Siege of Tsingtao
Japan and Britain took the German colony of Tsingtao in China in November 1914 after a siege of two months. Germany had acquired the Kiautschou concession in 1897 as compensation for the murder of two missionaries, held it on a ninety-nine-year lease, and had spent enormous sums making it a model colony with a brewery, a university, a sewage system and a naval base for the East Asia Squadron. Japan was allied to Britain and had no obligation to enter a European war, and did so on a calculation about position in China. It issued an ultimatum in August demanding the surrender of the territory for eventual restoration to China, which Germany ignored. Some 23,000 Japanese and 1,500 British and Indian troops landed and advanced overland across neutral Chinese territory, which China protested and could do nothing about. The siege was conducted in the European style with heavy artillery and parallel trenches, against about 4,000 defenders who had no prospect of relief. It also contained the first naval air operations in history: a Japanese seaplane carrier launched aircraft that bombed the port and spotted for the guns, and a single German aircraft flew reconnaissance until it ran out of parts. The garrison surrendered on 7 November. Japan kept the territory and pressed the Twenty-One Demands on China the following year, and the transfer of German rights in Shandong to Japan at Versailles produced the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and turned a generation of Chinese intellectuals against the Western powers. The brewery the Germans built in 1903 survived everything and is still one of the largest in China, exported under a spelling of the city's name that predates the modern romanisation.
- Year: 1914 CE
- Category: Military
