WI America never forces Japan to discontinue isolationism

Delaying the opening of Japan a decade or two could make the industrialization of OTL Japan impossible since the gap with the Europeans will have become large to surmount.

Japan may stay nominally independent but it would remain a backwater.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Delaying the opening of Japan a decade or two could make the industrialization of OTL Japan impossible since the gap with the Europeans will have become large to surmount.
Why? plenty of countries in the 20th century closed gaps way bigger, it doesn't matter if europeans has techs 10 years or so more advanced you are still buying/hiring europeans to teach your people how to build them.
 
Why? plenty of countries in the 20th century closed gaps way bigger, it doesn't matter if europeans has techs 10 years or so more advanced you are still buying/hiring europeans to teach your people how to build them.
This is the before 1900 forum. We are not talking about 20th century at all. I am saying it is plausible Japan wouldn't become a great power which changes things quite a bit.
 
Technology isn't linear like a video game where you have to "close up the gap". Euros got a new rifle? Buy them and start building your own based on that, rinse and repeat.
 
Technology isn't linear like a video game where you have to "close up the gap". Euros got a new rifle? Buy them and start building your own based on that, rinse and repeat.
And where would they get the money to pay for that? They would have no industry to pay for those things. China might be able to pay for stuff like that but Japan? No Perry expedition means no flash industrialization period for Japan at an opportune time. They will lose any war to China hands down over Korea and much less be able to stand up to Russia. Which changes things.

Allow me to rephrase what I said before. Japan got a head start in OTL. In a timeline without that head start, the world starts to diverge widely from our own before the start of the twentieth century. So basing what would happen based on our twentieth century is erroneous because this timeline has already jumped onto a separate railroad track.
 
South Africa WAS lightly populated, the West was by itself for geographic and other reasons, the East because of indigenous warfare:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mfecane
I'm aware of the narrative, popularized initially by the white South Africans, that Southern Africa was practically depopulated by the time of the Great Trek. While there may be some level of truth to it, I think that the current and former demographics statistics for South Africa speak for themselves (Not to mention the numerous border wars fought throughout the history of the Cape colony).
 
And where would they get the money to pay for that?
Taxing the population, like how they did in OTL.
China might be able to pay for stuff like that but Japan?
Japan is more likely to acquire the funds through taxation than China, are you aware how messed up China was 1850-1870? Also China did buy Western stuff, they weren't able to use it properly due to massive mismanagement and government corruption, the Japanese have far less issues with those.
Allow me to rephrase what I said before. Japan got a head start in OTL. In a timeline without that head start, the world starts to diverge widely from our own before the start of the twentieth century. So basing what would happen based on our twentieth century is erroneous because this timeline has already jumped onto a separate railroad track.
Why are you so obsessed with the twentieth century? There is no way the sakoku can hold off that long, Japan will be isolated until 1860s at most.
 
I'm aware of the narrative, popularized initially by the white South Africans, that Southern Africa was practically depopulated by the time of the Great Trek. While there may be some level of truth to it, I think that the current and former demographics statistics for South Africa speak for themselves (Not to mention the numerous border wars fought throughout the history of the Cape colony).
Exactly how do current demographic statistics speak to anything but fertility rate in a country over the last century or two? South Africa went from 17 million 50 years ago to 56 million now and the Philippines went from 1.5 million people in 1800 to 100 million now. As for border wars, the US had plenty with the Native Americans and they weren't ever in great number after the Columbian plagues decimated their people.

In any case, it is very thinly populated, by any metric, compared to Japan's main islands in the 1860s, together hosting somewhere between 32 and 34 million people (more people than South Africa would have a hundred years later). The Japanese army had firearms, the potential to build up a navy (they had their first steam ship 2 years after Perry's Expedition), and mountainous terrain not exactly conducive to invasion, especially by a nation on the other side of the planet. That's not mentioning the British, Russian, and American interests in Japan and how they'd respond to a French takeover of such a large market (as they saw it) and the territorial disputes that would ensue.

The more likely event is being forced open, since that treads on the fewest feet while giving benefits to all of the outside nations involved.
 

RousseauX

Donor
This is the before 1900 forum. We are not talking about 20th century at all. I am saying it is plausible Japan wouldn't become a great power which changes things quite a bit.
but the concept is basically the same, you hire people and buy technology from the European to modernize and industrialize, it being the 1850s, 1870s, 1890s, or the 1950s doesn't change that part
 
To be honest, another Western power would probably do it a few years later. The late-nineteenth-century West was very big on trade, and very down on countries which sought to exclude them from their markets.

There was also the Japanese policy of treating castaways on the Japanese coast, or ships forced by weather to shelter in Japanese waters, as criminals.
 
Again, even without Western gunboat diplomacy, there is already pressure from within Japan to modernize in the form of a technology race between the Satsuma Domain and the Tokugawa Shogunate. Of course, that doesn't necessarily end its isolationism until one of the other Western Empires force the issue.

I'm guessing the latest that Japan would remain isolated would be around the 1870s, when Russia would continue flexing its muscles in the Far East after China has been 'dealt with'. Japan may lose control of Hokkaido to the Russians before the British were to take notice and extend the Great Game to the Far East as an 'advocate' for Japan. Other than Hokkaido, Japan may have to concede some more treaty ports, and release Ryukyu from vassalage.

After that (and maybe some civil wars), the Japanese central government, whether it be in the form of a Shogunate (Tokugawa/other clan) or Imperial Rule, will try to play the Western Powers off each other, and mitigate (if not undo) the effect of most of the Unfair Treaties just in the 1660s and the OTL Meiji Era.

So, all in all, they may end up like OTL Thailand at the worst case situation, losing some territory, but retaining some dignity.
 
Exactly how do current demographic statistics speak to anything but fertility rate in a country over the last century or two? South Africa went from 17 million 50 years ago to 56 million now and the Philippines went from 1.5 million people in 1800 to 100 million now. As for border wars, the US had plenty with the Native Americans and they weren't ever in great number after the Columbian plagues decimated their people.

In any case, it is very thinly populated, by any metric, compared to Japan's main islands in the 1860s, together hosting somewhere between 32 and 34 million people (more people than South Africa would have a hundred years later). The Japanese army had firearms, the potential to build up a navy (they had their first steam ship 2 years after Perry's Expedition), and mountainous terrain not exactly conducive to invasion, especially by a nation on the other side of the planet. That's not mentioning the British, Russian, and American interests in Japan and how they'd respond to a French takeover of such a large market (as they saw it) and the territorial disputes that would ensue.

The more likely event is being forced open, since that treads on the fewest feet while giving benefits to all of the outside nations involved.

The only people counted in Spanish census in the Philippines are catholics not pagans so it is not correct.
 
Probably France colonises Japan instead of Indochina. They would have had the means and the motivation.
They had neither I'd say. For the means, Indochina was a tough nut to crack, as the first war took two years and almost ended in disaster at DaNang (Tourane).
This is the end of the logistic rope for the French and they have other fishes to fry in Europe.
For the motivation now, Indochina was colonized to access the South China market through the Mekong and Red River. It was also colonized as there was a very long Franco-Vietnamese history by that point. Gia Long had been helped by a French bishop and there had been a sizable Catholic community
 
How do you keep that from being a foot in the door for colonization?

Naively: Learn quickly, do not have a strategically important location and perhaps most importantly, do not have circumstances that encourage or allow Europeans to build up private armies in the country (e.g. it would very much cost more than it's worth for them to form private armies to defend their trade interests, and they're not bringing in the troops to deal with local mass rebellions), because that gives them the capability and once that starts the competitive dynamics between European states begin (as I understand it colonisation was very much a "We need this place for trade, because otherwise this nation will lock us out, and because this place can't be secured against some other territory held by this other nation, we then need this other place as well..." and so on until they're holding a large amount of territory that is actually marginal to the profits that were attracting them in the first place).
 
They had neither I'd say. For the means, Indochina was a tough nut to crack, as the first war took two years and almost ended in disaster at DaNang (Tourane).
This is the end of the logistic rope for the French and they have other fishes to fry in Europe.
For the motivation now, Indochina was colonized to access the South China market through the Mekong and Red River. It was also colonized as there was a very long Franco-Vietnamese history by that point. Gia Long had been helped by a French bishop and there had been a sizable Catholic community
I'd say the only reason they were in Indochina was prestige. In the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, this was more of a pride restoring vanity project as much as anything else. If access to China was what they wanted, surely a "99 year lease" on some Chinese fishing port would have sufficed. The fact of the matter is, the whole risk reward ratio in Indochina was out of wack. It was indeed a tough but to crack, and the benefits were suspect. Why not use all that pent up French military energy on a semi-fuedal Japan instead? Sure it would have been just as tough a but to crack, but I'm guessing a French Japan would have been more useful in the long run than OTL French Indochina?
 
I'd say the only reason they were in Indochina was prestige. In the wake of the Franco-Prussian War, this was more of a pride restoring vanity project as much as anything else. If access to China was what they wanted, surely a "99 year lease" on some Chinese fishing port would have sufficed. The fact of the matter is, the whole risk reward ratio in Indochina was out of wack. It was indeed a tough but to crack, and the benefits were suspect. Why not use all that pent up French military energy on a semi-fuedal Japan instead? Sure it would have been just as tough a but to crack, but I'm guessing a French Japan would have been more useful in the long run than OTL French Indochina?
The first indochinese war was in 1858, 12 years before the Franco-prussian war. The African colonisation was a vanity project, you'd be right on that but not Indochina.
It was definitely for trade (see the Garnier expedition up the Mekong and Dupuis up the Red River) and for the protection of Catholics, as per the policy of Napoleon III.
They didn't get a 99 year lease because they could. The European needed a Chinese state and officially losing territory would not have been possible.
The only territory actually annexed by the French was Cochinchina, which was a recent conquest of the Vietnamese and not a core province.
The rest was a protectorate with the Nguyen dynasty
 
So, all in all, they may end up like OTL Thailand at the worst case situation, losing some territory, but retaining some dignity.

What is "some territory"? The Home Islands aren't big and this is before the Imperial period, so there are next to none overseas domains.
 
The only people counted in Spanish census in the Philippines are catholics not pagans so it is not correct.
Ah, my mistake. I believe the point still stands though, seeing as population sizes two hundred years ago generally aren't good shows of current day populations for a variety of reasons (better nutrition, medicine, immigration, etc.).

What is "some territory"? The Home Islands aren't big and this is before the Imperial period, so there are next to none overseas domains.
Presumably some of the smaller islands (Kyushu, Shikoku, Hokkaido, the Ryukyu Islands).
 
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