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The Unparalleled Invasion

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"The Unparalleled Invasion"
Short storybyJack London
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Genre(s)Short story
Publication
Published inMcClure's
Publication typeMagazine
Publication date1910

"The Unparalleled Invasion"is a science fiction story written by American authorJack London.It was first published inMcClure'sin 1910.[1]

Plot summary

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Under the influence ofJapan,Chinamodernizes and undergoes its own version of theMeiji Reformsin the 1910s. In 1922, China breaks away from Japan and fights a brief war that culminates in the Chinese annexation of theJapanese possessionsofKorea,Formosa,andManchuria.Enraged over the loss ofIndochinato Chinese migrants and invading armies,Franceattempts toblockadeChina, but is thwarted by China'seconomic self-sufficiency.In a last-ditch attempt, France assembles a large military force to invade China, but the entire force is quickly defeated by China's vast army. Over the next half century, China's population steadily grows, and eventually migration overwhelms every otherEuropean colony in Asia.

By 1975, the population of China is double that of the Western world combined, and China's government is confident that the nation's highbirth rateand population will result in Chinese world domination. The United States enlists the help of other Western powers and amasses an invasion force on China's borders. America then launches abiological warfarecampaign against China, resulting in the total destruction of China's population, with the few survivors of the plague being killed out of hand by European and American troops. Some German soldiers are exposed to "a sort of hybridization between plague-germs" in China and are studied by German scientists, but the infection is safely kept from spreading. China is then colonized by the Western powers, opening the way to a joyous epoch of "splendid mechanical, intellectual, and art output". In the 1980s, war clouds once more gather betweenGermanyandFranceoverAlsace–Lorraine.The story ends with the nations of the world solemnly pledging not to use the same techniques that they had used against China.

Background and context

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London wrote the story in 1907 and it was published inMcClure'sin 1910[2][3]: 18 

Analysis

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"The Unparalleled Invasion" was included inThe Strength of the Strong,a collection of stories by London published byMacmillanin 1914,[4]which also included "The Dream of Debs",a critique ofcapitalist societyin the US, and "The Strength of the Strong", which used a primitive background as metaphor ofsocial injusticeamong men.

Many academics take the text at face value.[3]: 19 "The Unparalleled Invasion" has been used to support claims of racism in London's work.[5][6]Academics pointed out that the premise, themes, and even some passages were borrowed directly from London's 1904 "Yellow Peril" essay, where London warns that "the menace to the Western World lies, not in the [Japanese] little brown man, but in the four hundred millions of [Chinese] yellow men". [7]AcademicH. Bruce Franklindescribed the story as celebrating superweapons and the genocide of Asians.[3]: 19 

However, other academics have also claimed that this story is a "strident warning against race hatred and its paranoia", due to its focus on the danger posed to China by the West. Some academics argue that the story represents a warning of what happens when racial hatred is allowed to develop or an ironic criticism ofimperialism.[3]: 19 The story has also been viewed as a prescient political prediction of the rise of China as a world political power triggered in part by Japan's imperial aspirations. [8][9]

See also

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References

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  1. ^"McClure's Magazine v35n03 [1910-07]".July 1910.
  2. ^"McClure's Magazine v35n03 [1910-07]".July 1910.
  3. ^abcdCrean, Jeffrey (2024).The Fear of Chinese Power: an International History.New Approaches to International History series. London, UK:Bloomsbury Academic.ISBN978-1-350-23394-2.
  4. ^The Strength of the StrongArchivedMay 27, 2015, at theWayback MachineThe World of Jack London, retrieved February 4, 2015.
  5. ^Shi, Flair Donglai (February 2019). "The Yellow Peril as a Travelling Discourse: A Comparative Study of Wang Lixiong's".Comparative Critical Studies.16(1): 7–30.doi:10.3366/ccs.2019.0308.S2CID150408836.
  6. ^ Hari, Johann (August 15, 2010)."Jack London's many sides emerge in James L. Haley's Wolf".Slate.Slate.RetrievedJanuary 3,2014.Slate quotes it having the line "the only possible solution to the Chinese problem", although the line doesn't exist in the short story.
  7. ^Swift, John N. (Fall 2002)."Jack London's" The Unparalleled Invasion ": Germ Warfare, Eugenics, and Cultural Hygiene".American Literary Realism.35(1): 59–71.JSTOR27747084.
  8. ^Jeanne Campbell Reesman (1999).Jack London: A Study of the Short Fiction.Twayne Publishers.ISBN978-0-8057-1678-8.OCLC1014742577.
  9. ^Métraux, Daniel (June 2008)."Jack London Reporting from Tokyo and Manchuria: The Forgotten Role of an Influential Observer of Early Modern Asia"(PDF).Asia Pacific Perspectives.8(1): 1–5. Archived fromthe original(PDF)on August 3, 2019.RetrievedMarch 30,2021.
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