Combat
East Asia Operations 1866-1897
A grouping of the smaller Marine actions in the Far East across the decades after the Civil War, apart from the great Korean expedition of 1871.
The category gathers a long, scattered record of protective and punitive work: the New Chwang affair of 1866, when a squadron was sent to answer the assault on an American consul in northern China; the Formosa expedition of 1867, the reprisal for the Rover massacre; the intermittent landings in Japan during the upheaval of the Meiji Restoration; the establishment of the Marine guard at the American legation in Seoul from 1888; the protection of American interests during the Sino-Japanese War of the mid-1890s; and the Bering Sea patrols against seal poachers from 1890. The common thread was the small landing party, sent ashore to guard American consular and commercial interests in a turbulent region, with the occasional sharper punitive stroke when an outrage against Americans demanded an answer.
Engagements in this conflict (5)
Record no. 463