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Japan Past and Present
1910. There, as in Formosa, she embarked upon an ambitious program of economic development and exploitation, which brought railways, factories, and other outward aspects of the modern world to these lands. The Koreans and Formosans, however, were subjected to the repressive rule of an efficient but often ruthless colonial administration and an omnipresent and usually brutal police force. The natives had even less opportunity for personal economic gain than the lower classes in Japan, and their intellectual and spiritual oppression was severe.
The First World War gave Japan another chance to expand, this time with little risk or effort. As the ally of England, Japan at once declared war on Germany. Little interested in the outcome of the war in Europe, Japan happily proceeded to pick up German colonies in the East, taking Tsingtao and all the German interests in adjoining areas of China, and seizing German islands in the North Pacific, the Marianas, Carolines, and Marshalls—later given to Japan in the form of a mandate by the peace treaty. With the eyes of the rest of the world turned toward Europe, Japan also found this a good time to win more concessions from the Chinese, and in 1915, presented China with the so-called “Twenty-one Demands,” which would have made China a virtual colony of Japan. The Chinese Republican government resisted the more sweeping of these demands, but Japan managed to acquire many valuable economic concessions during the war years. The war in Europe also cut off the cotton mills of England and the factories of continental Europe from the markets of Asia. Japanese business men took full ad-