Race and U.S. Foreign Policy from 1900 Through World War II

Michael L. Krenn, Michael L. Krenn, E. Nathaniel Gates

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781136764684
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia afroamericana

Explores the concept of "race" The term "race," which originally denoted genealogical or class identity, has in the comparatively brief span of 300 years taken on an entirely new meaning. In the wake of the Enlightenment it came to be applied to social groups. This ideological transformation coupled with a dogmatic insistence that the groups so designated were natural, and not socially created, gave birth to the modern notion of "races" as genetically distinct entities. The results of this view were the encoding of "race" and "racial" hierarchies in law, literature, and culture.

How "racial"categories facilitate social control
The articles in the series demonstrate that the classification of humans according to selected physical characteristics was an arbitrary decision that was not based on valid scientific method. They also examine the impact of colonialism on the propagation of the concept and note that "racial" categorization is a powerful social force that is often used to promote the interests of dominant social groups. Finally, the collection surveys how laws based on "race" have been enacted around the world to deny power to minority groups.

A multidisciplinaryresource
This collection of outstanding articles brings multiple perspectives to bear on race theory and draws on a wider ranger of periodicals than even the largest library usually holds. Even if all the articles were available on campus, chances are that a student would have to track them down in several libraries and microfilm collections. Providing, of course, that no journals were reserved for graduate students, out for binding, or simply missing. This convenient set saves students substantial time and effort by making available all the key articles in one reliable source.

Authoritative commentary
The series editor has put together a balanced selection of the most significant works, accompanied by expert commentary. A general introduction gives important background information and outlines fundamental issues, current scholarship, and scholarly controversies. Introductions to individual volumes put the articles in context and draw attention to germinal ideas and major shifts in the field. After reading the material, even a beginning student will have an excellent grasp of the basics of the subject.

RACIAL ASPECTS OF THE FAR EASTERN WAR OF 1941-1945¹

¹ The author's warm thanks are due to Professors Ronald Dore and James Joll, who were kind enough to read and comment upon drafts; to Professor Akira Iriye, for discussions on the subject stretching over many years; and to Dr Albert Kersten, for collaboration within Dutch archives. The research upon which the essay is based has been possible only as a result of support from the Social Science Research Council, while preparation of the Lecture itself was greatly facilitated by a Resident Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study.

RALEIGH LECTURE ON HISTORY

By CHRISTOPHER THORNE

Read 19 November 1980

IT would seem appropriate to devote an essay which commemorates Sir Walter Raleigh to a subject whose dimensions place it in the category of 'world history' and whose ingredients include comparisons between Western Europe and Asia.² It is very much in our own day, however, that issues concerning race relations have come to the fore,³ which no doubt explains why various references to such matters that were made in the present writer's study of the Far Eastern War, Allies of a Kind,⁴ have tended to be singled out for comment. Some of this comment, even so, has tended to divorce the subject from its historical context. The intention of this new essay, therefore, is to clarify these racial aspects of the Far Eastern War by drawing them together as a single theme, and by viewing them within a framework which extends back into the years before Pearl Harbour. In addition, it provides an opportunity to bring to bear on the question material which has been gathered, since the completion of Allies of a Kind, in Asia, Australasia, Europe and North America.

² See, for example, the contrast between Western Europe's security and stability on the one hand and the ruining of Asia by 'overflowing multitudes' on the other, which Raleigh put forward in his Discourse On The Original And Fundamental Cause Of Natural, Arbitrary, And Unnatural War. The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh, vol. 8 (Franklin, New York, 1829), 256.

³ Although of course such issues have a lengthy history. See, for example, the 1961 Raleigh Lecture by C. R. Boxer, 'The Colour Question in the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1812', Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. XLVII (London, 1962).

⁴ C. Thorne, Allies of a Kind: the United States, Britain, and the War Against Japan, 1941-1945 (London and New York, 1978).

A number of cautionary and qualifying observations need to be made at the outset, however, for they are essential when it comes to establishing that context and perspective referred to above. First, when reviewing the Second World War and some of its racial aspects, it must be borne in mind how great have been the changes since then in the entire international scene and climate of opinion.¹ Such changes, of course, enable—and no doubt encourage—the historian to bring out more clearly a theme which was not always seen or, at least, publicly acknowledged during the war years themselves.² (Theodore White, for example, looking back on his work then as journalist in China, recalls that 'The ethic of the time forbade one from reporting in terms of race.')³ This advantage, however, must be matched by an awareness of, say, how much more widespread in the Western world of the early 1940s were certain assumptions about racial matters which would be regarded as deplorable if voiced aloud today. Indeed, a distinguished soldier and historian who served in India and south-east Asia during the Second World War has suggested to the present writer that 'in the sense the word now has, most people were racist in 1939-43 ... We were still certain of the utter superiority of Western civilisation.'⁴ It is a judgement which may not allow sufficiently for the range of attitudes to be found between those of, say, a Churchill and a Cripps in London, or those of a Henry Stimson and a Henry Wallace in Washington; but the underlying point is a valid one, and if it appears correct to describe the views of a Churchill or a Stimson by the modern term 'racist',⁵ the historical context must at the same time be borne in mind.

¹ On the related subject of international inequalities of wealth and well-being, Willy Brandt observes in the recently-published report, North-South, that 'a new epoch in man's history began when the majority of nations now in existence achieved their political independence in the period following the Second World War'; and that 'the concept of global responsibility for economic and social development... in state-to-state terms does not go back much more than one generation'. Independent Commission on Development Issues: North-South: a Programme for Survival (London, 1980), 8, 17.

² For a broad survey, see H. Tinker, Race, Conflict, and the International Order (London, 1977); also R. E. Park, Race and Culture (New York, 1950).

³ T. White, In Search of History (New York, 1978), 156.

⁴ Colonel Hugh Toye to the author, 8 Feb. and 19 Nov. 1980. And see, e.g. P. Addison, 'The Political Beliefs of Winston Churchill', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Fifth Series, vol. 30 (London, 1980), 39-40.

⁵ See Allies of a Kind, 6. The definition being employed is that advanced by

A second word of caution arises from this. In much of what follows, we are dealing with people's attitudes and perceptions: with ideas about race. These notions will not be tested on each occasion for their anthropological validity; but it will be evident how crude they often were and in what a variety of ways the term 'race' was employed. In fact, classification by race was jumbled up with the division between 'white' and 'coloured', and also with the opposing of an entity labelled 'Asia' or 'the East' on the one hand to that of 'the West' on the other. Only very occasionally does one come across such definitions being examined during the war years (Stanley Hornbeck of the State Department had a somewhat muddled exchange on the subject with Pearl Buck, for example).¹ As for this present essay, it is sufficient to observe the confusion that was involved, and simply to note at the outset that, anthropologically speaking, 'phrases like "Asian man" or "Asiatic society" are', in Dr Iyer's words, 'almost meaningless . . . and are artificial concepts rather than concrete entities'.²

¹ Material in the Hornbeck Papers, box 40 (Hoover Institution, Stanford).

² R. Iyer (ed.), The Glass Curtain Between Asia and Europe (London, 1965), 3 ff. See also, e.g. R. Dawson, The Chinese Chameleon (London, 1967), 90ff.

However insubstantial such concepts might be, they could none the less provide the basis of strong convictions about the significance of the Far Eastern War, as will be seen below. Even so—a qualification, this, which common-sense alone would suggest—it must not be inferred that because, for example, Ahmed Soekarno had been emphasizing since the late 1920s that the Indonesian struggle for independence had to be seen as part of 'the greatest . . . problem: Asia against Europe',³ his fellow-countrymen awoke each morning during the war years to an acute awareness of their identity as 'Asians'. 'For the average Indonesian', wrote another nationalist leader, 'the war was not really a world conflict between two great forces. It was simply a struggle in which the Dutch colonial rulers finally would be punished by Providence for the evil, the arrogance, and the oppression they had brought to Indonesia.'⁴ Contemporary evidence of various kinds—for example, papers found on dead or wounded Japanese soldiers in the south-west Pacific¹—together with interviews with a variety of participants in the war underlines the degree to which it was local views of the conflict that tended to predominate.

³ B. Dahm, Sukarno and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence (Ithica, New York, 1969), 62-3, 69.

⁴ S. Sjahrir, Out of Exile (New York, 1949), 219. Also, interviews with Dr Anak Agung Gde Agung, who became Prince of Bali during the war years, and was subsequently Foreign Minister of the Indonesian Republic.

¹ 'Beliefs of the Average Soldier in the South West Pacific Area in 1942': report of 1 June 1943, External Affairs files, EA 84/6/1 part 1, National Archives, Wellington, New Zealand. On the essentially local, rather than nationalist, outlook of large sections of the people of China during the war, see L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Series Introduction
• Volume Introduction
• Theodore Roosevelt's Social Darwinism and Views on Imperialism
• The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Saint Louis, 1904: "The Coronation of Civilization"
• The Afro-American Response to the Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934
• "The Damnable Dilemma": African-American Accommodation and Protest During World War I
• Human Rights in History: Diplomacy and Racial Equality at the Paris Peace Conference
• William E.B DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and Pan-Africa
• Black Nationalism and the Italo-Ethiopian Conflict, 1934-1936
• Black America and the Italian-Ethiopian Crisis: An Episode in Pan-Negroism
• Black Americans and Italo-Ethiopian Relief, 1935-1936
• Afro-American Reactions to the Japanese and the Anti-Japanese Movement, 1906-1924
• The Genesis of American-Japanese Antagonism
• Yellow, Red, and Black Men
• Racial Aspects of the Far Eastern War of 1941-1945
• Cross-Cultural Perception and World War II: American Japanists of the 1940s and Their Images of Japan
• Walter White and the American Negro Soldier in World War II: A Diplomatic Dilemma for Britain
• Britain and the Black G.I.s: Racial Issues and Anglo-American Relations in 1942
• Acknowledgments