Japan as a colony

What if instead of managing to modernize succesfully after the collapse of the Shogunate, Japan had instead disintergrated and one or more of the major European powers had decided to take over the country.

What effect would this have on the 20th century and which countries would be likely to colonize Japan?
 
I have noticed no one has ever really done a detailed account of a colonized Japan. It'd almost certainly be partly protectorates, that is for sure.
 
I have noticed no one has ever really done a detailed account of a colonized Japan. It'd almost certainly be partly protectorates, that is for sure.

I think it's because the closest analogue IOTL are the Boxer Rebellions and etc. It's fuedal japan versus Britain, France, or Spain... it's not like a whole lot could be done on the part of the Japanese.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
Its far from impossible. Pretty every much every other major power in East Asia had already been taken over by Europeans.

That said, for starters, the Japanese are too technologically sophisticated to conquer without some wars occuring and there are too many Japanese to make it a white settler colony dominating an enfranchised Japanese minority like New Zealand.

I think what happens depends on who takes over and when.

If the Portuguese colonize between the 1500s and 1600s, they take over through merchant concessions and attempts at Christianizing the Emperor to make him an effective puppet like they did in the Congo or other places and if they take over, there is a good chance the Dutch or British kick them out later. There will be revolts against Christianity being imposed.

If the Dutch or British take it from Portugal or do it on their own accord, the Dutch will exploit it for mercantile gain and treat the Japanese like cheap labor and the Dutch East India company will be involved. Maybe they leave some stubborn settlers behind on Hokkaido. We can call them Nipponiers.

If its the British, they don't really try to Christianize the Japanese, though the Ainu might take up Anglicanism to get back at their former oppressors, they leave some daimyo as autonomous and then Japanese people end up as a minority in other British colonies when they emigrate there as laborers or soldiers. At some point a British monarch is crowned Emperor or Empress of Japan. How that goes down with the actual Emperor, if they are not dead, is another question entirely, let alone his subjects.
 
Japn is a colony/ protectorate of the French Empire in my TL "The Federal Republic of America". Not much detail has been said about it yet, but that is because it just go conqured.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
Hmm. If its like the others, they send Catholic farmers, the French teach the Japanese children as if they were French people and govern it as an extension of Metropolitan France and then the Japanese kick them out in a prolonged guerilla war.
 
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