Japan liberates Asia from Western Imperialism

Naturally... that rarely ever happens. I was thinking about what Japan gets out of it. Perhaps military alliances a some islands that they can use to build bases along the pacific and the Indian ocean.

Japan already has a fully fledged imperialist colony in Korea. For its posturing to mean anything this would have to be first on the list for liberation - which isn't going to happen so the whole concept is flawed.
 
So if I understand this, they liberate various Asian nations in the Pacific from the West. For free? With nothing in return except they wanted to do it out of the goodness of their hearts? That's hard...
Best I can think of is for economic reasons, being the only major industrialised nation in the regions they figure that they can pick up a fair amount of business if the former colonies are still pissed at the west and hopefully some residual gratitude. At the very least it gets them a level playing field for trade and access to markets by removing the advantages the colonising countries maintained in their colonies.


The only really 'respectful' colony I can think of was parts of New France where they had mutually beneficial alliances with the natives. Are there any others that did not attack and displace, or exploit, the existing groups of peoples?
Well there was the North Borneo Chartered Company that ran the what is nowadays Sabah state in Malaysia as a British protectorate. They had internal autonomy and whilst ironically a for profit company they seem to have run the place pretty well. As a Abdul, a former member, put it,
You would think a chartered company with responsibility to shareholders would be rapacious, but it was actually perhaps the most responsible, humane, and conscientious colonial state ever founded. The management early on decided to establish order and infrastructure, and then make money through surpluses on taxation of economic developments encouraged by a favorable atmosphere. Also, being very weak with regard to force, it couldn't afford to be arrogant or overbearing, so it worked closely with the natives and brought them into the administration through relationships of mutual advantage. If not for the devastating and brutal Japanese occupation, Sabah would be one of the richest places in Asia. This is one of those rare cases of positive imperialism, and ironically it was done through pure capitalism and private enterprise.
 

Cyan

Banned
Possible timeline:

Sometime in the 1930's Japan realizes that holding onto imperial dominions is essentially impossible over the long term and does the UK thing with its commonwealth of nations. In this case. It turns colonies (Korea etc) into states and then into commonwealth members.

After that happens during the entry state of WW2, assuming they try to stay out of China on general principle of how idiotic it would be to occupy if not meaning to hold (in this timeline focusing on occupied minors) and simply just strike south and liberate all Allied colonies and turn them into commonwealth nations in a crash course and just sit out the allies counter-attack and try to support all local efforts at resistance and try to keep all japanese personnel away from any local civilians if possible and remove all soldiers as fast as possible. You might see a US that doesnt do an embargo but rather just laughs at the whole thing.

UK/France, believe it or not, wasnt exactly popular pre-pearl and pre-Chinesemassacres in the US.

You might see a successful commonwealth of Asia forming around Japan. Germany would still collapse as the US would increase its anti-sub efforts, feed planes and supplies to the UK commonwealth and USSR in sufficient numbers to cause Germany to collapse anyway, with or without direct US war-entry.

If japan manages to pull it off it will be viewed much like the UK commonwealth is these days. A talking circle for countries with a level of historical co-operation that is quite a distance away from one nation or alliance but its something. It would be a massive resource drain for very little PR and some political associations but if they wanted to do it, they probably could have.
 
I think Japan still will be involved in WWII and on loosing side, because your liberation movement will be against US, UK and other European powers, hence against Wining side of the WWII.
 
Japanese propaganda portrayed the Japanese military as liberators who wanted save other Asian countries from Western Imperialism. In reality they just wanted to create several puppet governments loyals to the Japanese Empire.

But in a scenario where Japan really did try to liberate Asia from Western and Asian Imperialism, how would they be viewed today? Would the Allies be seen as the 'bad guys' in the Pacific War?

And how early of a POD would be needed to get a Japan that was more interested in liberation than conquest?

First of all, no country will go out of its way to "liberate" another country, especially if it has to go to war to do it, without gaining for itself as well. It will not do things to benefit the locals if it doesn't see a benefit for itself as well.

There is also the problem that if Japan fights against an alliance of Western powers or even makes a mortal enemy out of the USA like it did in OTL WW2, it won't be able to win.

But that does not totally invalidate your scenario. It is not impossible to create a Japan that is friendly with the Asian mainland and acts as a counterforce to Western encroachment. In fact the general opinion among the Japanese leadership in the later 1800s and early 1900s was that if they did not stop the Europeans from expanding in Asia, Japan would eventually be cornered and colonized as well. This was one of the reasoning behind them annexing Korea and later Manchuria, though of course there was also a great deal of greed involved.

The annexation of Korea was obviously not a liberation, so it is certainly not something we want TTL's Japan to do. To stop this from happening we can change the way another power acts. Russia is a convenient one because it is already interested in Korea and prior to 1904 had some presence there. If we can get Russia to be more aggressive, perhaps they try to occupy Korea first. They spend some time building up more infrastructure in the Far East, and attack Korea. They make some gains and start to encounter geurilla resistance. Japan enters the war too. The Russian fleet is defeated. The Japanese, together with Koreans, fight the Russians as allies. Russia is kicked out of Korea. Korea is naturally grateful and enters an anti-Russia alliance with Japan.

So now Japan has "liberated" one country, Korea, which will start modernizing in a manner similar to itself. Japan maintains some troops on the peninsula but they are seen as protectors and not occupiers, and the Koreans have political independence. But China is still in danger and Manchuria is under Russian occupation. The Qing has either collapsed or on its last legs; in any case, there is activity in China.

For conveniences' sake, let's say Qing China is already collapsing by the time the Japanese-Korean alliance has been set up. The Qing are still there, but only in a semi-legitimate form and as a Russian puppet, similar to how the Japanese used Pu Yi in OTL. The Han Chinese hate the rump Qing in Manchuria, who they rightfully see as being controlled by Russians, and are rebelling against the dynasty's authority. But the rebels who are fighting against the loyalist armies are unorganized and ill-equipped. The Japanese see this and are worried. They do not want the Qing to survive because otherwise it will be the same as Russia having influence on all or a lot of China. They want the rebels to survive and replace the old dynasty, so they pick a group and begin to fund it. They send advisers to help train and organize the Han rebels. This is difficult to do and is fraught with problems (such as which groups and leaders to support exactly), but it is seen as politically and strategically imperative to counter Japan's arch-enemy Russia.

After years or even decades of warfare the Qing have been defeated, but China is still a mess, with a weak central government friendly to Japan, but does not control all the provinces and has to make use of warlords nominally loyal to it to keep the country in one piece. The Russian threat probably still exists to some degree depending on how well the Tsar has been doing in Europe and Central Asia. China is not doing that great but at least it has been "liberated" with the help of Japan, which is doing lots of developmental business in Chinese cities. Perhaps Japanese companies are outsourcing jobs to cheap Chinese labor. In any case Japan is still doing okay.

By the late 20s/early 30s, Japanese society is not as militaristic as it was IOTL, because its experiences ITTL have shown the people and leaders that it does not have to directly control the Asian countries around it in order to have them modernize and ward off European expansion. Japan can benefit economically from a big European war, and it can also do trade with the industrial countries in peacetime. Diplomatically, Japan will be enemies with Russia and perhaps other Western powers, but it would be stupid to be the enemy of all of them. Japan might thus find partners in Germany (few or no colonies in the East) and the USA (far away, not dependent on colonies for its prosperity). The USA in particular is interested in an "Open China", and if Japan shall oblige, everyone is happy.

Over time, Japan will still champion decolonization in South Asia, but as it has been given some breathing room in the form of friendly and independent China and Korea, it will not find it so imperative to actually help the Indonesians or the Indians, who are still under colonial rule, and it turns a blind eye to the Philippines which is controlled by the USA. The chief enemies of Japan will be Russia, France, and Great Britain. It may fight wars with these powers in SE Asia, and have a say in the fate of the relevant colonies as they become independent. If there is a Cold War of some kind, Japan could be seen as a third side or nonaligned bloc.
 
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