Okay, so there are a couple of historical incidents I know a little about, but for some reason I’ve never been able to figure out if there was any fighting. I mean deadly fighting, like with guns and bombs and other nasty things.
Perry’s expedition to Tokyo, 19th Century. Okay, this was the event where a big U.S. fleet sailed to Japan and eventually got a really sweet trade deal. Previous to that expedition, the Japanese had had a closed economy. This raises the slightly creepy question of, Did the U.S. Navy sail in and start blasting, or did the Japanese just decide to humor us since, heck, we did have a nice Navy and all, and what’s so bad about a little trade?
Anglo-Soviet joint invasion of Iran, World War II. Okay, so they wanted to open a transport route from the Soviet Union to the outside world, and Iran was in the way. The Iranians would not logically be pleased by foreigners just marching in and taking over, but I’ve never figured out whether there were any battles. Shooting or none?
Operation Torch landings into French colonies, 1942. Obviously we went there to drive the Germans and Italians out of North Africa. I don’t want to get into a semantic debate over whether Vichy France was an Axis country or a neutral country. My question is, did the Allies and pro-Axis Frenchmen inflict many casualties on each other?
I had a bunch of other similar questions but I’ve forgotten them. I confess that I’m a teensy bit embarrassed at having tried to gather this from history but never figured it out. I mean, you’d think the first thing you’d hear about a certain historical event would be Whether or Not It Was a War.
As tc said you can “Read all about it at the Perry Memorial Monument.”
Or you can see the musical “Pacific Overtures,” which is all about the Perry expedition and the subsequent imperialization of Japan.
[Editorial hijack: See, that’s why Sondheim is a great songwriter. While the rest of the nominations in the “Best Lyricist” thread write songs about picking up foozies in smokey bars, he writes about the 19th century subversion of the Japanese culture – from the Japanese point of view. The man’s a genius, that’s all. Editorial over. Thanks for listening.]
Perry was definitely prepared to start blasting away at the Japanese if need be. It wasn’t an easy mission, sailing around the world to a place where you have never been and trying to negotiate with people who don’t want you around and have been openly hostile to visitors before.
There was heavy opposition to most of the TORCH landings in North Africa.
Here’s a link giving the Naval Overview of the landings, and although it includes damage by German and Italian action, certainly points out that the landings were opposed.
Something like 107,000 troops were landed, roughly in the proportion 75% US to 25% British. I have heard rumours–proto-ULs, I guess, that some British units were given US uniforms and equipment for the landing, in order to emphasize the US’s role. Without hard facts, I’d take that with a grain of salt.
I haven’t been able to find a casualty figure for TORCH, but here’s a link to the official US Army history.
Addendum: just saw mattk’s post, with 3000 casualty figure. Good digging, mattk!
BobT, can you provide a cite for the notion that Perry was prepared to start a war?
I’m not actually doubting that as a possibility. I suspect, however, that he (and the U.S. administration) did not feel that it would be necessary.
Of course, the reason they were prepared to assume that the mission would succeed was based on Britain’s efforts in China eleven years earlier. When Great Britain decided that it was time for China to help enhance the wealth of the British Empire, they sent a fleet up the river to the Great Canal which provided an enormous amount of the internal trade traffic and most of the administrative communications within China. Once they blockaded the canal, China was forced to its knees, and capitulated on the issue of the trade concessions demanded by Britain.
Japan would have known of the Sino-British incident (and the U.S. certainly knew of it). I was always under the impression that we never thought we would need to open a single gun port, simply letting the British example do our work for us.
Re:
2. Anglo-Soviet joint invasion of Iran, World War II. Okay, so they wanted to open a transport route from the Soviet Union to the outside world, and Iran was in the way. The Iranians would not logically be pleased by foreigners just marching in and taking over, but I’ve never figured out whether there were any battles. Shooting or none?
There may have been if the Allies gone in without intelligence preparation. At lease one Iranian general suspected of Nazi sympathies was neutalized prior to the takeover (cite: Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean, which also includes his memoirs of action with the SAS in North Africa & with Tito’s partisans)
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that Perry was ready to go to war, but he was very careful and his ships were armed.
However, he obviously didn’t want to do that and he would have had a hard time accomplishing anything more than pissing off the shogun and keeping his crew alive.
There was some shooting. There was fighting around Basra, Khurramshahr, Ahwaz, Kermanshah and the Paitak Pass. British casualties were light: 22 killed and 42 wounded. Given that the Germans were attempting to stir up trouble in Iran as they had done before in Iraq, the British were lucky that the operations were such a walkover.