Treaty of Shimonoseki

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Treaty of Shimonoseki" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Treaty of Shimonoseki (Japanese: 下関条約, Hepburn: Shimonoseki Jōyaku), also known as the Treaty of Maguan (Chinese: 馬關條約; pinyin: Mǎguān Tiáoyuē; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Má-koan Tiâu-iok) in China or the Treaty of Bakan (馬關條約, Bakan Jōyaku) in Japan, was signed at the Shunpanrō [ja] hotel in Shimonoseki, Japan, on April 17, 1895, between the Empire of Japan and Qing China. It was an unequal treaty and ended the First Sino-Japanese War, in which Chinese land and naval forces were decisively defeated by the Japanese. The treaty was signed by Count Ito Hirobumi and Viscount Mutsu Munemitsu for Japan and Li Hongzhang and his son Li Jingfang on behalf of China.

The peace conference took place from March 20 to April 17, 1895, and the treaty followed and superseded the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty of 1871.^[1][2] It consisted of 11 articles which provided for the termination of China's tributary relations with Korea; required that China pay an indemnity of 200 million taels and cede Taiwan (Formosa), the Penghu (Pescadores) Islands, and the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan; and opened four cities (Shashi, Chongqing, Suzhou, and Hangzhou) to Japan as trading ports. However, due to the diplomatic Triple Intervention of Russia, Germany, and France just one week after the treaty was signed, the Japanese withdrew their claim to the Liaodong Peninsula in return for an additional war indemnity of 30 million taels from China.

Chinese scholars and officials vigorously opposed the harsh terms of the treaty, but it was ratified by the Guangxu Emperor. The cession of Taiwan and the Penghu Islands met with strong resistance by the local populace, and the islands were not taken over by Japan until October 1895. At the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, Japan surrendered and later signed the Treaty of Taipei with the Republic of China on 28 April 1952, which officially abrogated the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

• Article 1: China recognizes definitively the full and complete independence and autonomy of Korea, and, in consequence, the payment of tribute and the performance of ceremonies and formalities by Korea to China, that are in derogation of such independence and autonomy, shall wholly cease for the future.
• Articles 2 & 3: China cedes to Japan in perpetuity and full sovereignty of the
  Taiwan (Formosa) and the Liaodong Peninsula
  together with all fortifications, arsenals, and public property.
• Article 4: China agrees to pay to Japan as a war indemnity the sum of 200,000,000 Kuping taels ( 7,500,000 kilograms/16,534,500 pounds of silver).
• Article 5: China opens
  Shashi (Shashih), Chongqing (Chungking), Suzhou (Soochow) and Hangzhou (Hangchow) to Japan. Moreover, China is to grant Japan most favoured nation status for foreign trade (which is equal to, not above, the trade relations granted to the United Kingdom, United States, and France in 1843–44 and to Russia
  in 1858),

The treaty ended the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 as a clear victory for Japan.

China recognized the "full and complete independence and autonomy" of Joseon (the kingdom of Korea) and formally renounced China's traditional claims of imperial overlordship.^[3] The ceremonies in which Joseon acknowledged subordination to China were permanently abolished. In the next year, the Yeongeunmun gate outside Seoul, where those ceremonies were performed, was demolished leaving its two stone pillars.

China ceded to Japan the

China paid Japan a war indemnity of 200 million Kuping taels, paid over seven years.

China opened various ports and rivers to Japanese trade, and granted Japan the same status regarding trade as various western powers had gained in the aftermath of the First and Second Opium Wars.

Qing China's indemnity to Japan of 200 million

During the summit between Japanese and Qing representatives in March and April 1895, Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi and Foreign Minister Mutsu Munemitsu wanted to reduce the power of the Qing dynasty on not only the Korean Peninsula but also the Taiwan islands. Moreover, Mutsu had already noticed its importance in order to expand Japanese military power towards South China and Southeast Asia. It was also the age of imperialism, so Japan wished to mimic what the Western nations were doing. Imperial Japan was seeking colonies and resources in the Korean Peninsula and mainland China to compete with the presence of Western powers at that time. This was the way the Japanese leadership chose to illustrate how fast Imperial Japan had advanced compared to the West since the 1867 Meiji Restoration, and the extent it wanted to amend the unequal treaties that were held in the Far East by the Western powers.

At the peace conference between Imperial Japan and the Qing dynasty, Li Hongzhang and Li Jingfang, the ambassadors at the negotiation desk of the Qing dynasty, originally did not plan to cede Taiwan because they also realized Taiwan's great location for trading with the West. Therefore, even though the Qing had lost wars against Britain and France in the 19th century, the Qing emperor was serious about keeping Taiwan under its rule, which began in 1683. On March 20, 1895, at Shunpanrō (春帆楼) in Shimonoseki in Japan, a one month long peace conference began.

At the first half of the conference, Ito and Li talked mainly about a cease-fire agreement, and during the second half of the conference, the contents of the peace treaty were discussed. Ito and Mutsu claimed that yielding the full sovereignty of Taiwan was an absolute condition and requested Li to hand over full sovereignty of the

However, Imperial Japan had the military advantage, and eventually Li gave Taiwan up. On April 17, 1895, the peace treaty between Imperial Japan and the Qing dynasty had been signed and was followed by the successful

The treaty was drafted with John W. Foster, former American secretary of state, advising the Qing Empire. It was signed by Count Itō Hirobumi and Viscount Mutsu Munemitsu for the emperor of Japan and Li Hongzhang and Li Jingfang on behalf of the emperor of China. Before the treaty was signed, Li Hongzhang was attacked by a right-wing Japanese extremist on 24 March: he was fired at and wounded on his way back to his lodgings at Injoji temple. The public outcry aroused by the assassination attempt caused the Japanese to temper their demands and agree to a temporary armistice. The conference was temporarily adjourned and resumed on 10 April.

The conditions imposed by Japan on China led to the

In Taiwan, pro-Qing officials and elements of the local gentry declared a Republic of Formosa in 1895, but failed to win international recognition.

In China, the Treaty was considered a national humiliation by the bureaucracy and greatly weakened support for the Qing dynasty. The previous decades of the Self-Strengthening Movement were considered to be a failure, and support grew for more radical changes in China's political and social systems which led to Hundred Days' Reform in 1898. When the latter movement failed due to resistance from the Manchu nobility, a series of uprisings culminated in the fall of the Qing dynasty itself in 1911.

The Triple Intervention is regarded by many Japanese historians as being a crucial historic turning point in Japanese foreign affairs – from this point on, the nationalist, expansionist, and militant elements began to join ranks and steer Japan from a foreign policy based mainly on economic hegemony toward outright imperialism — a case of the coerced turning increasingly to coercion.

Both the

The People's Republic of China does not recognize the Treaty of Taipei.

Prelude to war

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Treaty of Shimonoseki" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Russia wasted little time after the Triple Intervention to move men and materials down into the Liaodong to start building a railroad from both ends — Port Arthur and

This acted as a further goad to emerging Japanese anger at their disrespectful treatment by all the West. In the immediate fallout of the Triple Intervention, Japanese popular resentment at Russia's deviousness and the perceived weakness of its own government caving in to foreign pressure led to riots in Tokyo. The disturbance almost brought down the government, as well as a strengthening of imperial and expansionist factions within Japan. The Russian spear into the sphere also brought about the ensuing struggle with Russia for dominance in Korea and Manchuria. These events eventually led to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 by a renewed and modernized Japanese military, which led to a major defeat for Russia that marked the beginning of the end for the Romanov dynasty.^[8]

• Unequal treaty
• Kwantung Leased Territory
• Chinese Eastern Railway
• South Manchuria Railway
• Yeongeunmun
• Independence Gate
• Anti-Japanese colonialism in Taiwan

Further reading

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Treaty of Shimonoseki

• Cai, Yang; Zhu, Jiong (2024). "Cooperative Culture and the Birth of Modern Enterprises in China: Evidence from the Signing of the Treaty of Shimonoseki". European Economic Review
• Chamberlain, William Henry. (1937). Japan Over Asia. Boston:, Little, Brown, and Company.
• Cheng, Pei-Kai and Michael Lestz. (1999). The Search for Modern China: A Documentary Collection. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
• Colliers. (1904). The Russo-Japanese War. New York: P.F. Collier & Son.
• ISBN 9780860083061; OCLC 252084846
• Sedwick, F. R. (1909). The Russo-Japanese War, 1909. New York: Macmillan Company.
• Warner, Dennis and Peggy Warner. (1974). The Tide At Sunrise. New York: Charterhouse.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Treaty of Shimonoseki, 1895.

• Text of the treaty
• Ch'ing Dynasty Treaties and Agreements Preserved by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Archived August 4, 2015, at the Wayback Machine