WI: French-influenced Japan rather than British-influenced

What if Japan was influenced by France rather than Britain in the late 1800's and created an alliance with France instead of Britain?
 
What if Japan was influenced by France rather than Britain in the late 1800's and created an alliance with France instead of Britain?

I think for this to happen, you would need a POD well before the Meiji Restoration. Japan was more or less forced to opened up after Commodore Perry's Black Ships visited in 1853 and 1854 and of course, this led to the fall of the bakufu, the Meiji Restoration and ultimately to Japan's rapid modernization.

One of the major catalysts for Japan's modernization was to catch up technologically with the West in order to renegotiate what it saw as unequal treaties that had been negotiated between the Tokugawa bakufu and the Western powers. Three years after full power had been restored to the Emperor, in 1871, a mission was launched to travel the world (the Iwakura Mission) in order to do two things: renegotiate the unequal treaties and to view what countries did what best (technology, government, military etc.) and to bring the best learnings back to Japan for Japan to implement. The Iwakura Mission travelled from Japan to the USA, then on to the UK, Europe, Russia and SE Asia.

Whilst the Iwakura Mission ultimately failed in renegotiating the treaties in place with the major Western powers, it was able to view and compare the best examples of modern military, technology and more across a number of countries. Japan pretty much correctly identified the best examples (at the time) of most modern institutions and borrowed the ideas, changing them where necessary to meet Japan's own cultural needs, to build up its own infrastructure and reform. Not only this, but Japan invited experts from each of these countries to Japan to assist with implementing and building up this infrastructure. So Japan took and used experts from Prussia / Germany to build, train and develop a land army, education experts from American and Prussia / Germany to build an education system, naval experts from the UK to build and develop a strong navy (this developed into the UK-Japan Alliance and as a side note, is the reason that the Japan Maritime Self Defence Force to this day eats 'kaigun curry' every Friday), railway experts from the UK, agriculture experts from the UK, legal experts from France to develop a civil and criminal legal system and experts from France, the UK and America to develop a parliamentary system, which resulted in the Diet.

So all of this is why I think that for Japan to borrow more from France and to develop a stronger link or alliance with France, an earlier POD than the Meiji Restoration is needed. Providing that any earlier changes do not butterfly the Meiji Restoration away and it goes ahead as per OTL, you need to see a much stronger, much more developed France. So think of a France with a stronger navy, stronger army, more industrial might and more. This would need a POD along the lines of there being no French Revolution or Napoleon winning the Napoleonic Wars or fewer revolutions and changes in the 19th Century that impacted society.

Don't forget that in 1871, the first year of the Iwakura Mission, France had just been defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War. Showing weakness and such a defeat is perhaps one of the reasons that French military prowess was not so admired by the industrializing Japanese and to be able to have more of an impact and more influence, France really needed to have a stronger military and industrial base in place well before 1871. If that had been the case, we may have well seen an alliance with France rather than Britain, or maybe Japan becoming part of a triple alliance with France and Britain.

However, having said that, one thing does kind of wave away any of this. Japan saw itself as potentially becoming an Asian version of the UK. It saw many similarities; it is an island nation that needs to protect the waters around it, it has large, potentially aggressive continental neighbors and, of course, it's another of the world's greatest tea drinking nations :D :D Jokes aside, France did not really need to have as big a navy as the UK and for this reason, Japan saw the UK and the UK's imperial success as an island nation as a very relevant Western power to copy where necessary and to ally with until it was strong enough to be an imperial power in its own right.
 
In what ways would emulating the French systems in governance, military, education, etc., be inferior to those of other European powers?
 

dead_wolf

Banned
Er, Jules Brunet anyone? This is pretty easy to do, simply have the Shogunate win out in the Boshin War
 
In what ways would emulating the French systems in governance, military, education, etc., be inferior to those of other European powers?

I wouldn't say that the French governmental system, military and education were inferior in any way to other systems in Europe. Indeed, the Japanese took elements of the French legal system and implemented them in a way that suited Japan. Much in the same way that German scientific methodology was emulated, even to the point that today, people learning to be doctors in Japan often learn the German words for body parts / certain conditions (I was very surprised when I was in hospital in Japan and heard this, I even asked them why).

So that's the point I guess. It's not because French systems were inferior, Japan just took / copied what it saw as the best or the strongest. If I had been sent from some newly-developing country to travel around the world in 1871 - 1872, I don't think I would recommend much about France, given that it had stronger neighbors at the time; the Prussian army and the British Navy were pretty much the strongest in the world and if you want to modernize and match the West, do you really copy the military of a country that had just been kerbstomped by Prussia à la France? Would you really copy the governmental system of a country that had gone through 4 revolutions in under 100 years (the French revolution of 1789, the July revolution of 1830, the Second French Revolution in 1848 and the failed Paris Commune of 1871)?

During the Meiji restoration, Japan was attempting to modernize itself, not to become the most modern and advanced nation in Asia (although that was certainly one of the lesser goals) but to become an equal, if not better of the Western powers. It took what it saw as the best and changed these for its own use.

I can't see a France that could open Japan or have a stronger influence on Japan without some POD in France well before this time. Having sailing ships go to Japan in 1830 or before would have had little influence unless France assembled an armada and sailed all the way around the world (and just why would it want to do this? There are no natural resources of note in the home islands, not to mention the cost of pulling together a large navy to send to Japan. I'm not sure that Britain and the Netherlands would have been all too comfortable with France creating a large navy and sending it East, either). Japan closed itself off to the West in the 17th Century and no power from that time, including Spain, Portugal, Holland or Britain, was able to open it up until Perry's black ships arrived. There were a few attempts by some nations, but they were always rebuffed because they did not have enough force or power to force Japan to open up. There's no real way France could have done this - sending one or two ships with a fair number of men on board may have been able to land, but they would have been beaten back into the sea, if not through technological superiority, but by numbers.
 
Remembering that the Japanese Navy was heavily influenced by the Jeune Ecole IOTL, it seems like a fairly simple way to have a pro-France Japan is to avoid the Franco-Prussian War (of which there are loads of PoDs to do so). Then France is not disgraced and maintains the illusion if not the fact of the French military dominance. When Japan then models its legal system and navy in large part on France as IOTL in addition to modeling the Japanese Army on the French Army, it seems pretty likely they'll get in bed eventually.
 
Remembering that the Japanese Navy was heavily influenced by the Jeune Ecole IOTL, it seems like a fairly simple way to have a pro-France Japan is to avoid the Franco-Prussian War (of which there are loads of PoDs to do so). Then France is not disgraced and maintains the illusion if not the fact of the French military dominance. When Japan then models its legal system and navy in large part on France as IOTL in addition to modeling the Japanese Army on the French Army, it seems pretty likely they'll get in bed eventually.

That's a potentially good place for a POD however, why would Japan base its navy on France even if there was no Franco-Prussian war (it wasn't a naval war)? France's navy was made to project power around the world and to serve its empire, which is a fair thing to copy, but Japan still copied the British as much as possible as the Royal Navy was built not just to project power around the world and serve the Empire, but also to protect the British Home Islands. This is something Japan needed to do urgently - which it did to great effect in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 against Russia.

Franco-Prussian War not happening is one thing, but I think realistically to have a much stronger influence on Japan, France is going to have to be stronger in more areas and much earlier than any POD around the Franco-Prussian War.
 
That's a potentially good place for a POD however, why would Japan base its navy on France even if there was no Franco-Prussian war (it wasn't a naval war)?

Because they did historically. Before the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan was clearly the number two naval power in the region to China. Lacking the wealth to build a battleship navy to counter China's, Japan instead opted to follow the "Jeune Ecole" a school of thought proposed by the French that revolved around defeating battleship heavy forces (Read the British and Chinese) with a mix of heavily gunned and torpedo armed lighter ships. While it is true that post 1895 Japan battleshipped up and started seriously emulating the British, before 1894 the Japanese Navy was in large part designed by French naval engineers like Louis-Emile Bertin, and built just as much in French shipyards as in British ones.

If in 1894-1895 the Japanese crush the Chinese as in IOTL but this time with both a French designed Navy and a French trained Army, it seems likely that those cultural connections will produce an alliance eventually.
 
Lacking the wealth to build a battleship navy to counter China's, Japan instead opted to follow the "Jeune Ecole" a school of thought proposed by the French that revolved around defeating battleship heavy forces (Read the British and Chinese) with a mix of heavily gunned and torpedo armed lighter ships.

That's quite true, and the main reason for investing in small cruisers and torpedo boats was because of the limited resources Japan had at its disposal. It followed this doctrine during the 1880s, but this only lasted from about 1882 until 1887 - so five years. Whilst setting up the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had been going on well before this, there was an imperial decree in 1870 that ordered Japan's navy to use the Royal Navy as an example for development, instead of navies from other nations.

Japan invested in French-built torpedo boats and lighter ships for that five year period in the 1880s but that was about it. After this, all foreign involvement was with Britain (and prior to this had been largely with Britain and the Netherlands).

I think for France to really have had any large impact on the development of Japan, more so than Britain, it would have had to have contributed a lot more and a lot earlier. By offering smaller, lighter vessels to save money it did make in-roads into the IJN, but not really across greater swathes of Japanese society and lost influence with the IJN after a very brief period (and having a ship that had been ordered sink en-route from France can't have helped much, either :p ).
 

Neirdak

Banned
There is perhaps another good POD which isn't situated during the Franco-Prussian War. The main reason why Japan temporary divorced from France was the Boshin War and the establishment of the "Tokugawa" Republic of Ezo with the help of France.

There were four military training missions to Japan. The French Military Mission to Japan of 1867-68 was actually the first foreign military training mission to Japan. Shibata Takenaka requested both the United Kingdom and France to send a military mission for training in Western warfare. UK refused to send officers there and France accepted. The military mission was able to train an elite corps, the Denshutai.

At the end of the Boshin War, many members of the French Mission chose to remain in Japan and continued to support the Bakufu side. They resigned from the French army, and left for the north of Japan with the remains of the Shogunate's armies creating the Ezo Republic. The Ezo troops were organized under a Franco-Japanese command. The commander-in-chief Otori Keisuke was seconded by the French captain Jules Brunet, and divided between four brigades. Each of these was commanded by a French non-commissioned officer (Fortant, Marlin, Cazeneuve, Bouffier), and were themselves divided into eight half-brigades, each under Japanese command.

The Frenchmen were later evacuated on a french vessel and were protected by the French Government. The Ezo Republic was kinda like a second Mexican expedition and probably decided by the French Government as a way to get a long time foothold in Japan. After this war, there were strong factions with the Japanese government who favored the British or Germans over the French, or who still begrudged the French for their strong support of the Tokugawa Bakufu.

The POD would simply be a switch of side by the French during the Boshin War. They would resign from the French Army and directly join the Emperor's forces, instead of the staying with the Tokugawa forces. Of course, it won't change the fact that France will lose in 1870, but it will help to avoid the biggest french problem, hesitations about France's loyalty and trust.

France already sent back a mission to Japan in 1872, while the first and only German mission, the Meckel Mission, occurred in 1885. It shows that Japanese weren't interested by Sedan and its aftermath.
 
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