Abstract
The outbreak of the Great War in Europe triggered a chain of events in the Pacific that includes an often overlooked short war which, in turn, changed the balance of power in the region with ramifications of a global order.Before the war, Germany had a thin but significant presence across large parts of the Ocean, in between an Anglo-Australasian and French-controlled southern portion and a growing Japanese Empire to the north of the islands, with the United States interspersed across the Pacific. The opportunity provided in August 1914 was quickly seized by Japan, absorbing the vast northern portion of the German Pacific from Palau to the Marshall Islands, whereas the southern part, including New Guinea, was occupied by British Australasia, with the United States looking on from outside and Germany, militarily overwhelmed, from inside the war.
The long duration of the war meant that the possible outcomes for the Pacific were being discussed for years between the powers, not least the reactions of all those previous ‘incumbents’ to the expansion of Japan deep into the Ocean. Viewing these events from the perspectives afforded by the archives of all those different ‘incumbent’ nations exposes the underlying fault-lines which in due course led to a new political map and order in the Pacific, diplomatically rehearsed throughout the war and finally cemented by the Paris Peace Conference. This little-known settlement proved just as unstable as the better known one in Europe and the Middle East. Ultimately - but not teleologically - it constituted a decisive element on the path to the Pacific War of 1941-45.
| Date of Award | 28 Feb 2019 |
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| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
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| Supervisor | Carl Bridge (Supervisor) & Andrew Lambert (Supervisor) |