Selective Racism, the Daily Mail, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance

This article examines the role of the popular press, particularly the Daily Mail, in shaping public opinion to facilitate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. It focuses on the role and writing of Herbert Wrigley Wilson, long-time contributor and assistant editor of the Mail. It is argued that, especially through Wilson’s writings, the Daily Mail sought to recast Japan’s image in British public opinion from negative to positive, and to create an atmosphere more conducive to alliance. The ‘selective racism’ of the Mail is shown—defending Japan in racial terms while publishing intensely racist statements regarding South African Boers and Eastern European Jewish immigrants. This was not driven by racial hierarchy but by support for the realist imperatives of the British Empire—subordinating racial prejudice to strategic needs. This study presents a significant correction to scholarship on the alliance focused solely upon elite diplomacy and discourse.