Why The Ligue of nations Was Unable to Prevent the

Manchurian Crisis?

The Manchurian crisis It was one of the most interesting conflicts of the 19th

century, in this conflict we can observe different techniques that governments can use to

achieve their goal, as can be seen in this crisis, but the most interesting thing about this

crisis was how it demonstrated the inability of the league of nations to resolve international

conflicts

Before talking about the events and the actions of the league of nations we have to

go back to the 19th century in the Meiji restoration, where the Japanese population began

to have religious devotion towards the emperor, also thanks to the adopted ultra-

nationalism, a focused state and technological advances, obtained thanks to the fact that

in the 19th and 20th centuries Japan had increased its influence in the west obtaining

more technological advances through trade and also with a growing population they

decided to expand, first they took Korea and then they continued by The invasion of

Manchuria which began on September 18, 1931, in the southern Manchurian territory is

known as the Mukden incident where one of the worst incidents that a country can do to

another was committed, sabotage, at 6:00 a.m. On the same day, there was an explosion

of dynamite on the rails that connect Japan with southern Manchuria, this action was

considered by the generals of Japan as a terrorist attack, seriously influencing the

economic affairs of the country, since by this means of transport, thousands of tons of

merchandise were mobilized to the country, giving a great blow to the Japanese economy,

for the aforementioned General ShIgeru Honjō commanded the second division, better

known as The Courage Division, onto the train line with the plan to take over all the cities

of southern Manchuria such as Fushun, Szeping-Chieh, Changchun, Kuanchengtzu,

Yingkou, Antung, and Penhsih, Also on September 19 of the same year, the forces of the

20th division, created especially as a garrison force for the Japanese territory in Korea,

Korean Japanese, known as the Chosun army, was divided thus creating brigade 39,

these forces between the September 20 and 25 they were able to conquer Hsiungyueh,

Changtu, Liaoyang, Tungliao, Tiaonan, Jilin, Chiaoho, Huangkutun and Hsin-min, giving

them total control of southern Manchuria, but these actions were never authorized by the

Emperor of Japan, He asked the different generals to withdraw their forces from hostile

territories, but thanks to the fact that the government did not have any kind of control over

the Japanese forces, this was impossible, so thanks to this all of southern Manchuria was

now was over the complete control of the Japanese Empire.

But now dais we know that these radical actions taken by the military forces was

not because of the Mukden incident, this was only and excuse, because thanks to the

growing population and a major demand of resources it was necessary for Japan to gather

more territory, so the Imperialist Japan forces sabotaged their own rails to blame China for

this act. and having this act as an excuse to take Manchuria, during this act there was no

resistance from China, so in 1932 Japan had complete control of southern Manchuria,

changing the name of this puppet state to Manchukuo, But after this China decided to

appeal to the Ligue of Nations, which took 3 actions, the first was to request that the

Japanese troops withdraw from the territory, but this was not achieved thanks to the lack

of control of the Japanese government about their armed forces, second

 after a year of conversations, the league decided that this was unjustified and the third

was to report that none of the league members considered Manchukuo as a new

Japanese state, so Japan decided to leave the Ligue of Nations saying that it was lake "

hypocritical on the part of Britain, as they have a long history of using force in Chinese

territories.
 As we can see, the League of Nations was not able to take action on the

"aggressors" which in this case were the Japanese, and honor its principle of Collective

Security, also thanks to the fact that all the members were concentrated in their countries

thanks to the great depreciation, none were willing to take action, also thanks to the

remoteness of Manchuria and that only the USA and the British had the naval force to

confront the Japanese, but the USA was unwilling to fight, and the British could not fight

this war alone so that the league of Nations was unable to avoid this international conflict

and honor the Collective security

APA

Díaz, M. E. C. (1991, January 1). El conflicto de Manchuria en la sociedad de las naciones

(1931-33). Dialnet. Retrieved December 1, 2021, from
https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=122934.

Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Mukden incident. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved

December 1, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Mukden-Incident.