Have a European power "colonize" Japan. By Colonize I mean have them own most or all of Japan for an extended period of time...lets say half a century.
Have a European power "colonize" Japan. By Colonize I mean have them own most or all of Japan for an extended period of time...lets say half a century.
Have a European power "colonize" Japan. By Colonize I mean have them own most or all of Japan for an extended period of time...lets say half a century.
What's your POD and which century are we targeting here?
The problem is that this is nearly impossible after 1600 due to Japan being a modern urbanized nation. Europeans could only completely subjugate places with much smaller population densities than Europe, and those who were otherwise easily divided. After the Sengoku Jidai, Japan is a unified nation and won't get split like India and is much stronger than the Africans.
Bengal? Punjab? These were population dense, urban, wealthy states. If the Europeans have naval supremacy, and they do, then they can win. The British lost battle after battle in their early Indian colonisation, but they had the constant advantage that they could ship out a defeated army before it became a rout, and when it was close, they could bring in reinforcements faster. Besides, Japan certainly wasn't a unified state before the Meiji restoration, with most power lying with each domain.
Have a European power "colonize" Japan. By Colonize I mean have them own most or all of Japan for an extended period of time...lets say half a century.
Napoleon II intervenes in the Austro-Prussian War resulting in a quick Prussian defeat and a bolstering of the French Empire. As a result the French are much less willing to accept the defeat of their forces in Korea in November and are much more receptive to American overtures to launch a much larger joint punitive campaign against Korea. With the French and the Americans back in Korea in force and making significant gains, the Russians send their own force into Korea to make sure that in the inevitable peace deal Korea is opened to them as well. By mid 1867 the Korean Empire is forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty that opens up Korea to French, American, and Russian trade as well as allow for French missionary efforts. As a result of being more heavily involved in Asia, the French Empire becomes more involved with the Tokugawa Shogunate than they were in OTL, to the point that when the Boshin War breaks out the French aren't only arming the Shogunate, they are also contributing troops. The Meiji Restoration is prevented as a result and the Shogunate becomes increasingly reliant on the French to keep it in power, resulting in it becomes a vassal of the French Empire. A decade or so later a popular rebellion in Japan is quashed, the Shogunate is dissolved and the various feudal domains become direct vassals of the French Empire with (by this time) Napoleon IV imitating Queen Victoria's becoming Empress of India and taking he title Emperor of Japan.
While that sounds very fine up to the point of direct vassalage. While they can be dependent, the shogunate wouldn't sign away their sovereignty
a popular rebellion could not be squashed.
Napoleon II intervenes in the Austro-Prussian War resulting in a quick Prussian defeat and a bolstering of the French Empire. As a result the French are much less willing to accept the defeat of their forces in Korea in November and are much more receptive to American overtures to launch a much larger joint punitive campaign against Korea. With the French and the Americans back in Korea in force and making significant gains, the Russians send their own force into Korea to make sure that in the inevitable peace deal Korea is opened to them as well. By mid 1867 the Korean Empire is forced to sign a humiliating peace treaty that opens up Korea to French, American, and Russian trade as well as allow for French missionary efforts.
Napoleon II died in 1832 IOTL, while the Austro-Prussian War and the French campaign against Korea occurred in 1866. Additionally, the Korean Empire did not exist until 1897.
Sorry about a typo a using an anachronistic term.
The Indians were divided. They had never been a true nation, and thus divide and conquer was used effectively against them.
And they had a highly-centralised system of government, with rulers of [a few generations back] foreign origin, within which the British -- having defeated those rulers' army -- could quite easily step in as substitutes for the previous regime.Your analysis only works if you apply the anachronistic concept of "Indians" to the place. The Indians didn't exist at this point in time. The Bengalis certainly did, and they were a united strong state. They were wealthy. They were urbanised.
You don't have really distinct identities you could play off to divide the population unless they try to create an expanded sense of regionalism, like the people of Kyushu being distinct from the people of Shikoku.
People like Japan so the idea of someone conquering it is horrific and ergo unfathomable, but there's no reason Japan would be any harder to conquer than the Indian states the British conquered.
... Japan had ALOT of guns (at one point Japan had more guns than all of Europe combined) and more importantly the indigenous industry to build them and fix them;
...
when some of the European powers were establishing colonies for prestige reasons it was far to late for them to ever hope to colonize Japan.