Did the British ever attempt to colonize Japan or exert their imperial power over the Japanese?
Is there any way to get the British to essentially "Take over" Japan in the same way they did to India?
Is there any way to get the British to essentially "Take over" Japan in the same way they did to India?
I had an idea along these lines once, putting a British Resident or Company in the role of Shogun and using the daimyo as equivalent to the Indian princely states. Not sure how doable that is, exactly.
Is there any way to get the British to essentially "Take over" Japan in the same way they did to India?
In short their is no way Britain could colonize Japan without essentially bankrupting themselves and slowly destroying their own military capacity.
It conquered India because India was a massive market and gave them a monumental income boost.
From what I've seen, there are two general outcomes of a successful British takeover of Japan:How could Britain and Japan unify? Maybe through royal inheritance somewhere down the line or political union?
That's something that's always intrigued me. Imagine an English prince marries a Japanese princess, then the Emperor dies and the Englishman inherits Japan. Probably quite ASB but a fun idea. Would make for a good historic love story![]()
Nagasaki or Kagoshima, or the Shimonoseki straits, where the British interfered in the late Tokugawa Shogunate, could be turned into treaty ports like the ones the Europeans got out of China, but that would require that the Shogunate doesn't fall or that the Meiji Restoration fails.
I think you could certainly see the British turn Kagoshima into a sort of Japanese Hong Kong or Singapore. Perhaps if the Anglo-Satsuma War of 1863 gets really out of hand or the British are just harsher towards the Japanese.
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So, I guess you just have the British determined to play the nutcracker in '63 (perhaps a bloodier Namamugi Incident) and boom! British Kagoshima! (though you can expect a really nasty Japanese insurgency; IIRC Satsuma was a big center of the sonno joi movement.
It's possible, but Britain would have to pour down some serious resources in a place that gets them little gain, strategically (it's easier in Northern China, and foiling Russia in the East is not as important in the early 1860s) or economically, since Coal, fish and cheap labor can be acquired elsewhere.
How could Britain and Japan unify? Maybe through royal inheritance somewhere down the line or political union?
That's something that's always intrigued me. Imagine an English prince marries a Japanese princess, then the Emperor dies and the Englishman inherits Japan. Probably quite ASB but a fun idea. Would make for a good historic love story![]()
India was not conquered because it was a market. India was conquered because it was a wonderful source of products already in demand in England and Europe.
And it was conquered not by Britain but by the East India Company; a sort of British club of gentleman adventurers (ie. well dressed conquistadors).