Manchurian Incident Dbq

Source Paper

1) In both Source A and B, both history books both agree that China did not attack the Manchurian railway and that the Japanese was at fault. For example, Source A says “The Japanese had successfully caused confusion about what had really happened at the Mukden Incident.” And Source B says “League action was postponed until the submission of the Lytton Commission report, which was given to the Assembly in September 1932. The long document acknowledged Chinese failures in the administration of Manchuria but denied that they justified the Japanese occupation.” However, the impact of the invasion of the league is extremely different in both sources. For example, Source A says “However, because these events took place in East Asia

The failure of the League to act in either the economic or military sphere was worrying. The Covenant powers, especially Great Britain and France, proved weak and hesitant when put to the test. The consequences to the League were lost commitment and confidence even before it had to face the greater challenges that would soon be provided by Germany and Italy.” In conclusion, we can see that both sources A and B acknowledge the fact that Japan had acted aggressively and without enough or any justification. However, we can see both sources disagree with the impact the Manchurian incident had on the league’s integrity. For one, we can see that in Source A indicates that because the incident was not in Europe, it did not affect the league’s integrity as China was in a state of turmoil and was not being governed properly and that the invasion was of no consequence to the League’s integrity. However, Source B states that this was the start of the downfall of the league and its ideals and that because the league did not intervene in the Manchurian incident, it was unable to deal with the other much harder crises such as the invasion of Abyssinia and Hitler’s re-armament with objectivity and integrity as they were far too focused on their very own

For one, a senior government minister would want to keep British self-interests at heart as they would want their party to win in further elections especially after the British sentiment was extremely war weary. Furthermore, If the British had pushed for sanctions against Japan, Japan would have acted even more aggressively and might have started to act British colonies which would have made the British have to defend against the Japanese Invasions. Firstly, this would have made the general population of Britain very angry as they were extremely war weary. Secondly, as source E states “If you enforce an economic boycott, you will have war declared by Japan and she will seize Singapore and Hong Kong.” If the British had lost these overseas colonies, its influence in the regions would significantly decrease. Furthermore, having Singapore under the control of the British was extremely important as it was vital to implementing one of its biggest naval defense policies as it housed a large number of Warships and was seen as a prime location for defense against aggressive Japanese expansion, as if Singapore was taken, Japan could easily build a railway through Thailand all the way to India which was extremely important to Britain’s economy. Furthermore, Source E states that the letter was written in 1931 as shown here “A senior government minister writing to another member of the British government in 1931.” This was during the Manchurian