Origins
Many sources credit Kaiser Wilhelm II with coining the phrase "Yellow Peril" (German: gelbe Gefahr) in September 1895. The Kaiser had an illustration of this title — depicting the Archangel Michael as an allegorical Germany leading the European powers against an Asiatic threat represented by a golden Buddha — hung in all ships of the Hamburg America Line. It was ostensibly designed by the Kaiser himself. Wilhelm changed his mind after his abdication in World War I, saying that he should not have bothered to warn Europe of the Yellow Peril, writing that "We shall be the leaders of the Orient against the Occident! I shall now have to alter my picture 'Peoples of Europe'. We belong on the other side! Once we have proved to the Germans that the French and English are are not Whites at all but Blacks". He declared Germany as "face of the East against the West" instead of being in the west, and wished for the destruction of the western countries like England, France, and America, declaring the French to be "negroids", and stating his disgust at the racial equality Britain was allowing for blacks.
In 1898, the British writer M. P. Shiel published a short story serial entitled The Empress of the Earth. The later novel edition was named The Yellow Danger. Shiel's novel centers on the murder of two German missionaries in Kiau-Tschou in 1897 and features the Chinese villain, Dr. Yen How.
Read more about this topic: Yellow Peril
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)