Western imperialism in Asia

In the 16th century, the Portuguese broke the (overland) monopoly of the Arabs and Italians in trade between Asia and Europe by the discovery of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope.

Before the Industrial Revolution in the mid-to-late 19th century, demand for oriental goods such as porcelain, silk, spices, and tea remained the driving force behind European imperialism.

Between the 1870s and the beginning of World War I in 1914, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands—the established colonial powers in Asia—added to their empires vast expanses of territory in the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and Southeast Asia.

In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa under the sponsorship of Portugal's John II, from which point he noticed that the coast swung northeast (Cape of Good Hope).

He understood that Portugal could wrest commercial supremacy from the Arabs only by force, and therefore devised a plan to establish forts at strategic sites which would dominate the trade routes and also protect Portuguese interests on land.

Lured by the potential of high profits from another expedition, the Portuguese established a permanent base in Cochin, south of the Indian trade port of Calicut in the early 16th century.

[5][6] Constantino de Sá, romantically celebrated in the 17th century Sinhalese Epic (also for its greater humanism and tolerance compared to other governors) led the last military operation that also ended in disaster.

After fighting with the Portuguese by the Spice Islands since 1522 and the agreement between the two powers in 1529 (in the treaty of Zaragoza), the Spanish, led by Miguel López de Legazpi, settled and conquered gradually the Philippines since 1564.

Rival European powers began to make inroads in Asia as the Portuguese and Spanish trade in the Indian Ocean declined primarily because they had become hugely over-stretched financially due to the limitations on their investment capacity and contemporary naval technology.

The existing Portuguese interests in Asia proved sufficient to finance further colonial expansion and entrenchment in areas regarded as of greater strategic importance in Africa and Brazil.

[24][25] During first contact with China, numerous aggressions and provocations were undertaken by the Portuguese[26][27] They believed they could mistreat the non-Christians because they themselves were Christians and acted in the name of their religion in committing crimes and atrocities.

Partly driven by re-newed colonial aspirations of fellow European nation states the Dutch strived to establish unchallenged control of the archipelago now known as Indonesia.

The "Home charges", payments transferred from India for administrative costs, were a lasting source of nationalist grievance, though the flow declined in relative importance over the decades to independence in 1947.

Qing China defeated Russia in the early Sino-Russian border conflicts, although the Russian Empire later acquired Outer Manchuria in the Amur Annexation during the Second Opium War.

The United Kingdom and Russia chose to reach these uneasy compromises because of growing concern on the part of both powers over German expansion in strategic areas of China and Africa.

Early in the 19th century, serious internal weaknesses developed in the Qing dynasty which left China vulnerable to Western Europeans, Meiji period Japanese, and Russian imperialism.

Meanwhile, new but not exactly modern Chinese armies suppressed the midcentury rebellions, bluffed Russia into a peaceful settlement of disputed frontiers in Central Asia, and defeated the French forces on land in the Sino-French War (1884-1885).

Russia obtained access to Dairen and Port Arthur and the right to build a railroad across Manchuria, thereby achieving complete domination over a large portion of northwestern China.

In 1900, several powers agreed to the U.S.-backed scheme, giving rise to the "Open Door" policy, denoting freedom of commercial access and non-annexation of Chinese territory.

German forces were particularly severe in exacting revenge for the killing of their ambassador due to the orders of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who held anti-Asian sentiments, while Russia tightened its hold on Manchuria in the northeast until its crushing defeat by Japan in the war of 1904–1905.

[65] U.S. counter-insurgency operations in rural areas often included scorched earth tactics which involved burning down villages and concentrating civilians into camps known as "protected zones".

In 1914, Dean C. Worcester, U.S. Secretary of the Interior for the Philippines (1901–1913) described "the regime of civilisation and improvement which started with American occupation and resulted in developing naked savages into cultivated and educated men".

Japan's freedom from Western contact ended on 8 July 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy sailed a squadron of black-hulled warships into Edo (modern Tokyo) harbor.

Japan had limited natural resources of her own and sought both overseas markets and sources of raw materials, fuelling a drive for imperial conquest which began with the defeat of China in 1895.

Its spectacular defeat of Russia's navy in 1905 gave it the southern half of the island of Sakhalin; exclusive Japanese influence over Korea (propinquity); the former Russian lease of the Liaodong Peninsula with Port Arthur (Lüshunkou); and extensive rights in Manchuria (see the Russo-Japanese War).

Mass protests in Peking in 1919 which sparked widespread Chinese nationalism, coupled with Allied (and particularly U.S.) opinion led to Japan's abandonment of most of the demands and Kiaochow's 1922 return to China.

The destabilisation of European rule led to the rapid growth of nationalist movements in Asia—especially in Indonesia, Malaya, Burma, and French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos).

In India, the westward movement of Japanese forces towards Bengal during World War II had led to major concessions on the part of British authorities to Indian nationalist leaders.

However, with the onset of the Cold War, its growing political strength drew a reaction from the ruling government and the United States, resulting in the repression of the PKP and its associated organizations.

However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict turned into a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union.