The First World War was a calamity, but what was done in the wake of it, and the world it created, set the stage for even worse events. The post war world teetered on a precarious balance in both Europe and Asia. The nationalism that caused the First World War, manifested itself after the war and threatened post war security. Post- war Europe and Asia were fractured because of issues stemming from the First World War and combined with nascent and growing nationalism.
Europe bore the brunt of the damage caused by the First World War. Millions died, thousands of square kilometers were decimated. The economies of the major nations were in ruins and old and new empires were shattered. As a response to the brutality of war on an industrial scale, …show more content…
China’s Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, three years before the First World War. Sun Yat Sen became president of the new republic and set out on his mission of reforming China. However, his presidency only lasted for a few weeks as he soon was forced to hand over power to the military. Within a few years’ China went from being an established empire to a country with no central government. Warlords ruled different regions and constantly vied for control of Beijing. This state of continuous struggle that affected Asia’s largest nation helped to fuel an instability across Asia. Japan, although a victor of the First World War got nothing out of the Paris peace conferences. Japan felt betrayed by this and concluded it couldn’t trust the western powers, resolving to forge a divergent path. Imperial Japan wanted to become the dominant power in Asia, aiming to remove western colonialism from Asia. Japan became more and more militaristic and in the early 1930’s invaded and occupied Manchuria as a bid to show their dominance over the region, and to expand their empire. This show of military power created a broad uneasiness and showed that the Japanese were a serious threat to peace in Asia. Japan was becoming powerful enough to worry western powers and force them to watch Japan’s actions carefully. China’s decline into a state of perpetual conflict and unrest left a massive power vacuum in Asia that was filled by a surging Japan, setting the stage for future wars of expansion. Instability was thus an Asian as well as a a European problem after the First World War, manifest in and consequent of the power struggle in China, and the Japanese power
Europe bore the brunt of the damage caused by the First World War. Millions died, thousands of square kilometers were decimated. The economies of the major nations were in ruins and old and new empires were shattered. As a response to the brutality of war on an industrial scale, …show more content…
China’s Qing dynasty collapsed in 1911, three years before the First World War. Sun Yat Sen became president of the new republic and set out on his mission of reforming China. However, his presidency only lasted for a few weeks as he soon was forced to hand over power to the military. Within a few years’ China went from being an established empire to a country with no central government. Warlords ruled different regions and constantly vied for control of Beijing. This state of continuous struggle that affected Asia’s largest nation helped to fuel an instability across Asia. Japan, although a victor of the First World War got nothing out of the Paris peace conferences. Japan felt betrayed by this and concluded it couldn’t trust the western powers, resolving to forge a divergent path. Imperial Japan wanted to become the dominant power in Asia, aiming to remove western colonialism from Asia. Japan became more and more militaristic and in the early 1930’s invaded and occupied Manchuria as a bid to show their dominance over the region, and to expand their empire. This show of military power created a broad uneasiness and showed that the Japanese were a serious threat to peace in Asia. Japan was becoming powerful enough to worry western powers and force them to watch Japan’s actions carefully. China’s decline into a state of perpetual conflict and unrest left a massive power vacuum in Asia that was filled by a surging Japan, setting the stage for future wars of expansion. Instability was thus an Asian as well as a a European problem after the First World War, manifest in and consequent of the power struggle in China, and the Japanese power