Japan vs Spain for the philipines

Mrstrategy

Banned
What if japan declare war on Spain before the U.S vs Spain war because they want to make the philipines part of the Japanese empire would they win?
 
They should win. The rebels already asked for their help in 1896 which in otl the Japanese didn't act on.

The Japanese would have to make the same choices as the Americans did for long term. if they don't care about expenses and time, annexing or colonizing Philippines which they have to invest for a longer war va the rebels. Or if they care about time only and/or manpower, just finance and supply the rebels with minimal military help and make them puppet protectorate. A choice between complete control higher expenses or nominal control Lower expenses.
 
They should win. The rebels already asked for their help in 1896 which in otl the Japanese didn't act on.

The Japanese would have to make the same choices as the Americans did for long term. if they don't care about expenses and time, annexing or colonizing Philippines which they have to invest for a longer war va the rebels. Or if they care about time only and/or manpower, just finance and supply the rebels with minimal military help and make them puppet protectorate. A choice between complete control higher expenses or nominal control Lower expenses.

Knowing the Japanese, they would go for complete control and higher expenses. This should produce interesting butterflies since any future desire to expand into Southeast Asia will not be complicated by an American colony straddling Japanese supply lines (assuming such desires aren't butterflied away by a PoD in the late 19th century).
 
Spain was losing so much power that they may have given the colony to the Japanese before the year was over.

I imagine Spain might sell the colony if Japan showed interest in it. Just giving it away would be too embarrassing, even for a second tier power like Spain. Japan would probably agree: it takes less effort than conquering the colony while Spain saves face and other European colonial powers don't freak out.
 

Mrstrategy

Banned
I imagine Spain might sell the colony if Japan showed interest in it. Just giving it away would be too embarrassing, even for a second tier power like Spain. Japan would probably agree: it takes less effort than conquering the colony while Spain saves face and other European colonial powers don't freak out.
how much would they sell it for?
 
Big butterflies here. If Japan goes south, there's a good chance that they can't afford to dislodge the Russians from Port Arthur. The added expenses from pacifying the Philippines would be far too much to consider a war with Russia imho. And a Russia that doesn't lose against Japan may make a much bigger play in Manchuria/Mongolia (perhaps an annexation of Mongolia and Dzungaria, or at least a puppet regime). Add to the fact that it might be set on more of a collision course with Britain over a perceived threat to India (Russia for a while looked like it was going to make intrigue in Tibet) and looking a lot more menacing in general (plus not suffering a humiliating defeat of a relative new great power and not suffering a near fatal revolution immediately afterward) British attitude might be a lot more cool to Russia in the early 20th century.
 
Big butterflies here. If Japan goes south, there's a good chance that they can't afford to dislodge the Russians from Port Arthur. The added expenses from pacifying the Philippines would be far too much to consider a war with Russia imho. And a Russia that doesn't lose against Japan may make a much bigger play in Manchuria/Mongolia (perhaps an annexation of Mongolia and Dzungaria, or at least a puppet regime). Add to the fact that it might be set on more of a collision course with Britain over a perceived threat to India (Russia for a while looked like it was going to make intrigue in Tibet) and looking a lot more menacing in general (plus not suffering a humiliating defeat of a relative new great power and not suffering a near fatal revolution immediately afterward) British attitude might be a lot more cool to Russia in the early 20th century.
This could potentially be better for Japan, if it leads to a clash between Britain and Russia. Rather then Japan bearing the full brunt of the costs of such a war Britain would bear part of them, and Japan probably gains more or less the same territories.
 
This could potentially be better for Japan, if it leads to a clash between Britain and Russia. Rather then Japan bearing the full brunt of the costs of such a war Britain would bear part of them, and Japan probably gains more or less the same territories.

My thinking is that Britain very much attempts to avert a Russo-Japanese War. Germany is still building ships, but Russia isn't the paper tiger of OTL and looks like it could still make a pass at India. In OTL the Russian minister was keen for a detente with Britain and Japan, something Japan might be amenable to if the Philippines goes anything like OTL. But this was AFTER the Russo-Japanese War, so here he might be turfed out in a more aggressive foreign policy depending on how 1896-1910 goes. A side note too, the Bosnia annexation probably gets played a lot different if Russia isn't thrashed from the 1905 revolution. You could potentially see a war break out in 1908.

That war shook Russia to the core, almost anything could happen with Russia if she doesn't lose.
 
Can you imagine the Phillipines today being a country with Japanese as it's post-colonial Lingua Franca.

It would be interesting to see how the Philippines itself, culture and all, plays out in such a situation. If it goes the same road it does with Korea, it would perhaps put the Philippines on a road that rejects both the Western imperialism of Spain and the pan-Asian Eastern imperialism of Japan.

However, more than that, we would be the lynchpin of Japan's maritime empire, straddling between the Home Islands and any oil-rich regions to the south.
 
It would be interesting to see how the Philippines itself, culture and all, plays out in such a situation. If it goes the same road it does with Korea, it would perhaps put the Philippines on a road that rejects both the Western imperialism of Spain and the pan-Asian Eastern imperialism of Japan.

However, more than that, we would be the lynchpin of Japan's maritime empire, straddling between the Home Islands and any oil-rich regions to the south.

Maybe even putting an aggressive support for a united Nusantara/Malaya. Filipinos at the time of the revolution considered themselves to be Malays, especially with the national hero Jose Rizal having the epithet the Hero of the Malay Race.

If the butterflies made the Philippines hate both Western imperialism and a Pan-Asian imperialism, there's going to be a stronger desire for their own identity, perhaps even making the Alibata writing script to be used instead of the Latin alphabet for the local languages as a counter to both Western languages and Japanese and as a way to strengthen bonds with other maritime SEA nations.
 
If the butterflies made the Philippines hate both Western imperialism and a Pan-Asian imperialism, there's going to be a stronger desire for their own identity, perhaps even making the Alibata writing script to be used instead of the Latin alphabet for the local languages as a counter to both Western languages and Japanese and as a way to strengthen bonds with other maritime SEA nations.

We'd keep the Latin alphabet because that's what we're used to and our languages were changed to the point that the old scripts are useless for writing them, but I can certainly see revival movements and modified scripts, alongside pagan/Shinto-syncretist revivals with Catholic backlash.
 
We'd keep the Latin alphabet because that's what we're used to and our languages were changed to the point that the old scripts are useless for writing them, but I can certainly see revival movements and modified scripts, alongside pagan/Shinto-syncretist revivals with Catholic backlash.

Not sure on that. I remember a drawing/picture that name the parts of the body with Spanish in Latin alphabet and Tagalog in Alibata/Baybayin. It was said to have been made by Rizal as a way to teach basic anatomy. Also, I think Alibata's modified already for it. There wasn't a + symbol that denotes a single consonant until the Spanish arrived. It was a bit like Japanese where each symbol represents a syllable.

One must remember that unlike the British who went teach everyone English in every colony they had, the Spanish prefer to keep us ignorant of Spanish and so learned the local languages. Don't forget the usage of the baybayin letter Ka on one of the Katipunan flags. The complete abandonment of the Alibata script, in my opinion, happened in the American period when the Americans taught the next generation English.

Not sure on the pagan revival though. Sure, there will be revival/reconstruction movements of the pagan faith but, especially so in the provinces, there's already syncretism, mixing Catholicism and folklore. There will be a reactionary puritan backlash though. Maybe even support of Islam as a way to connect with the other Malay states.
 
Not sure on that. I remember a drawing/picture that name the parts of the body with Spanish in Latin alphabet and Tagalog in Alibata/Baybayin. It was said to have been made by Rizal as a way to teach basic anatomy. Also, I think Alibata's modified already for it. There wasn't a + symbol that denotes a single consonant until the Spanish arrived. It was a bit like Japanese where each symbol represents a syllable.

One must remember that unlike the British who went teach everyone English in every colony they had, the Spanish prefer to keep us ignorant of Spanish and so learned the local languages. Don't forget the usage of the baybayin letter Ka on one of the Katipunan flags. The complete abandonment of the Alibata script, in my opinion, happened in the American period when the Americans taught the next generation English.

Not sure on the pagan revival though. Sure, there will be revival/reconstruction movements of the pagan faith but, especially so in the provinces, there's already syncretism, mixing Catholicism and folklore. There will be a reactionary puritan backlash though. Maybe even support of Islam as a way to connect with the other Malay states.

The Latin alphabet was always the more important one, though. Writing in Baybayin is an anachronism and a pointless archaism. Encouraging it would only be possible in modified form which accommodates modern Filipino sounds.

Rizal and Del Pilar and the majority of the intellectual classes wrote with the Latin script, if not the Spanish language. It was Bonifacio who tried to encourage a nativist view, the rough equivalent of Romantic nationalism.
 
It really depends on the butterflies. There's the likelihood of using the Latin alphabet or the Baybayin one. Latin if a pragmatic person is in charge, Baybayin if a romantic nationalist/historical revisionist is in charge.

Government wise, it could be anything. Dictatorship/Republic-in-name-only, a federation of ethnic states, maybe even a communist government.
 
It really depends on the butterflies. There's the likelihood of using the Latin alphabet or the Baybayin one. Latin if a pragmatic person is in charge, Baybayin if a romantic nationalist/historical revisionist is in charge.

Government wise, it could be anything. Dictatorship/Republic-in-name-only, a federation of ethnic states, maybe even a communist government.

The Japanese may never even leave, they were a stubborn bunch in OTL.
 
It really depends on the butterflies. There's the likelihood of using the Latin alphabet or the Baybayin one. Latin if a pragmatic person is in charge, Baybayin if a romantic nationalist/historical revisionist is in charge.
Well, it not just Baybayin in Tagalog/Kumintang region; other pre-Hispanic Philippine scripts would be revived (e.g. Pampanga's Kulitan)
 
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