AHC: Japanese Superpower - POD 1800

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a Japanese superpower post-1800. Show your work. No WWII ass-pulls and no sudden, unexplained interest in far flung colonies in the Pacific in the 19th century where there was none historically.
 
Hmm. Seward's Folly gets canned, the Russians sell Alaska to the Japanese in the 1880s-1890s, the Spanish-American War happens on time and the Japanese jump on the Philippines?
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
I think that necessitates a slight Britscrew in the Pacific to make sure Alaska doesn't become part of Canada and Hawaii doesn't become a British protectorate. How could that be done? Either that or Japan somehow gets the protectorate to change allegiance or snatch it in an Anglo-Japanese war which Japan somehow wins. Any suggestions for keeping Hawaii out of the hands of the Americans?
 
Japan already had a superior navy vs Spain. by 1890s. However, POD is 1800.

So a japanese modernization happening around 1800s instead of 1870s. It would give them a 70 year headstart of OTL Japan.

They can join the Opium wars by 1840s and get Formosa, Korea, Manchuria from China earlier.

They should have sufficient cash to buy Alaska from the Russians by 1860s.

Greatest challenge would be to take Spanish East Indies since it contains Philippines, Guam, Marianas and Palau. A possible successful invasion may happen around 1860s since Spain is quite slow in adopting Ironclad, Iron/Steel Navies. Anything before Iron/Steel Navies were introduce is not a possible scenario since Spain had a large Wooden Fleet.
 
There was certainly a long history of talking about reforming the Shogunate and the crisis of the 1860s did not come out of nowhere. Some of this was due to foreign influence (ie not foreign powers influencing Japan, but individual Japanese being influenced by foreign practice) but a lot was because the existing power structure increasingly made no sense. It was very similar to how the HRE had gone - one family with its power base trying to dominate other families with strong powerbases who couldn't see why they owed the Shogun money or support most of the time.

The problem is of course that most of the reformist individuals were those involved in administration, whereas those with the power - principally the daimyo - did not see things in the same light.

At least that's my reading of things. I'm still waiting for the delivery of that book I ordered a month ago - I think they put it on a bloody ship!

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Here's an interesting bit from another thread. The introduction of ASBs into the ecosystem seems to be driving butterflies to extinction, but some interesting ideas to toy with nonetheless.

For this Alternate Monday, our assigned reading is his entry "The Empire of the Calabash." Highlights for those of you who refuse to click: King Kalakaua of Hawai'i (r. 1874-1891) attempted to get Hawai'i (I'm spelling it thuswise to distinguish it from the State of Hawaii) some strategic breathing room during the colonial Light Egg-White Only Scramble For The Pacific by a) pursuing alliances and eventual confederation with the Kingdom of Samoa, and if that had worked out, Tonga, and eventually all the remaining independent Pacific kingdoms; and b) a "Union and Federation of Asiatic Nations and Sovereigns" with the Meiji Emperor of Japan. In OTL, the Japanese still comprehended the differential between eyes and stomach, and turned Kalakaua down in 1881; the Malietoa Leaupepe of Samoa signed up for a confederation with Hawai'i in 1887 but got overthrown by the Germans for his trouble.

But what if ...

Our point of divergence is this: the Japanese see the potential of dominating cross-Pacific trade in an instant, and sign on. The British, happy to see someone blocking the Americans and the Germans in the Pacific, provide a solid Great Power backing for the deal, anticipating OTL's Anglo-Japanese alliance by 20 years. The Hawai'ians snap up Samoa, Tonga, and (based on a farcical 1857 annexation of the islet of Sikaiana by Kamehameha IV) eventually the Solomon Islands; the Japanese back the Hawai'ian monarchy against their sugar-planting opponents (much to the anti-annexationist Grover Cleveland's delight); the British back the Japanese. This takes us up to 1897, when the expansionist William McKinley becomes President, and Alfred Thayer Mahan's theories of sea power become dominant in American policy circles.

Now, things can get screwy. The Spanish-American War goes off on schedule, but do the Americans (without the Hawaiian Protectorate-and-Annexation of OTL) have the strategic wherewithal to insist on controlling the Philippines? Or do Britain and Japan jointly guarantee Aguinaldo's Republic?

Do increasing tensions over the Pacific spill into a war between an overconfident America and a cautious (but still overwhelming-at-sea) Britain, as almost happened in OTL over the Venezuelan border crisis of 1895, of all things? (And if that war breaks out in 1895, does that push the Spanish-American War back, or cancel it until 1941?) Such a war doesn't end well for America at sea, although we might well have busted off a chunk or two of Canada into puppet states -- Quebec, perhaps, Nova Scotia or no-longer-British Columbia if we were really on the ball. Or does this crisis tie into the Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and now we've got a Pacific War on our hands -- which we still lose. (Either way, the war probably costs us Midway Island, annexed in 1867 for the rich, tasty guano it holds. Held. Whatevs.)

Or do we pick on the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War, Teddy R. pushing our luck all the way to the edge of belligerency? Another demarche from the British, another threatened invasion of rump Canada, more ill feeling.

This then maybe tilts the balance against U.S. intervention in World War I, during which the Japanese-Hawai'ian Union swallows up the German colonies in New Guinea and the Western Pacific (assuming they hadn't already). But without America coming in, the Germans may very well win and take all of it back with interest.

Now we have a sullen, resentful Japan, mad at Germany and America, militarizing itself and increasingly dominating its Hawai'ian partner. Does Japan go to war with Germany as the Kaiserreich weakens? Or knock out the only fleet in the Pacific capable of stopping it: the U.S. Pacific Fleet, based in San Francisco Bay.

Or we have America and Britain avoiding war in 1895, WWI as Big Japanese Win, and now Yamamoto's gassing the carriers up from Pearl Harbor ready for the beheading strike against the U.S. Pacific Fleet, based in San Francisco Bay. If they don't block the Panama Canal with sabotage or a second carrier strike (remember, all the stuff that hit the Philippines in OTL can be re-tasked) they will soon.

Does the extra moat's worth of islands keep Japan in play long enough for F-Go to give them the Bomb and a stalemate? (Strategically, the U.S. is in a pickle, even if we can probably provide enough land-based air cover to keep the shipyards on the West Coast working.) Or do they squander their advantages on an invasion of Australia (apparently seriously considered in OTL) or Alaska? Do they try to bring Mexico in with another Zimmerman Telegram? (Much, obviously, also depends on this TL's Stalin and his appetite for Manchuria and/or destruction.) It's not absolutely utterly unpossible (although it's not bloody likely) that the Japanese can fight to a stalemate in this TL, perhaps with American Marines occupying an increasingly restive and bloody Hawai'i and Samoa under puppet governments, and everyone gearing up for the big rematch we all know is coming in the 1960s -- this time with nukes.
 
Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to have a Japanese superpower post-1800. Show your work. No WWII ass-pulls and no sudden, unexplained interest in far flung colonies in the Pacific in the 19th century where there was none historically.

I think you might need to have Japan follow a different path post-Sekigahara, when Tokugawa Ieyasu basically decreed that Japan was to be 'closed off', but instead continue to engage in maritime trade and whatnot. Make Japan more active in the West Pacific in the 17th and 18th centuries and they could certainly establish themselves as a powerful martime power.

However, the biggest obstacle to Japan emerging as a British-like superpower with a POD prior to 1800 would be China, which in the 17th and 18th century wasn't the moribund, backwards and corrupt dynasty that got piled upon by the west. Competent, ambitious emperors like Kangxi and Qianlong would certainly not tolerate a powerful Japan that doesn't abide by the traditional tributary system.

A constant geopolitical competition with China throughout the 17th and 18th century would I think be essential for Japan to emerge as a powerful martime power, as there would be the impetus to expand markets, modernize and provide the impetus for colonization.
 
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