easily seized Korea, destroyed the Chinese naval forces, over-ran Southern Manchuria, and even captured the port of Wei-hai-wei in China proper. The war ended in 1895. In the peace treaty China agreed to pay a large indemnity to Japan, recognized the full independence of Korea, and ceded to Japan the rich island of Formosa, the strategically placed Pescadores Islands between Formosa and the coast of China, and the Liaotung Peninsula at the southern tip of Manchuria. Japan had demonstrated that she had indeed become a modern military power, and had made a successful start in building an empire.
At about the same time Japan finally won recognition from the occidental powers as a true equal and a full-fledged member of the family of nations. Impressed by the rapid and efficient reorganization of Japanese political institutions in conformity with Western patterns, and satisfied that the new legal system was up to occidental standards of justice and humaneness, the British in 1894 agreed to surrender their right to extraterritoriality, the right exercised by most Western governments throughout Asia to have their nationals tried by their own rather than by native laws. Other Western powers followed the British example, and in 1899 Japan became the first Asiatic land to free itself of extraterritoriality. The Western nations also began to relinquish the treaty rights under which they had restricted Japanese tariffs since the late days of the Tokugawa. By 1911, Japan had resumed complete control of her own tariffs.
For the most part, Americans and Europeans were favorably impressed with the rapid strides in modern-