The League Of Nations: The Manchurian Crisis

The League of Nations was established in 1919 as the idea born in Woodrow Wilson, who was president of the United States of America. The purpose of the League of Nations was to establish an international body of nations devoted to maintain peace, ensure the treaty of Versailles was being upheld and to never let the possibility of war breaking out. Despite the mission being set out, the whole thing was arguably a failure. Granted social services on their part were successful, the main objectives that were important were undermined by the self-interest of the respective members in the League. Different factors come into play but this remains the biggest, as many countries weren’t interested in supporting the leagues as their own economic problems

While remaining to be one of the main reasons of failure for the League, there are still other factors that deeply intertwine within the whole thing; begging the question ‘To what extent was the League of Nations Membership responsible for its ineptitude in handling crises

The Manchurian crisis occurred around 1931, staged by the Japanese on the pretext that that the Chinese had sabotage Japanese railways in order to obtain newer MINERALS. China at the time was in the gripes of anarchy, but could still tell that the Japanese were purposely trying to invoke conflict as an excuse to takeover, and they had done this through the use of the railways owned by each countries respectively. The Japanese proclaimed that Chinese troops had sabotaged their railways and used this as a way to instigate further damage. This was serious considering that Japan was a leading member in the League. The reasons for this hostile takeover was due to the Great Depression (insert a bunch of in text textbook citations). Before the Depression, Japan was doing economically well, establishing a strong industry with good exportation, powerful army (although the strength of the army caused government policy to be dictated primarily by army leaders), as well as a growing empire. When the Depression hit, it deeply devastated Japan. China and USA put up tariffs (trading barriers) against Japanese goods. Japan was quite dependent on trade, as it was a country with few natural resources. Ultimately decided to use an incident in Manchuria 1931 to invade. Once they had overthrown any remaining Chinese forces, they set up a Manchuko, a puppet government, in 1932. The civilian government condemened the military’s action and demanded it to move