Treaty of Ganghwa
Japan forced Korea to sign an unequal treaty in February 1876, using exactly the method the Americans had used on Japan twenty-two years earlier. Korea under the regent Daewongun had spent the 1860s and 1870s refusing all foreign contact, repelling a French expedition in 1866 and an American one in 1871, and executing missionaries and converts. Japan's new Meiji government wanted the relationship redefined. Its first diplomatic notes after 1868 used language reserved for the Chinese emperor and were rejected by Seoul on that ground, and an influential faction in Tokyo argued for war over the insult in 1873 and was defeated. The pretext came in September 1875, when the gunboat Un'yō sailed into the restricted waters near Ganghwa Island, sent a boat towards the shore batteries ostensibly for drinking water, was fired on, and destroyed the fort in reply. A squadron arrived the following January to demand satisfaction. The Treaty of Ganghwa declared Korea an independent state — which was directed at China, whose tributary it had been for centuries — opened three ports including Busan and eventually Incheon, gave Japanese subjects extraterritorial rights, allowed Japanese survey of Korean coasts, and set no tariff. The Koreans, unfamiliar with treaty practice, did not initially grasp what the extraterritoriality clause meant. Within twenty years Japan had fought China over Korea and won. The queen was murdered in her palace by Japanese agents in 1895, Korea became a protectorate in 1905 and a colony in 1910. The treaty is conventionally taken as the start of Korea's modern history and of its colonial one at the same time. Both Korean states date the loss of sovereignty from here rather than from 1910, on the argument that the annexation was only the last instalment of what was signed at Ganghwa.
- Year: 1876 CE
- Category: Political
