The first Dutch ship arrived in 1600, and in 1609 the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC) established a trading factory in Hirado. Following the expulsion of the Portuguese in 1639, the Dutch became the only Europeans allowed to remain in Japan.
Japan's first encounter with Western colonialism was with Portugal in the mid-sixteenth century. The Portuguese brought Catholicism and the new technology of gun and gunpowder into Japan. The latter changed the way samurai rulers fought wars, and accelerated the process of national unification.
Japan is one of the countries today that has never been colonized.
Meiji Foreign Policy
In 1894-95 Japan fought a war against China over the control of Korea and gained Taiwan, Japan's first colony.
Japan had traditionally sought to avoid foreign intrusion. For many years, only the Dutch and the Chinese were allowed trading depots, each having access to only one port. No other foreigners were permitted to land in Japan, though Russia, France, and England tried, but with little success.
In that declaration, then-Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said: “I feel acute remorse and offer an apology from my heart” over the colonial rule. Japanese governments have expressed remorse or apologies over the colonial period numerous times.
Was China colonized by any country? Yes, China was colonized directly by Britain, Portugal, Russia, and China. Many other countries had control over trade in much of China.
But one of the most oppressive colonizers came from within the region: Japan. At its peak, in 1942, the Japanese Empire ruled over two hundred million people across thirteen modern-day countries, and it did so through extraordinary violence.
Before 1949. China and Japan are geographically separated only by a relatively narrow stretch of ocean. China has strongly influenced Japan with its writing system, architecture, culture, religion, philosophy, and law.
Seeking raw materials to fuel its growing industries, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931. By 1937 Japan controlled large sections of China, and war crimes against the Chinese became commonplace.
British settlement of Australia began as a penal colony governed by a captain of the Royal Navy. Until the 1850s, when local forces began to be recruited, British regular troops garrisoned the colonies with little local assistance.
United Kingdom (Britain) The British Empire was the largest of its kind in history, and once covered about one quarter of all the land on Earth.
Korea was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910-1945. For the first ten years Japan ruled directly through the military, and any Korean dissent was ruthlessly crushed.
The war in China, 1937–41
In 1931–32 the Japanese had invaded Manchuria (Northeast China) and, after overcoming ineffective Chinese resistance there, had created the Japanese-controlled puppet state of Manchukuo.
The Japanese occupation of the Philippines occurred between 1942 and 1945 during WWII. Filipinos staged guerrilla resistance against the Japanese until 1945. The Philippines was liberated from Japanese control by Allied forces in 1944. The Philippines was granted full independence by the United States in 1946.
After 60 years there is still no prospect of a true reconciliation between China and Japan. The recent visit by Junichiro Koizumi, Japan's prime minister, to a war shrine in central Tokyo was condemned by the Chinese.
After surviving millennia it finally had a standard written form, and is now one of the most spoken languages in the world! So Chinese predates both Japanese and Korean, and, interestingly, it had a big influence on both.
Mitochondrial DNA studies likewise support the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Chinese came to Asia from Africa. The M Haplogroup, a descendant of the African L3 Haplogroup, originated somewhere between Africa, India and Central Asia.
In the late imperial period, Russian historiography was dominated by the self-colonization school. Russian historians wrote detailed accounts of Russia's takeover of the Crimea, Finland, Ukraine, Poland, and other lands, but they did not describe these areas as Russian colonies.
Although nearly all the fighting took place in northern China, Japan had important territorial ambitions in southern China. As the war approached its end, the Japanese took steps to ensure that Taiwan would be ceded to Japan under the eventual peace treaty and that they were well placed militarily to occupy the island.
The Japanese occupation of the Andamans is perhaps one of the least talked about episodes of the Second World War. Japanese forces landed in South Andamans on March 23, 1942 and in the next three to four hours gained complete control over the area. Japanese control over the Andamans coincided with the Indian National ...
During the European powers' attempt to control the world, the Chinese Empire was not easy to conquer as it had a powerful army and government like the Ottoman Empire. Its large size became an advantage, making it an elusive target for colonization.
Kublai Khan was a Mongolian general and statesman who was the grandson and greatest successor of Genghis Khan. He was the fifth emperor (reigned 1260–94) of the Yuan (Mongol) dynasty. In 1279 he completed the conquest of China begun by Genghis Khan and became the first Yuan ruler of all of China.
Likewise, China was never formally colonized, but the Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860 were fought to ensure that British opium merchants had access to Chinese markets.