An Imperial Union of Japan and the Netherlands

I'm considering doing a TL that features a Union between the Netherlands and Japan, however since I'm doing alot of other research at the moment I figured I'd make a thread and see what everyone thought about it and what's the best route to go with.

The initial PoD is meant to be around the beginning of the 17th century.
 
Hmm. That seems very unlikely unless some change of government occurs in Japan. I suppose the most likely case would be a Dutch "Commodore Perry" opening up Japan the way the Americans did. Japan would at that time be technologically more advanced relative to the rest of the world, but they will be hard pressed to gain any territory with the Qing Dynasty and the Russian Tsars holding all nearby territory worth fighting for, except Taiwan, which would probably be invaded. Then they could move into SE Asia, Hawaii, or the South Pacific. Then WWII looks a lot different, with Japan probably neutral.
 
Very very hard indeed.
You need big hard changes on two fronts.
1: Make the Netherlands a monarchy.
2: Turn Japanese christian.
And even once you have 2 its then a big further change to make it more outwards looking and bring relations close enough that a union could occur.
 
1: Make the Netherlands a monarchy.

Was'nt the Netherlands already a de facto monarchy, being a Crowned Republic?

2: Turn Japanese Christian.

This one I considered and I'm not so sure it's required, I mean the main reason the Dutch were Japan's only European trading partners for so long was because they helped the Japanese crush a Christian rebellion, so I don't think Religion would play as big a role.


And even once you have 2 its then a big further change to make it more outwards looking and bring relations close enough that a union could occur.

This is really why I'm thinking of having the PoD be in the first two decades of the 17th century, as Japanese isolationism was'nt started until the 1630's,

However it is difficult to get relations close enough for Union
I'm thinking of it starting off as a Personal Union resulting from the merging of the Crowns via a marriage of the two reigning monarchs in the early 1800's and following growing European Imperialism and the decline of China having it become a full political Union by the end of the 19th century.

Still it's all still vague.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Well I know very little about pre-opening Japan, but what about a Dutch shogun supported by the Netherlands?
 
I'm intending it to be a peaceful evolution of relations between the two, not an Imperialist annexation.
 
I'm intending it to be a peaceful evolution of relations between the two, not an Imperialist annexation.

Thing is, unions of two countries by voluntary mergers just don't really happen. When it does happen, on the rare occasions, it's a merger between two countries with a lot of similarities and a lot of history together - i.e. the Kalmar Union, or ex-Soviet cooperation etc. The one way this could happen is if the Dutch can slowly proclaim a protectorate over Japan and formalise it into a kind of province of the empire, one more important than any other colony presumably. But the two countries just deciding to unite in a federation...I can't really see it happening.
 
Thing is, unions of two countries by voluntary mergers just don't really happen. When it does happen, on the rare occasions, it's a merger between two countries with a lot of similarities and a lot of history together - i.e. the Kalmar Union, or ex-Soviet cooperation etc. The one way this could happen is if the Dutch can slowly proclaim a protectorate over Japan and formalise it into a kind of province of the empire, one more important than any other colony presumably. But the two countries just deciding to unite in a federation...I can't really see it happening.

Well we are talking about a period of two-hundred years before they actually merge, so I think that's enough time to become close enough.

I realize it's difficult to do, but it's not impossible.


Well now, I don't think this scenario has ever been done before. Run with it!

I will, but it'll probably be awhile before I do, I'm working on three different projects right now as is.
 
Well we are talking about a period of two-hundred years before they actually merge, so I think that's enough time to become close enough.

I realize it's difficult to do, but it's not impossible.

1600s-1800s? Still not really going to happen. With the tech and population levels early on, you're not really going to see too much cultural diffusion. You're talking 25-30 million Japanese, versus the couple hundred Dutch that are able to make it over. You're going to need to ship a hell of a lot more Dutch over for Japan to start really feeling cultural influences, and that's just not going to happen.

1) Not enough Dutch. The population of the Netherlands was something like 1.5 million at the time. Of those, how many are going to be willing to make the arduous journey to Japan?
2) The tech was shitty. Of the people who are willing to make the journey, how many are going to survive it? When the first Dutchmen arrived, there were twenty survivors out of 500. That's 4%. So even if the entire population of the Netherlands decided at once to move to Japan, we'd still see only 60,000 Dutch in the country. That should be enough to make a cultural impact, but I don't think enough to completely convert the country into wanting a union with the Dutch. But that's moot, anyway, since it's not like the entire population of the Netherlands is going to want to head over there. You're not going to have 60,000 Dutchmen. You're going to have a few thousand at most, many of whom are going to be traders who don't spend long enough in the country to really exchange cultures.
3) So, say you fix the first two problems. Tweak some numbers here, have some ASBs there, and you have a few million Dutchmen in Japan. But one more problem. Japan at the time was not known for loving Christians. There was constant, brutal repression of the religion. If it starts getting too powerful, a Shinto or Buddhist shogun will put it down. The Japanese were very effective at keeping Christianity down historically. It still existed, but was practiced in secret. It certainly wasn't part of mainstream culture. To fix this, you'd really need to have a Christian ruler, or at least a ruler with a lot of sympathies towards Christianity. This becomes difficult, because a Christian shogun would be very unpopular with daimyos.
4) Logistics. Even if Japan decided to have an Imperial Union, how is that going to work out well? It'll take months to transfer information from one to the other. A colony system works, where you have a local governor who is relatively empowered and independent. Having Japan be a province of the Netherlands just like any other would not. You'd need to make Japan a colony, or at least a colony in all but name. Since there's not enough Dutch to dominate Japan like that, you'd have a province that basically rules itself, and Japan would end up almost completely detached from the Dutch crown. Since Japan rules itself, what's the point of the union?
 
1600s-1800s?

At the primary period of forming relations, yes.


1) -snip-
2) -snip-

I had no intentions to have large numbers of Dutch to resettle in Japan, indeed I was thinking that major immigration would'nt start until the 1860's onward.

Though it'd be interesting the other way around, with alot of Japanese resettling in the Netherlands itself, not enough to form a majority, but still enough that the other European nations look at the Dutch as odd.


3) Japan at the time was not known for loving Christians. There was constant, brutal repression of the religion. If it starts getting too powerful, a Shinto or Buddhist shogun will put it down. The Japanese were very effective at keeping Christianity down historically. It still existed, but was practiced in secret. It certainly wasn't part of mainstream culture. To fix this, you'd really need to have a Christian ruler, or at least a ruler with a lot of sympathies towards Christianity. This becomes difficult, because a Christian shogun would be very unpopular with daimyos.

Well as I pointed out, the main reason the Dutch remained Japan's trading partner when it went isolationist was because the Dutch helped the Japanese put down a major Christian rebellion.

Anyhow, the Dutch really were'nt the missionary type anyways, so I think it'd make sense for them to simply not allow missionaries to travel to Japan without Japan's permission.

Another thing to, one of the reasons that Christianity started spreading in Japan was because Daimyo's were being converted and they had a tendency to force it on their subjects, so it's more taking out certain Daimyo's than anything.

I was actually thinking of the Japanese being pragmatic and working to slow the spread of Christianity while simultaneously working to form a 'Japanese Christianity' that would make it less of a threat and then eventually having the two countries becoming secular nations so the role of religion would'nt be that important.


4) Logistics. Even if Japan decided to have an Imperial Union, how is that going to work out well? It'll take months to transfer information from one to the other. A colony system works, where you have a local governor who is relatively empowered and independent. Having Japan be a province of the Netherlands just like any other would not. You'd need to make Japan a colony, or at least a colony in all but name. Since there's not enough Dutch to dominate Japan like that, you'd have a province that basically rules itself, and Japan would end up almost completely detached from the Dutch crown. Since Japan rules itself, what's the point of the union?

The Union of Crowns, which would just be a Personal Union would be in the early 19th century, as such since it's not a true united entity the logistics, apart from Royal trips, would'nt really need to change from what they would be already.
The Political Union, where logistics come in would'nt be until 1890 onwards, by which time the technology to establish such a Union did exist and would in coming years advance greatly.
 
1600s-1800s? Still not really going to happen. With the tech and population levels early on, you're not really going to see too much cultural diffusion. You're talking 25-30 million Japanese, versus the couple hundred Dutch that are able to make it over. You're going to need to ship a hell of a lot more Dutch over for Japan to start really feeling cultural influences, and that's just not going to happen.

1) Not enough Dutch. The population of the Netherlands was something like 1.5 million at the time. Of those, how many are going to be willing to make the arduous journey to Japan?
Well, the Nethelrands could be wanked a bit to include Flanders. And if that's not enough, keep adding Wallonia, Luxemburg, Cleves, and significant parts of the Rhineland untill you achieve the desired result. All were very much potentially Dutch territory, though ofcourse adding all of those is both very implausible and very wank-ish.

And that's without mentioning the ridiculous 'possibility' of the Netherlands uniting Germany. :rolleyes: Population isn't neccesarily that big of an issue.
 
Well, the Netherlands could be wanked a bit to include Flanders. And if that's not enough, keep adding Wallonia, Luxemburg, Cleves, and significant parts of the Rhineland untill you achieve the desired result. All were very much potentially Dutch territory, though ofcourse adding all of those is both very implausible and very wank-ish.

And that's without mentioning the ridiculous 'possibility' of the Netherlands uniting Germany.

I was considering what's now Belgium and Luxembourg remaining part of it, nothing else though, since I'm sort of thinking that the development of the relationship between the Netherlands and Japan would lead to the Netherlands basically not giving a damn about the rest of Europe so long as they're left alone.
 
You could always go for a Date shogunate to connect Europe and Japan. Masamune Date was very close to the Spanish OTL(even wrote a letter to the Pope in fact), just swing him to the Dutch side and let him pull off some power swings in the Sengoku period and you may have a POD on your hands. There is, of course, a massive difference between "very close allies" and "personal union", but it's a possibility.

In any case, I hope that this TL gets off the ground, I very much look forward to reading it.
 
i really hope this gets off the ground, as i had entertained similar ideas about such a union.

even wrote two short stories (and they were bad) for myself, one featuring Yamamoto as a ship commander in the union navy during WW1, as the fleet he is part of (escorting a convoy) stares down a brittish battlecruiser group attempting to stop the supplies (intended for trade with Germany), ending in a naval battle near the suez canal.

the other was about a Japanese soldier defending a Dutch town with his mixed Dutch/Japanese unit against nazi germany. (this one was unfinished)

but i had no idea for a realistic PoD, and wrote them before i found this forum.

so if someone more knowledgeable about history writes this i'll be overjoyed.
 
Well as I pointed out, the main reason the Dutch remained Japan's trading partner when it went isolationist was because the Dutch helped the Japanese put down a major Christian rebellion.

Anyhow, the Dutch really were'nt the missionary type anyways, so I think it'd make sense for them to simply not allow missionaries to travel to Japan without Japan's permission.

Another thing to, one of the reasons that Christianity started spreading in Japan was because Daimyo's were being converted and they had a tendency to force it on their subjects, so it's more taking out certain Daimyo's than anything.

I was actually thinking of the Japanese being pragmatic and working to slow the spread of Christianity while simultaneously working to form a 'Japanese Christianity' that would make it less of a threat and then eventually having the two countries becoming secular nations so the role of religion would'nt be that important.

If you want secularism in your monarchy then your Personal Union's going to have to wait so long it could potentially not be formed by the year 2000. I know, butterflies and all, etc etc, but monarchs tended to be obligatorially heavily religious as they were considered the protectors of their country's national church and usually had continuing involvement in controlling the formation and progress of said church, meaning they usually had too much stake in religion to get bored and turn atheist before atheism had become the predominant religious belief. In fact, even now you'd be hard-pressed to find an atheist monarch or claimant to a defunct throne. Otherwise, your explanation of how this is going to work is alright except that it seems to try to explain away the events by showing how Japan won't let Christianity get powerful enough to become a threat to the natural order of things, which is fine except that Japan becoming Christian is your best chance of engineering a Personal Union.

I am, however, glad that you've stated that your idea is for a Personal Union to occur rather than a spontaneous union of the two states in a federation of republics which I originally thought was your intention. I'm not really a believer in the plausibility of states spontaneously federating, though others appear to disagree in their droves.
 
I think in the early 1800's the Dutch tried to open Japan in a sense. They offered to modernize Japan in exchange for complete trade and basing rights and essentially tethering Japan to Holland.

The offer was declined.
 
I had no intentions to have large numbers of Dutch to resettle in Japan, indeed I was thinking that major immigration would'nt start until the 1860's onward.

The problem with this is you need really close cultural relations with the Dutch to even contemplate a union between the Japanese and Dutch royal families. The Japanese just culturally were really opposed to foreigners. Even Christian Japanese weren't really pro-European.

Though it'd be interesting the other way around, with alot of Japanese resettling in the Netherlands itself, not enough to form a majority, but still enough that the other European nations look at the Dutch as odd.
I'd say this is a little more reasonable. Still pretty difficult to get a huge number of Japanese to settle in the Netherlands, though.



Well as I pointed out, the main reason the Dutch remained Japan's trading partner when it went isolationist was because the Dutch helped the Japanese put down a major Christian rebellion.
There's an important qualifier there. The Dutch helped the Japanese put down a major Catholic rebellion. It was the Satsuma Rebellion, IIRC (don't quite remember off the top of my head). The protestant Dutch were already enemies of the Catholics. If it had been a protestant rebellion, the Dutch wouldn't have been so eager to supply arms to the Japanese.

Another thing to, one of the reasons that Christianity started spreading in Japan was because Daimyo's were being converted and they had a tendency to force it on their subjects, so it's more taking out certain Daimyo's than anything.
But even then, it's difficult. The subjects wouldn't be sincere Christians, as you said, they were forced into it. Even a lot of the daimyos were only "converting" for temporary benefit. You're not going to see a lot of those provinces become hereditary Christian, they're going to convert back to Shinto or Buddhist within a couple of generations. Finally, the main source of Christian diamyos was the island of Kyushu, which was seen as a backwater to some extent, anyway.

I was actually thinking of the Japanese being pragmatic and working to slow the spread of Christianity while simultaneously working to form a 'Japanese Christianity' that would make it less of a threat and then eventually having the two countries becoming secular nations so the role of religion would'nt be that important.
That's actually the way it worked IRL, to a big extent. The "Japanese Christianity" wasn't a formal policy of Tokugawa, but they worked hard to prevent Christianity from spreading. Most of the Christian Japanese still followed forms of Buddhism, Shinto, and other typical Japanese beliefs. To them, Christianity and emperor worship was not mutually exclusive.

Well, the Nethelrands could be wanked a bit to include Flanders. And if that's not enough, keep adding Wallonia, Luxemburg, Cleves, and significant parts of the Rhineland untill you achieve the desired result. All were very much potentially Dutch territory, though ofcourse adding all of those is both very implausible and very wank-ish.

And that's without mentioning the ridiculous 'possibility' of the Netherlands uniting Germany. :rolleyes: Population isn't neccesarily that big of an issue.

It's already ASB enough, why not just have the Netherlands consist of all of Europe? ;)

I think in the early 1800's the Dutch tried to open Japan in a sense. They offered to modernize Japan in exchange for complete trade and basing rights and essentially tethering Japan to Holland.

The offer was declined.

They did, but creating a puppet state isn't at all like a political union.
 
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