The South Pacific
The formal annexation and incorporation of the Bonin Islands and Taiwan into the Japanese Empire can be viewed as first steps in implementation of the “Southern Expansion Doctrine” in concrete terms.
However, World War I had a profound impact on the “Southern Expansion Doctrine”. Japan was able to occupy the vast areas in the Pacific formerly controlled by the German Empire: i.e. the Caroline Islands, Mariana Islands, Marshall Islands and Palau. In 1919, these island groups officially became a League of Nations mandate of Japan and came under the administration of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The focus of the “Southern Expansion Doctrine” expanded to include these island groups (Nan'yo), the economic and military development of which came to be viewed as essential to Japan's security.
Read more about this topic: "Strike South" Group
Famous quotes containing the words the south, south and/or pacific:
“Is it not the chief disgrace in the world, not to be an unit;Mnot to be reckoned one character;Mnot to yield that peculiar fruit which each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted geographically, as the north, or the south?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Indeed, I believe that in the future, when we shall have seized again, as we will seize if we are true to ourselves, our own fair part of commerce upon the sea, and when we shall have again our appropriate share of South American trade, that these railroads from St. Louis, touching deep harbors on the gulf, and communicating there with lines of steamships, shall touch the ports of South America and bring their tribute to you.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)