th troops; and, in 1885, a convention,
signed at Tientsin, pledged each of the contracting parties not to
send a military force to Korea without notifying the other.

In spite of these agreements China's arbitrary and unfriendly
interference in Korean affairs continued to be demonstrated to Japan.
Efforts to obtain redress proved futile, and even provoked threats of
Chinese armed intervention. Finally, in the spring of 1894, an
insurrection of some magnitude broke out in Korea, and in response to
an appeal from the Royal family, China sent twenty-five hundred
troops, who went into camp at Asan, on the southwest coast of the
peninsula. Notice was duly given to the Tokyo Government, which now
decided that Japan's vital interests as well as the cause of
civilization in the East required that an end must be put to Korea's
dangerous misrule and to China's arbitrary interference. Japan did
not claim for herself anything that she was not willing to accord to
China. But the Tokyo statesmen were sensible that to ask their
conservative neighbour to promote in the Peninsular Kingdom a
progressive programme which she had always steadily rejected and
despised in her own case, must prove a chimerical attempt, if
ordinary diplomatic methods alone were used. Accordingly, on receipt
of Peking's notice as to the sending of troops to the peninsula,
Japan gave corresponding notice on her own part, and thus July, 1894,
saw a Chinese force encamped at Asan and a Japanese force in the
vicinity of Seoul.

In having recourse to military aid, China's nominal purpose was to
quell the Tonghak insurrection, and Japan's motive was to obtain a
position such as would strengthen her demand for drastic treatment of
Korea's malady. In giving notice of the despatch of troops, China
described Korea as her "tributary State," thus emphasizing a
contention which at once created an impossible situation. During
nearly twenty years Japan had treated Korea as her own equal, in
accordance with the terms of the treaty of 1876, and she could not
now agree that the Peninsular Kingdom should be officially classed as
a tributary of China. Her protests, however, were contemptuously
ignored, and Chinese statesmen continued to apply the offensive
appellation to Korea, while at the same time they asserted the right
of limiting the number of troops sent by Japan to the peninsula as
well as the manner of their employment.

Still desirous of preserving the peace, Japan pr