Seafaring Japan

[westvirginiarebel]

Wi Japan hadn't become isolationist; what does a Japanese Empire with a sea-worthy navy look like by the early 18th century?

[rinkou]

You're assuming a western tradition of seafaring and exploration. The concept of the use of a navy for force projection and area-denial is entirely western and has no precedence in Asia. Without a mercantile economy, there's no impetus for Japan to seek out trading partners.

Conversely, isolation allowed Japan to develop a proto-national identity and was "worth" more as far as developing cultural capital to industrialize as quickly as it did in the modern era. An 18th century "blue water" Japanese navy would just get wrecked by the imperialist of the day. Also, arguably, because Japan was isolationist, it was viewed as backwards and impoverished by the western imperialists for the most part, sparing it the fate that China suffered until the US, uppity from not having any unequal treaties going, picks on the kid everyone else ignored for being too poor to bother with. That extra time insulated from western imperialism arguably also influenced Japan's ability to industrialize at a pace to resist and then rival the major European powers in the early 1900s.

[petros]

For the navy to appear by 1750, the change has to happen far earlier.

If Japan had continued to trade, Japan might consider it important to be the one who controls the ships that conduct the trade, even if they choose to isolate themselves, so the Red Seal Ships would still exist, now in larger numbers. When Japanese Quarters and Trading Posts are set up around Southeast Asia, there is a further need to defend them, so increasing the fleet again, now in a more official and martial capacity.

The question to me is what happens when they run into the Spanish, or the other European powers who have interests in the region. It's the outcome of this first conflict that really makes the difference. If the Japanese lose, I would say they will cut off ties, and would be able to keep foreigners out as they did in OTL. If they win, they may gain more interests, and so redouble their efforts. They could take the Philippines, maybe become the middle-man in the silver trade with China, and from there I would imagine they'll focus interest on the straights next to Singapore. I wouldn't say the shorter lines of communication would be much of an advantage against European ships, but Europeans aren't the only ones who can build ships.

Japan is likely to do well in copying them, considering how quickly they adopted and perfected firearms. A few captured European ships could bring them up to speed. The need for timber creates the need to go north, to Kamatchka, ultimately Alaska. This opens up the fur market too. If furs from Japan become popular in Europe, then Japanese Alaska is not too far-fetched.

[rinkou]

But there's no impetus for that sort of control of trade. The very concept of controlling trade like that doesn't exist in East Asia at this time, primarily because the concept of statehood is rooted in the Diet of Worms. Any such trade is done in the name of either the throne, or local lords, but there is no national trade policy, because there is no nation. For a national consciousness to develop, there must first be a concept of sovereignty.

Arguably, a stronger seafaring tradition shows up in Western Europe due to a proliferation of smaller seafaring states, but between East Asian mainland being unified under Chinese direct rule or suzerainty, there wouldn't have existed the opportunity for other powers within Asia to have enough other trading partners to justify expeditions of this sort.

Also arguably, after the Heian period (and even then), Japan no longer has the political unity to expand beyond the home islands. There's a reason there was only one Japanese invasion of Korea prior the modern era. Beyond a minor trading post in Ezo and sometimes taking suzerainty over the Ryukyus (both actions taken under autonomous daimyo), there was neither the political will or unity for any sort of foray off the home islands.

tl;dr:

-This scenario requires a western European tradition and understanding of seafaring, mercantile trade, and extending a philosophy of area-denial to the ocean that doesn't exist in East Asia.
-This scenario requires a Japan to be a fully formed nation-state with some sort of national will and identity long before this was the case.

[bytor]

Jan 9, 2016 3:05:06 GMT rinkou said:

But there's no impetus for that sort of control of trade. The very concept of controlling trade like that doesn't exist in East Asia at this time, primarily because the concept of statehood is rooted in the Diet of Worms. Any such trade is done in the name of either the throne, or local lords, but there is no national trade policy, because there is no nation. For a national consciousness to develop, there must first be a concept of sovereignty.

Arguably, a stronger seafaring tradition shows up in Western Europe due to a proliferation of smaller seafaring states, but between East Asian mainland being unified under Chinese direct rule or suzerainty, there wouldn't have existed the opportunity for other powers within Asia to have enough other trading partners to justify expeditions of this sort.

Also arguably, after the Heian period (and even then), Japan no longer has the political unity to expand beyond the home islands. There's a reason there was only one Japanese invasion of Korea prior the modern era. Beyond a minor trading post in Ezo and sometimes taking suzerainty over the Ryukyus (both actions taken under autonomous daimyo), there was neither the political will or unity for any sort of foray off the home islands.

tl;dr:

-This scenario requires a western European tradition and understanding of seafaring, mercantile trade, and extending a philosophy of area-denial to the ocean that doesn't exist in East Asia.
-This scenario requires a Japan to be a fully formed nation-state with some sort of national will and identity long before this was the case.

Except imperial tribute evolves into mercantile trade, which is, from my admittedly limited understanding of Asian history, what happened with various Chinese empires since the 10th century and the South Asian Chinese communities all the way down to Java and Borneo.

Since Japanese culture was strongly influenced by the Chinese, perhaps a PoD where some petty kingdom with an interest in trade, like Ryukyu, also decides to throw off its tributary status and becomes an expansionist trade empire in imitation. When the Satsuma Han invades in 1609 on permission of the Tokugawa Shogunate, perhaps it goes the opposite way since they learned some European ship and canon technology from the Portuguese and the Satsuma become their vassals instead?

[punkrockbowler805]

There were waves of Japanese pirates called wako that took advantage of the Chinese Ming Dynasty maritime trade ban and scrapping the Treasure Fleets. They got pretty far afield too. Maybe something could come of them.

[rinkou]

Feb 7, 2016 16:57:24 GMT bytor said:

Except imperial tribute evolves into mercantile trade, which is, from my admittedly limited understanding of Asian history, what happened with various Chinese empires since the 10th century and the South Asian Chinese communities all the way down to Java and Borneo.

Since Japanese culture was strongly influenced by the Chinese, perhaps a PoD where some petty kingdom with an interest in trade, like Ryukyu, also decides to throw off its tributary status and becomes an expansionist trade empire in imitation. When the Satsuma Han invades in 1609 on permission of the Tokugawa Shogunate, perhaps it goes the opposite way since they learned some European ship and canon technology from the Portuguese and the Satsuma become their vassals instead?

Feb 8, 2016 6:12:25 GMT punkrockbowler805 said:

There were waves of Japanese pirates called wako that took advantage of the Chinese Ming Dynasty maritime trade ban and scrapping the Treasure Fleets. They got pretty far afield too. Maybe something could come of them.

Europe has a lot of geographical advantages to developing western naval theory. All those coastlines, navigable inlets and rivers, two major inland seas, several massive peninsulas and a major island extremely close to the mainland turns the sea into the most efficient trade route for Europe, while China relies largely on overland trade - their other tributary states overseas don't contribute nearly enough to be worth the major expenditures into shipping.

The Ryukyu islands also have significantly less arable land, and consequently a much smaller population than any of the Japanese daimyo's territories - there really isn't any way I could see them turning the tables on any foreign power actively invested in conquering the islands.

This is not to say that East Asians never developed shipping or maritime technology or traditions, but it's more that there wasn't any prolonged impetus to keep them going. Both China and Japan have major periods of isolation, and, as they control such a major portion of the East Asian landmass, a lot of the institutional memory that goes into maintaining shipping fleets gets reset.

On top of Europe's geographical advantages in spurring major utilization of maritime transit, there's the political history of it. Europe's oldest empires were maritime Mediterranean empires and had long used the sea for transit. Combine this with the political impetus to maintain contact after the collapse of the Roman state in western Europe and an overarching Christian civilization afterward gives another level of interconnectivity to what I'm calling Europe, but would more accurately be called western Christendom.

East Asia, on the other hand, does not have this level of interconnectedness, even within the Sinosphere. The Middle Kingdom never has the kind of influence over its tributary states that the legacy of Rome or the Bishop therein has in western Europe.

If we take the Sinosphere outside of China to be Japan, Korea, Vietnam, (and the Ryukyu), we're looking at a very small handful of states/arguably nations when compared to the diversity of states in western Europe, and none of them with the same sort of ties to China as the western European states have to the Pope, and neither is there any sense of legitimacy in a pan-Sinocultural empire. In short, while western Europe was a single interconnected civilization, bound by political history and religious structures, Sinocultural East Asia was a much looser civilization bound by cultural diffusion and suzerainty.

In the same way that a post-Carthaginian Rome had no need for a powerful navy, neither does China. The proximate factors just don't exist for this sort of maritime tradition to take hold in East/Southeast Asia, and, arguably, due to the region's geography, it's possible that it never would have. Even the Indonesian islands don't have enough arable land suitable to major cereal crops to sustain the sorts of societies necessary to field such major naval ambitions.

[huojin]

To add to rinkou's point, the most significant maritime cultures in Asia all emerge, not from East Asia, but from South Asia. The Indian Ocean and the booming trade therein, encompassing South East Asia, the whole of India, Arabia, Persia, and the East Coast of Africa, engendered a similar kind of maritime interconnectedness you got in Europe.

Though primarily concerned with commercial aspects, Indian Ocean trade can be compared to the Mediterranean in that it allowed the spread of Indian cultures throughout the region, as far afield as Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines - links you can see throughout the cultures and ethnic heritage of these regions to this day, despite subsequent waves of colonisation, trade, and foreign domination. As a result, the connection between these regions was far stronger.

It is telling that even at the height of what might be called historical Chinese naval strength (I'm thinking, of course, about Zheng He's treasure fleets), their voyages throughout the Indian Ocean were diplomatic, seeking tribute and acknowledgement of Ming suzerainty, rather than actively engaging in trade.

Also worth noting, I seriously doubt the capacity of the Ryukyu Kingdom to turn the tables on Satsuma Domain to the extent that after an attempt to conquer them, they turned around and concerned Satsuma. Not least because of the population and territory disparity involved, let alone the political implications of a foreign kingdom dominating any part of the Home Islands.

[rinkou]

Echoing off Huojin's point for a second, there's a second layer to western naval tradition beyond simple trade and commerce. Western imperialism is made possible not only by efficient seafaring technology, but also in highly efficient weapons that allows for relatively tiny complements of men to carve out concession territories, enforce ship-basing rights, or at the very least, protect their ships and cargo far afield and in the heart of foreign lands and waters. While Asians have had gunpowder weapons and more advanced naval technology for a longer period of time, the west's emergence onto the global scene comes as a result of the development of modern science. This is as much rooted in a western Christian tradition of Biblical scholasticism as it is in an influx of Byzantine refugees carrying Roman and ancient Greek knowledge westward.

Without a tradition of scholasticism and a large enough number of powerful competing states, it's hard to develop this sort of military advantage and couple it with a seafaring doctrine that takes control of seaways into account. I'm going to say that by extension of this, it's hard to see this sort of western imperial seafaring in South/Southeast Asia, the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa either - both due to the distances involved, as with the lack of the same cultural impetuses that developed modern science in western Europe.

I really only have a cursory knowledge of Indian Ocean cultures, though, so I'll defer to Huojin or anyone else who has more information on that point.

[huojin]

Much as East Asia is often undersold, I think the same is true of South Asian cultures. I would argue that there was a sustained scholarly/academic and technological tradition in South Asia - everything from crucible steel to countless mathematical advances (not to mention the numbers we use today) to vast scientific and medical advances and treatments came from India in particular. Additionally there is the lengthy tradition of literature, religions, music, and so on. So not that wildly different from Europe.

However you only really see all of this being taken advantage of in southern India and south east Asia. Empires like the Chola Dynasty or Srivijaya were powerful naval entities, spreading through the region. The Chola in particular represent the peak of Indian maritime strength, but very tellingly it subsides as they became more invested in land-based conflicts. So in a lot of ways you did have a similar seafaring culture - but as in China, partially undermined by extensive land-based neighbours constantly in competition, and also rooted in the peculiar difference of trade over conquest. Whether you're talking about South Asian or East Asian empires, the pattern seems far more geared towards tribute and trade than conquest and dominance. I'm not sure I could tell you why.

As for other issues amongst Indian Ocean cultures, I would say distance is a factor. Perhaps relatedly, each culture was sufficiently removed that more pressing regional issues facing inwards towards land took precedence when push came to shove over maritime affairs, whereas in Europe it could be argued that the largely insular or self-contained geography of regions like the Mediterranean, like the Black Sea, like the Baltic, like the North Sea, and so on, allowed these traditions to take root.

Just speculation, though.