry out his views. The Duke of Alva was inconceivably cold-blooded and cruel, yet he was a man of great ability. No more perfect chevalier and enlightened soldier existed than the young Don John, whose career was so short; and the famous Duke of Parma, the greatest general of the day, was to command the army of invasion; while the Duke of Medina Sidonia, one of the highest grandees of Spain, was a most gallant soldier He was no seaman, and was surrounded by a staff of soldiers, or else there might have been a different story to tell of Philip’s Armada. But that does not detract from the Duke’s personal devotion and gallantry; and the expedition was accompanied by hundreds of officers of like personal character.
In regard to the Armada and its destination, Philip at first preserved the secrecy which was so consonant with his nature; but at last, when publicity could no longer be avoided, he had every dock-yard and arsenal in his dominions resounding with the hum and noise of a busy multitude, working day and night, to provide the means necessary to accomplish his purpose. New ships were built, and old ones repaired; while immense quantities of military stores were forwarded to the Netherlands, a convenient base of supplies for the invaders.
The New World was then pouring its treasures into Philip’s coffers, the product of the enslavement of whole nations, and this immense wealth Philip poured out in turn, lavishly, to accomplish his darling ambition, which was the subjection of all that remained free in the Old World.
“Rendezvous for the shipment of seamen were opened in every seaport town; while throughout Philip’s vast dominions there was not a hamlet so insignificant, or a cottage so lowly, but that the recruiting sergeant made his way to it, in his eagerness to raise troops for the grand army, which, blessed by the Pope, and led by the famous Duke of Parma, was destined, it was confidently believed, to march in triumph through the streets of London, and, by one sweeping auto-da-fé, extirpate heresy from that accursed land which every
Spanish Catholic was taught to regard as the stronghold of the devil.”
“Volunteers of every degree, and from every corner of Europe, hastened to enlist under the banner of Castile. Of these, many were religious bigots, impelled to the crusade against English heretics by fanatic zeal; a few, men of exalted character, not unknown to fame; but by far the greater number, needy adventurers, seeking for spoil. At length, in April, 1588, after nearly three years of preparation, the army of invasion, 60,000 strong, was concentrated at Dunkirk and Nieuport, where large, flat-bottomed transports were built, ready for its reception.
“But still the Armada, that was to convoy the transports, and cover the landing of the troops on their arrival in England, loitered in Lisbon, waiting for a favorable wind. Toward the end of May it moved out of the Tagus by detachments, and passing the dangerous shoals called the Cachopos in safety, took its departure from Cape Roca, the westernmost point of Portugal, and of the continent of Europe, on June 1st, sailing due north, with a light southwesterly breeze. The fleet consisted in all of one hundred and thirty-two vessels, carrying 3165 guns, 21,639 soldiers, 8745 seamen, and 2088 galley slaves; and its aggregate burden was not less than 65,000 tons.”
The San Martin, a vessel of fifty guns, belonging to the contingent furnished by Portugal, carried the flag of the commander-in-chief, the Duke de Medina Sidonia, already mentioned.
This great Armada was very unwieldy, and contained many dull sailers, so that, making its way at the average rate of only about thirteen miles a day, it passed the Berlingas, crept by Figuera, Oporto and Vigo, and finally lay becalmed off Cape Finisterre. Up to this time the winds, if baffling, had been moderate, the weather pleasant, and the sea smooth as glass. But now the Spanish fleet was assailed by a tempest, which might be called fearful, even in the stormy Bay of Biscay.
Blowing at first fitfully, and in heavy squalls, it by nightfall settled into a steady gale from west-northwest, driving before it a tremendous sea, the surges of which broke with a roar distinctly heard above the fierce howling of the wind. Yet, though the sea ran high, it was not irregular, and the Armada, under snug canvas, was
making good weather of it, when, a little after midnight, the wind shifted very suddenly to northeast, blowing with the violence of a tornado, and taking every ship under square sail flat aback. Some of the vessels, gathering sternboard, lost their rudders, which were in that day very insecure; some, thrown on their beam-ends, were forced to cut away their masts and throw overboard their guns; while all lost sails and top-hamper, and not a few the upper deck cabins, at that time so lofty.
When day broke the spectacle was presented of a whole fleet helplessly adrift upon the ocean. Many of the largest and finest vessels were lying in the trough of the sea, which every now and then made a clean breach over them, each time carrying off some of the crews. Among the fleet was a huge Portuguese galley, the Diana, which had been knocked down by the shift of wind, lost her masts and oars, and was lying on her side, gradually filling with water, and fast settling by the stern. The rest of the vessels were powerless to assist her, and she soon sank before their eyes, carrying down every soul belonging to her, including, of course, the poor galley slaves chained to her oars.
Then, to add to the horrors of storm and shipwreck, a mutiny broke out among the rowers of the galley Vasana (a motley crew of Turkish and Moorish prisoners and Christian felons), who had been long watching for an opportunity to secure their freedom; and now, seeing their galley to windward of all the vessels of the Armada, with the exception of the Capitana galley, which was a mile away from them, they judged the occasion favorable for the accomplishment of their purpose. Led by a Welshman, named David Gwynne, the mutinous galley-slaves attacked the sailors and soldiers of the Vasana, and as they exceeded them in number, and the free men had no time to seize their arms, while the slaves were armed with stilettoes made of all kinds of metal, and carefully concealed for such an occasion, they quite easily prevailed. The captain of the Capitana, seeing that something was wrong on board the Vasana, ran down as close to her as the heavy sea would permit, and, finding her already in possession of the Welshman and his fellow galley-slaves, poured a broadside into her, which cut her up terribly, and filled her decks with more killed and wounded men. At this critical moment, while
engaged with an enemy without, the crew of the Capitana found themselves threatened with a greater danger from within. Their own slaves now rose, broke their chains, and took part in the engagement. It is not known whether they had any previous knowledge of an attempt on board the Vasana, or whether it was the effect of example. At any rate, they rushed upon their late masters and oppressors with such weapons as they had concealed, or could seize at the moment, and attacked them with desperate and irresistible fury and resolution. The struggle, in the midst of the gale, for the possession of the Capitana, was furious but brief. It ended in the triumph of the galley-slaves, who, like their fellows on board the Vasana, spared no rank nor age. The massacre was soon over, and the bodies thrown into the water; and the gale soon after abating, the galleys were run into Bayonne, where, Motley says, Gwynne was graciously received by Henry of Navarre. The crippled Armada, having lost three of its finest galleys, managed to creep into the different ports on the northern shore of Spain.
Once more they all made rendezvous at Corunna, and after a month spent in repairs, sailed again, on July 22d, for Calais Roads.
With fair winds and fine weather, the Spanish fleet struck soundings in the English channel on July 28th, and the following day, in the afternoon, were in sight of the Lizard, whence they were seen and recognized, and soon, by bonfires, and other preconcerted signals, all England knew that the long threatened danger was close at hand; and, without faltering, one and all prepared to meet it.
The most of the English fleet was in Plymouth at the time. Many of the principal officers were on shore, playing at bowls, and otherwise amusing themselves, and the wind was blowing directly into the harbor, preventing the fleet from pulling to sea. But the commanderin-chief, Lord Howard of Effingham, was equal to the emergency; summoning all to instant exertion; and before daylight the following morning sixty-seven of his best ships had been, with extreme labor and difficulty, towed and kedged into deep water, and, commanded by such men as Drake, Frobisher, and Hawkins, were off the Eddystone, keeping a sharp lookout for the Spaniards. Every hour additional vessels were joining the English fleet.
During the whole forenoon the wind was very light, and the weather thick; but towards evening a fine south-west wind set in, and the mist rising, the two fleets discovered each other.
The Armada, in a half-moon, and in complete battle array, was so compactly drawn up that its flanking vessels were distributed but seven miles from each other; and all were bearing steadily up channel. The Spanish guns were so numerous, and so much heavier in calibre than anything the English carried, that the Lord High Admiral saw at once that the force at his command could not successfully confront the enemy He therefore permitted them to pass without firing a shot; but hung closely upon their rear, in hopes of cutting off any vessels which might chance to fall astern of the others. It was not until the next day, Sunday, July 31st, that an opportunity offered for attacking to advantage. Then, “sending a pinnace, called the Defiance, before him, to denounce war against the enemy, by the discharge of all her guns,” Howard at once opened fire from his own ship, the Royal Oak, upon a large galleon, commanded by Don Alphonso de Leyva, which he took to be the flag-ship of the Spanish commander-in-chief.
In the meantime, the combined squadrons of Drake, Frobisher and Hawkins opened furiously upon the fleet of Biscay, or of northern Spain, which, consisting of fourteen vessels, and carrying 302 guns, was commanded by Vice-admiral Recalde, an officer of great experience. This squadron had been formed into a rear guard, in expectation of just such an attack.
Recalde maintained the unequal fight for some hours, and with great obstinacy; all the while endeavoring to get within small-arm range of the English, which he knew would be fatal to them, as he had a large force of arquebusiers embarked in his division.
But his wary antagonists, whose vessels, “light, weatherly and nimble, sailed six feet to the Spaniards’ two, and tacked twice to their once,” evaded every effort to close, and keeping at long range, inflicted much damage upon their enemy without receiving any themselves.
At length, seeing how matters stood, the Duke Medina Sidonia signaled to Recalde to join the main body of the fleet; and, hoisting the Royal standard of Spain at his main, drew out his whole force in
order of battle, and endeavored to bring on a general engagement. This Howard prudently avoided, and so the Spaniards had to keep on their course again, up channel, and “maintain a running fight of it;” the English now, as before, hanging on their rear, and receiving constant reinforcements from their seaport towns, in full view of which, as the Armada hugged the English shore, Howard, with his gallant ships and men, was passing.
In these days London alone sent forth fifty armed ships.
The night which followed was one fraught with disaster to the Spaniards. The gunner of the Santa Anna, a Fleming by birth, who had been reprimanded by his captain for some neglect of duty, in revenge laid a train to the magazine, and blew up all the after part of the vessel, with more than half her officers and crew.
The vessel nearest the Santa Anna hurried to her assistance, and was engaged in rescuing the survivors, when, in the darkness and confusion, two galleys fell foul of the flagship of the Andalusian squadron, and carried away her foremast close to the deck, so that she dropped astern of the Armada, and, the night being very dark, was soon lost sight of by her friends, and assailed by her vigilant foes.
Being well manned, and carrying fifty guns, she maintained her defence until daylight, when, finding the English hemming her in on all sides, Don Pedro de Valdez, the Admiral, struck his flag to Drake, in the Revenge, much to the chagrin of Frobisher and Hawkins, who had hoped to make prize of her themselves.
Don Pedro, who was courteously received by Drake, remained on board the Revenge until the 10th of August; so that he was an eye witness of all the subsequent events, and of the final discomfiture of his countrymen.
Drake sent the captain of the Santa Anna, “a prisoner, to Dartmouth, and left the money on board the prize, to be plundered by his men.”
All the following day was spent by the Duke in rearranging his fleet; and after the vessels were in the stations assigned them, each captain had written orders not to leave that station, under penalty of death.
In this new order the rear guard was increased to forty-three vessels, and placed under the command of Don Alphonso de Leyva, who had orders to avoid skirmishing as much as possible, but to lose no opportunity of bringing on a general engagement, or decisive battle.
On the 2d of August, at daylight, the wind shifted to the northeast, whereupon the Spanish, being to windward, bore down upon the English under full sail. But the latter also squared away, and having the advantage of greater speed, refused, as before, to allow their enemy to close with them; so the engagement was without result, there being little loss on the part of the Spaniards, while the only Englishman killed was a Mr. Cock, who was bravely fighting the enemy in a small vessel of his own.
Towards evening the wind backed to the west again, and the Armada once more continued its course toward Calais.
On the 3d of August there was a suspension of hostilities, and the Lord High Admiral received a supply of powder and ball, and a reinforcement of ships, and intended to attack the enemy in the middle of the night, but was prevented by a calm.
On the 4th, however, a straggler from the Spanish fleet was made prize of by the English.
This brought on a sharp engagement between the Spanish rear guard and the English advance, under Frobisher, which would have resulted in Frobisher’s capture had not Howard himself gone to the rescue, in the “Ark-Royal, followed by the Lion, the Bear, the Bull, the Elizabeth, and a great number of smaller vessels.” The fighting was for some time severe, but as soon as Frobisher was relieved, Howard, observing that the Duke was approaching, with the main body of the Spanish fleet, prudently gave the order to retire. It was, indeed, high time, for the Ark-Royal was so badly crippled that she had to be towed out of action.
The Lord High Admiral afterwards knighted Lord Thomas Howard, Lord Sheffield, Townsend, Hawkins and Frobisher, for their gallantry on this occasion; but a convincing proof that the English had the worst of it in the encounter is the determination of a council of war “not to make any further attempt upon the enemy until they should
be arrived in the Straits of Dover, where the Lord Henry Seymour and Sir William Winter were lying in wait for them.”
So the Armada kept on its way, unmolested, and with a fair wind, past Hastings and Dungeness, until it got to the north of the Varne, an extensive shoal in the Channel.
Then it left the English coast, and hauled up for Calais Road, where it anchored on the afternoon of Saturday, August 6th, close in to shore, with the Castle bearing from the centre of the fleet due east.
The English followed, and anchored two miles outside. Strengthened by the accession of Seymour’s and Winter’s squadron, they now numbered one hundred and forty sail—many of them large ships, but the majority small.
Every day since he had been in the Channel the Spanish commander-in-chief had despatched a messenger to the French coast, to proceed by land, and warn the Duke of Parma of the approach of the Armada, and to impress upon him the necessity of his being ready to make his descent upon England the moment the fleet reached Calais; and especially he desired Parma to send him, at once, pilots for the French and Flemish coasts, which those in the fleet had no knowledge of. To his bitter disappointment, on reaching Calais he found no preparation of any kind, and none of his requests complied with. All that night, and all day of August 7th, the vast Armada lay idly at anchor, vainly watching for the coming of Parma’s army, and not knowing that its egress from Nieuport and Dunkirk was a simple impossibility, since the fleets of Holland and Zealand were in full possession of all the narrow channels between Nieuport and Hils Banks and the Flemish shore; and Parma had not a single vessel of war to oppose to them.
On the evening of the 7th the appearance of the weather caused great anxiety to the seamen of the Armada, the sun setting in a dense bank of clouds, and they realized, much more fully than the soldiers on board, the insecurity of their anchorage; as a northwest gale, likely to rise at any moment, would drive them upon the treacherous quicksands of the French coast.
While this apprehension was troubling the seamen of the Armada, the English were fearful least Parma’s transports, eluding the
vigilance of the Dutch cruisers, should suddenly heave in sight. But, as the evening drew on, and they observed the threatening sky, and heard the increasing surf upon the shore, both of which boded a storm, they became reassured. A little before midnight of the 7th, the weather being very thick, and a strong current setting towards the Spanish fleet, the English prepared to send in among them eight fireships, which they had prepared as soon as they found the enemy anchored close together. The English captains Young and Prowse towed them in, directing their course, and firing them with great coolness and judgment. A great panic resulted among the Spaniards, for they knew that the English had in their service an Italian, who, three years before, had created great havoc and destruction at Antwerp, by ingenious floating torpedoes or mines, and they no sooner saw the fire-ships, “all alight with flame, from their keelsons to their mast-heads,” and bearing down upon them, than they imagined Giannibelli and his infernal machines in their midst. Shouts of “we are lost!” passed through the fleet, but in the midst of the panic the Duke de Medina Sidonia (who had been warned by Philip to be on his guard lest the dreaded Drake should burn his vessels) maintained his composure. He at once made the signal agreed upon, to cut cables and stand clear of the danger; and the Armada was soon under sail, and out of harm’s way from fire. But the fright and confusion had been so great that, next morning, when the Duke wished to rally his fleet and return to his anchorage, many ships were out of signal distance, some far at sea, and others among the shoals of the coast of Flanders.
The 8th of August dawned with squally, southwest weather, and the English observed some of the Spanish vessels to be crippled, and drifting to leeward, while the San Lorenzo, flag-ship of the squadron of galleasses (the class of large vessels which had contributed so much to the victory of Lepanto), was endeavoring to get into the harbor of Calais. Her rudder was gone, and, although her rowers were endeavoring to keep her in the narrow channel leading to the town, she yawed widely across it, and finally grounded on a sand bank near the town. In this position she was attacked by the boats of the English fleet, and after a stubborn resistance, in which many fell on both sides, was boarded and carried. The Govenor of
Calais claimed her as of right pertaining to him, and the English, just then not caring to quarrel with the French, gave her up to him, but not before they had plundered her.
The boat expedition no sooner returned, than Howard bore up for the Armada, the bulk of which was then off Gravelines, sailing in double Echelon, with flanks protected “by the three remaining galleasses, and the great galleons of Portugal.” The Duke Medina Sidonia at once hauled by the wind, with signal flying for close action, and the Royal standard at his fore. But the English had speed, handiness, and the weather gauge in their favor, and were enabled, as before, to choose their own distance, and after a desultory fight of six hours, the Duke (finding he was losing men, and had three of his best ships sunk, as many more put hors-de-combat, and having exhausted his shot, without a chance of bringing Howard within boarding distance, or of Parma’s coming out to join him) telegraphed to the fleet “to make its way to Spain, north about the British Isles,” and then himself kept away for the North Sea.
The sands of Zealand threatened him on one hand, and the hardy English seamen on the other; and with these odds against him, the proud Spaniard had no resource left but to retreat.
That night it blew a strong breeze from the north, and the next day some of the Spanish vessels were in great danger from the Dutch shoals, but a shift of wind saved them.
The English kept close after them until August 12th, when, being themselves short of provisions and ammunition, they came by the wind, and stood back for their own shores, where, of course, the intelligence they brought caused great joy, after the narrow escape from invasion.
An intelligent officer, Commodore Foxhall A. Parker, United States Navy, commenting upon these actions, says, “it has been asserted that Medina Sidonia so dreaded the passage around the grim Hebrides that he was upon the point of surrender to Howard, when he last approached him, but was dissuaded from doing so by the Ecclesiastics on board his vessel; but this story, as well as one told by the Spanish soldiers who were taken prisoners in the fight of August 8th, and who wished to curry favor with their captors, that this fight ‘far exceeded the battle of Lepanto,’ may be safely classed with
the marvelous relations of the ‘intelligent contraband,’ and the ‘reliable gentleman just from Richmond,’ so often brought to the front during the great civil war in America. Why, indeed, should the Duke have surrendered to a force unable to fire a shot at him, and which, had it ventured within boarding distance of the Armada, must have inevitably fallen into his hands? Was not the Saint Matthew, when assailed in a sorely crippled condition by a whole squadron, defended for two long hours? And did not several Spanish vessels, refusing to strike when they were in a sinking condition, go down with their colors flying? Was, then, the Commander-in-chief less courageous than his subordinates? Let the truth be told. Medina Sidonia, from his want of experience at sea, was utterly disqualified to command the great fleet entrusted to his care; but Spain possessed no braver man than he.”
The history of the Armada, after Howard left it, is one of shipwreck and disaster. Many of its vessels foundered at sea, and many more were lost on the rocky coasts of Scotland and Ireland; and the crews of some, who managed to reach the land, were massacred by the savage inhabitants of the west of Ireland.
Few of the leaders lived to return to their native land, and there was hardly a family in Spain that was not in mourning.
Upon learning of the disaster Philip affected great calmness, and merely remarked, “I did not send my fleet to combat the tempest, and I thank God, who has made me able to repair this loss.”
But, in spite of that, his disappointment was terrible, and in his fierce and savage resentment at the depression of his people he cut short all mourning by proclamation. A merchant of Lisbon, who imprudently allowed himself to express some joy at the defeat of the conqueror of his nation, was hanged by order of Philip—so that, as Motley says, “men were reminded that one could neither laugh nor cry in Spanish dominions.”
In other parts of Europe great joy was felt, for both England and the Continent were delivered from the nightmare of universal empire and the Inquisition. Well might England rejoice, and proceed to build up a more powerful navy.
The Spanish marine was irretrievably wrecked, and never again rose to its former position; and the loss of the preponderance of
Spain in European affairs began at this time.
The commander first selected for the Armada, Alvaro de Bazan, a fine seaman, died just before it left Lisbon. He would, no doubt, have handled it better than Medina Sidonia; and he certainly would have attacked the wind-bound English fleet in Plymouth, in spite of orders, and if he had done so would probably have destroyed it.
Philip had disregarded the advice of Parma and Santa Cruz, experienced soldiers, to secure a point in Flanders, before attacking England; and he erred in binding down Medina Sidonia not to take the initiative and attack the English fleet until he had been joined by Parma’s transports.
We may add a few words concerning Philip II. He survived the loss of his Armada ten years; having succeeded in making his memory thoroughly odious. Philip was gifted with high capacity, but was sombre, inflexible and bloody minded. He was at the same time vindictive, pusillanimous and cruel; full of joy at an auto-da-fè, while he trembled during a battle. To sanguinary fanaticism he added violence of temper almost bestial in its exhibition. He was close and deceptive in politics—always covering himself and his designs with the mask of religion. He seemed, indeed, not to have a human heart in his breast; and yet he had a taste for the fine arts—loving painting, but even better, architecture, in which latter he was learned. He finished the Escorial and beautified Madrid, which he made the capital of Spain.
Besides the foregoing his sole pleasure was the chase; while, unlike his father, he was generous to those who served him, and very sober in living and simple in dress.
A SPANISH GALLEASS OF THE 16TH CENTURY.
EVENTS SUCCEEDING THE ARMADA SIR FRANCIS DRAKE IN CENTRAL AMERICA
