British Imperialism over Japan

maverick

Banned
Yes, they did send some missions in the 1850s,and the 1840s as well IIRC, about the same time in which the Americans and the Russians did, but with the Crimean war, the Arrow War and then the Sepoy Mutiny, there was no time, and the Americans beat them to the punch.

Of course, Japan still signed unequal treaties with the powers able to extort them out of the East Asian nations until the Meiji Restoration, yet Britain remained an important ally of Japan, and played a role along with the United States in the development of the Imperial Navy.

Colonize wouldn't work, since it's not the official policy for the far east, which revolves around creating establishments like Singapore and Hong Kong, while the entire Imperial policy centers around India.

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.
 
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Wolfpaw

Banned
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.

Anyways, there was a rather clever British historian who summed up why British imperialism turned into one based on trade cities in the Far East; "China proved too big a morsel to swallow. Japan proved too hard a nut to crack."

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.).
 
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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.
 

maverick

Banned
Is there any way to get the British to essentially "Take over" Japan in the same way they did to India?

Probably not, there's no incentive.

The British Empire was designed around India and the Home Islands.

First India, then Egypt to get to India, then several ports through eastern Africa and the Mediterranean to protect the London-India route and expand it (Singapore and Hong Kong eastwards), and generally expands from there.

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.

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.

It's not impossible, but it'd be complicated.

Japan, China and Korea are different than India, which let's remember, wasn't conquered in one generation. Neither was China broken in one generation, which is what it took Japan to modernize.

It's a question of timing: someone with the motivation and resources getting there in the 18th century, when Japan couldn't "pull a Meiji", but after the 17th century, in which Japan could resist military relatively well.
 
Is there any way to get the British to essentially "Take over" Japan in the same way they did to India?

The British Raj was a multicultural entity made up of of directly controlled colonies and puppet kingdoms, the 'Princely States', and was'nt really fully controlled until the later 19th century.
Britain was also basically very lucky in terms of India, having been able to divide and conquer during the collapse of an empire.

Japan was a homogenous, centralized state that had been in existence over a thousand years by that point.

In short their is no way Britain could colonize Japan without essentially bankrupting themselves and slowly destroying their own military capacity.
 

maverick

Banned
The British Empire could not conquer random states and bring civilization?

ANGLOPHOBIA!!!

Oh, sorry...was reading Chat...:p

Iori does have a point, and it wouldn't be cost-effective to "colonize" Japan or turning them into India 2.0 (a very less profitable version), but I don't think that trying to subdue Japan would spell the end of the British Empire...

Turning them into China or maybe the Trucial states would be more "doable"
 
Remember the British Empire was a merchant state - the "empire of shopkeepers". It conquered India because India was a massive market and gave them a monumental income boost. China offered the same but by the point they were toying with China their focus was moving more to economic control than full political sovereignty. Japan, by contrast, offered little they didn't already have, routed all of its trade through the Dutch if it traded at all, was quite an unknown quantity, and as others have said, was a unified state (largely). Simply put, it didn't make economic sense trying to break the Japanese market. The invasion and control costs would outweigh profits for decades, centuries afterwards, which made it a foolish investment.
 
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 :p
 

Cook

Banned
It conquered India because India was a massive market and gave them a monumental income boost.

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).
 

Cook

Banned
It’s no great stretch for British interests to occupy the Southern city of Kagoshima after the 1963 Anglo-Satsuma War. The local clan was in no position to oppose a large Trade Mission in the city if the British had pressed for it. Then a British expansion throughout Kyushu Island is feasible if they could turn a profit from it.
 
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 :p
From what I've seen, there are two general outcomes of a successful British takeover of Japan:

  1. Dimension 459 Scenario (Hybrid British-Japanese Empire)
  2. Code Geass Scenario (Area 11):rolleyes:
 
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.

Indeed.

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.

-snip-

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.

I had an idea related to that, sort-of flipping the outer Daimyo with a William Adams POD.

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.

That's a key point. A lot of the pressure to open Japan was in pursuit of a supply base for the China trade and for whalers.

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 :p

Yeah, pretty ASB indeed.
 

Thande

Donor
Japan was never a high priority, not when the EIC was putting all its effort into trying to get China to open. China had silk and porcelain and tea, what did Japan have that was worth messing about with the Dutch and the Shogunate for?
 
well, if it was the dutch who were the big players in japan, what if they had added it to their empire, or a resurgent portugal, or better still Prussia?
 
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).

I am aware of this. My reply was simply me being lazy, sorry.
 
Perhaps if there were a famine or some other disaster that broke the central power of Japan? It seems to me that Japan should probably be broken first, and then have the British arrive.
 
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