made by the Japanese to secure a predominating influence in the kingdom. This was strenuously resisted by the Chinese, and, as a result, the court of Seoul was the scene of constant intrigues and the overthrow of ministries, marked by violence and barbarity. Twice was the Japanese representative driven from Seoul by armed force and his legation premises destroyed. As already noticed, these conflicts were sought to be avoided by the treaty negotiated at Tientsin in 1885 by Li Hung Chang and Marquis Ito, but the intrigues and disorder continued and had their culmination in the Chinese-Japanese war of 1894.
The causes and details of that war cannot be here narrated further than as they relate to the connection of the United States with that momentous contest.[1]
In June, 1894, a considerable body of Chinese troops were sent to Korea for the alleged purpose of putting down a rebellion which was threatening the overthrow of the Korean government. This action, claimed by Japan to have been in violation of the treaty of 1885, was followed by the dispatch of a force of Japanese troops which occupied Seoul, and its seaport, and fortified the connecting route. In the mean time the rebellion had been suppressed, and the king of Korea
- ↑ For causes of war, Williams's Hist. China, 437–444; Griffis's Corea, 460–462; The People and Politics of the Far East, by Henry Norman, New York, 1895, pp. 359–366; Curzon's Far East, 196–208; The China-Japan War, by "Vladimir," London, 1896, pt. i. chap. iii. and Appendix B; Heroic Japan, A History of the War between China and Japan, by P. W. Eastlake and Yamada Yoshi Aki, London, 1899, pp. i.–ix. and chap. i.; History of War between China and Japan, by J. Inouye, Osaka, 1895, chaps, i. and ii.; U. S. For. Rel. 1894, Appendix i. pp. 5–23.
