I welcome your thoughts on the U.S. Korean Punitive Expedition of 1871. Could America have taken over Korea completely and established an Asian colony? YOU decide!
Could American Conquer Korea?
- Thread starter pureet1948
- Start date
Could? It would take a good year or two to build up an expedition that could actually pull that off, but they could eventually occupy the peninsula if they wished to extend the effort and no other country intervened, but they had absolutely no desire to do so and the European powers would certainly have objected if they had.
TFSmith121
Banned
In God's name, why?
Hawaii wasn't even US territory in 1871....
Shooting up pirates (from the US/Western point of view; the Koreans presumably saw themselves as patriots) is one thing; organizing an expeditionary force of any size, all of six years after Appomattox, for a conflct 8,000 miles around the world seems a bit much, don't you think?
Best,
Hawaii wasn't even US territory in 1871....
Shooting up pirates (from the US/Western point of view; the Koreans presumably saw themselves as patriots) is one thing; organizing an expeditionary force of any size, all of six years after Appomattox, for a conflct 8,000 miles around the world seems a bit much, don't you think?
Best,
No. As others have already pointed out, the US was still reeling from the aftermath of its devastating civil war, along with struggling to implement Reconstruction policies from 1865 to 1877. Even if America had sent a larger expedition, it would have been unable to successfully withstand challenges from various other European powers, due to a relatively fledgling navy, not to mention numerous guerrilla efforts within the peninsula, which could have dragged on the conflict for several more years with virtually no gain.
Lateknight
Banned
It's not impossible if they really wanted they could, but there's no reason for to want to conquer Korea.
Any American force that landed would be cut to pieces inside a few weeks, between simple logistics and Korean tenacity. Think the Anglo-Afghan Wars, but the nearest cantonment isn't in Peshawar, but San Francisco!
This might spur Korea along the same path as Japan, but it might as easily confirm that they don't need to learn from the West.
This might spur Korea along the same path as Japan, but it might as easily confirm that they don't need to learn from the West.
It took the Qing 10 years to force Korea become its vassal. And this was after millions died and were kidnapped back to China. Protectorates also don't occur just because you invade the capital. Righteous Armies, as always, will rise up and fight against foreign invaders.
Does America, like the Qing, have the logistics and willingness to bring a hundred thousand-strong army, destroy the entire countryside, corner the King into a fortress and basically starve him out into submission?
It was. Is that a problem? You state a scenario as if it could be dealt with like a computer game, where you set mods like "Qing doesn't invade" and "infinite American supplies" then force upon a situation where Korea would possibly lose.
And it wouldn't - like ES mentioned, it's like trying to invade Afghanistan without the logistics. You hit the capital, the countryside would fight against the enemy. You try to hit the countryside and get annihilated with a lack of ammunition. It just wouldn't work.
You'd give a stupid answer to a stupid question, wouldn't you?
Huh? The Qing took about two months to receive the surrender of Injo. The first invasion in 1627 was only intended to make Joseon a Qing ally, not to make Joseon a Qing vassal.
I suspect that Britain wouldn't have minded much, bearing in mind that we had no real interests in (and relatively few interests very close to) Korea at the time, and might even have offered to support the American claim in exchange for American support in some other (current or future) dispute. When was the Alaska/BC border finally fixed at its RL line?
No, they did not. The point stands: Taizong of Qing took two months, not a decade, to receive the surrender of the Korean king. The Manchu invasions were fundamentally different from the Japanese invasions of the 1590s in this aspect.