Imperialism and its impact on Vietnam and Korea
As time went on into the 1900’s both Vietnam and Korea fell to imperialism. Vietnam, although spending a time constantly under threat of Chinese domination, would eventually succumb to imperialism under the French when the Vietnam government was persecuting Catholics in the country. This led to the opportunity for the French to have just cause in an intervention and they were able to set up a foothold in the country in 1862 and would have a more dominating control by 1891 (1, 85). The French had loft goa
ls for its new conquest but it is clear now that what the French wanted and their westernization actually made things worse for the Vietnamese’s. What they might have told the world was clearly not what they practiced. The French destroyed the Vietnam school system and infrastructure that was in place, a terrible loss (1, 95). Then destructive companies such as Michelin took part in what can be termed as “… cultural genocide…” when they lured the peasantry onto their rubber plantations and then stripped them of their own identity, giving them numbers to replace their names and forcing them to work hard labor (1, 95-97).
How did this compare to Korea under Japanese rule? The Japanese effectively crushed the Korean government. While Schoppa does not go into a lot of depth in this chapter it is clear that the fall of the Korean government was a great humiliation and an upsetting moment for the people (1, 199-200). Further research shows that Japan did crush any and all opposition to their rule. They maintained a strong military presence in Korea in order to maintain order in the early years (2). Japan built up Korea as a place of modernization (2). Given that this would have been forced upon the people it likely would have met some resistance from traditionalists. During World War 2 Japan used Korean women in order to supply the Japanese army with “…comfort women…” (2). Also Japan pushed name changes on the Koreans to bring them more in line with Japanese culture (2). Overall, one can see the effects of imperialism on these two nations as being very negative and falling in line with other negative experiences felt by other nations that suffered under imperialism. Their futures directly after imperialism would not be pleasant either and the countries would be thrown into years of war and conflict within the country and with outside forces.
1. R. Keith Schoppa, East Asia: Identities and Change in the Modern World | 1700 to Present Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2008.
2. Korea as a Colony of Japan, 1910-1945, Asia for Educators. Last seen February 13, 2015. http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/main_pop/kpct/kp_koreaimperialism.htm
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_campaign_against_Korea_%281866%29#mediaviewer/File:FranceGanghwa.jpg (Image)
You make a really good point about how Japan was forcing Korea to do things that it would have been forced to do anyway at some point. The fact that this choice was taken away though was humiliating and certainly served to make the people feel as though they’d lost any say in their own futures. This set up an environment where things were unstable and the people unhappy which led to events later in the century.