Extremely Rough Draft: Victorious Japanese Empire

[Cylon_Number_14]

I drafted this on a lark some time back. Here's a skeleton timeline based around the goal of the Empire of Japan gaining sizeable colonial territory without getting totally smacked down in the 20th Century. Feel free to critique the heck out of it!


POD 1898: The United States naval vessel Maine leaves Cuba peacefully; there is no war between the Kingdom of Spain and the United States.


1899: The German Empire purchases the Phillippines and various Pacific islands from Spain.


1902: The British Empire and the Empire of Japan sign a naval alliance.



1906: The Empire of Japan, victorious in the Russo-Japanese War, secures control over Korea, southern Sakhalin, the Kuriles, and Liaodong.


1911: The Empire of China falls into what will be a long period of civil war.



1914: The Great War erupts in Europe; the Empire of Japan honors its alliance to the British Empire by seizing German assets in China, the German Pacific islands, and invading the Philippines.



1918: The Great War ends with the defeat of the German Empire and the collapse of the Russian Empire into civil war.


1919-1922: The Japanese are one of several nations to intervene in the Russian Civil War.


1923: The Empire of Japan refuses to return Kamchatka and Sakhalin to the Soviet Union.


1920s onward: The Empire of Japan discovers in the Philippines just how difficult it can be to occupy an unwilling colony. This has an impact on Japan's designs on China.


1927: The forces of Chiang Kai-Shek gain control of nearly all of China proper


1932: Japanese forces establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.



1939: The Second World War erupts in Europe.


1940: In response to German victories in Europe, the Empire of Japan invades Indochina, Burma, and the East Indies; the Republic of China is ceded control of Liaodong and Shangdong, in exchange for neutrality; China takes the initiative to seize Tibet.


1942: The United States reluctantly joins the war against Germany after several high-profile losses to German U-boats; the Empire of Japan allows Union Lend-lease materiel to enter the Soviet Union through Vladivostok after tense negotiations.


1943: The British Empire agrees to the peace settlement offered by the Empire of Japan whereby the British regain Burma and an expanded Siam remains neutral territory while the Japanese are recognized in the East Indies and Indochina, and the Japanese government agrees to a payment in raw materials for the British war effort.

The Republic of China seizes Mongolia in a skirmish with the ailing Soviet Union.


1945: The Second World War ends in unconditional German surrender; the map of Europe is redrawn with Germany occupied by the British, Union, French, and the Soviets.

The Empire of Japan is deeply resented by the Europeans, including of course the Soviets, and still faces severe tensions with the Republic of China over Manchukuo. However, it is in control of Kamchatka etc, Korea, Taiwan, Manchuria, the Philippines, Indochina, and all the East Indies. The total population of this colonial empire is roughly double to treble the population of the Home Islands. Now can they hold on to this for very long?

And how much have I gotten wrong?

 

[Germaniac]

The POD is ASB

The United States was enraged about the treatment of the Cuban people by their Spanish oppressors. everyone was just trying to find an excuse. The United States was getting Cuban Independence, or whatever the United States thought Cuban Independence was, one way or the other.

I hate this assumption that in any TL where the Spanish-American war is avoided, Spain simply sells her colonies to Germany. Do you understand the Sums of money that will be involved. In return for the Philippines the United States paid 20 million, To a Defeated Nation! Think how much Germany would have to pay to Spain. Germany will effectively trade at least one of its naval building programs for Spanish colonies.

This means less tension between Germany and Britain, This means that European tensions as a whole will be less and effectively you could simply avoid WW1 all together, and From that WW2

 

[Cylon_Number_14]

The POD is ASB

I hate this assumption that in any TL where the Spanish-American war is avoided, Spain simply sells her colonies to Germany. Do you understand the Sums of money that will be involved. In return for the Philippines the United States paid 20 million, To a Defeated Nation! Think how much Germany would have to pay to Spain. Germany will effectively trade at least one of its naval building programs for Spanish colonies.

I dunno if it is so improbable to be ASB, but you bring up an interesting topic.

I hadn't really thought about the cost of buying a colonial empire. How much would it cost to buy the Philippines, hypothetically? Are we talking 50 million US dollars or like 100 million? And how much is 100 million really worth in terms of the economics of 1900? I know that inflation doesn't fully account for just how much money that is.

 

[Bill Cameron]

The POD is ASB.

Germaniac,

Agreed.

The US gained the whole of the Philippines not just because they beat Spain in a war and paid 20 million dollars but also because the US was not a European power.

No European power would allow the Philippines be transferred in toto to another European power. The faltering Iberian empires and what was seen as their eventual transfer to other powers were the subjects of a lot of nervous backstairs diplomacy, official memorandums, government pronouncements, and other activities. Britain and Germany had actually negotiated an understanding on how they would divide up Portugal's holdings when that nation went bankrupt.

If Spain decided to sell out, no nation would have bought the entire Philippines or been allowed to buy the entire Philippines. The islands would have been divided up among several nations at some huge European conference akin to the 1884 Berlin or 1908 Algeciras meetings.


Bill

 

[David S Poepoe]

Germaniac,

Agreed.

The US gained the whole of the Philippines not just because they beat Spain in a war and paid 20 million dollars but also because the US was not a European power.

No European power would allow the Philippines be transferred in toto to another European power. The faltering Iberian empires and what was seen as their eventual transfer to other powers were the subjects of a lot of nervous backstairs diplomacy, official memorandums, government pronouncements, and other activities. Britain and Germany had actually negotiated an understanding on how they would divide up Portugal's holdings when that nation went bankrupt.

If Spain decided to sell out, no nation would have bought the entire Philippines or been allowed to buy the entire Philippines. The islands would have been divided up among several nations at some huge European conference akin to the 1884 Berlin or 1908 Algeciras meetings.

Bill

Wait a minute Bill. Do you have a source to back this up? I doubt there would be any division of the Spanish Empire among the other Great and Lesser Powers regarding the Philippines. Isn't the British and German agreement about the Portugese empire post-1900 and strictly between themselves and not even involving the Portugese? I only mention the date since I think it is more because of the Spanish-American War that such an agreement came about.

 

[Bill Cameron]

Wait a minute Bill. Do you have a source to back this up?

David,

Bradford's Crucible of Empire and a book from the Standford Press by Payne(?) called Politics and the Military in Modern Spain. Especially the latter.

I doubt there would be any division of the Spanish Empire among the other Great and Lesser Powers regarding the Philippines.

If one power gained the whole of the Philippines, such a gain would have to be offset elsewhere. European powers were already horsetrading bits and pieces of their various national empires by this time.

Isn't the British and German agreement about the Portugese empire post-1900 and strictly between themselves and not even involving the Portugese?

Exactly. The concern over what was then seen as the eventual dissolution of the Iberian empires led Britain and Germany to privately come to an agreement about control Portugal's imperial possessions before events led to an European crisis involving that empire. Britain and Germany were planning ahead, stealing the march on the other powers, so that they could present a fait accompli during any conference on the issue.

I only mention the date since I think it is more because of the Spanish-American War that such an agreement came about.

Again, exactly. The quick dissolution and loss of most of the Spanish empire heightened anxieties over what was seen as the soon-to-occur dissolution of the Portuguese empire, hence the British and German discussions and eventual understanding on the issue.

The US' outright acquisition of Puerto Rico and control of Cuba as a client state were a non-issues. Those changes occurred in the Americas and thus weren't worth the political/diplomatic costs of modifying them. The Philippines were another story however.

The island group is huge and has no real unity aside from what it's colonial masters imposed. After Manila Bay, many European powers sent naval vessels as observers well before Dewey received any reinforcements from the US and the Spanish ashore capitulated. Several European powers, most notably Germany, "tested" the US with various provocations.

When the Paris conference leading to the final peace treaty began in October of '98, the US and Spain initially discussed Spain's cession of only part of the islands with Spain vaguely planning on selling off the rest. That started a scramble of sorts among the powers with everyone wanting to see who would get what.

McKinley inadvertently put a stop to that scramble later in the same month when he instructed the US party to push for a full cession of the islands. European interest diminished and when Spain began shopping her few remaining Pacific possessions only Germany still had interest.


Bill

 

[lothaw]

Seems to me Japan would sieze Spain's Pacific holdings on their own leash before Germany would get a hold of them.

As for a "neutral" Japan, you don't take in account the Sino-German alliance that was very real until Hilter decided Japan would make a more valuable ally in the far east.

 

[Enigmajones]

Have the Japanese-British Alliance keep going strong would the best way to have the Japanese Empire survive

 

[Faraday Cage]

Two island nations, one West, one East. So together they carve up China and fight the German supported Chinese Nationalist regime, providing a "second front" for Mao and his USSR supported army. Afterwards the Cold War makes supporting Japan's occupation of Manchuria natural (instead of Taiwan being the RoC, there's the PRC and then Manchuko). However the Communist intervention in Korea has the UN army discover the worst Japanese abuses of the Koreans and there's something akin to end of apartheid in Japan, with Truth and Reconciliation hearings and stuff like that, and Manchuria becomes it's own Western supported bulwark against communism landwise, while there is still a huge reliance on the Japanese navy checking the USSR Far East Fleet.

Maybe something like that?

 

[PLO-Style]

The POD is ASB

The United States was enraged about the treatment of the Cuban people by their Spanish oppressors. everyone was just trying to find an excuse. The United States was getting Cuban Independence, or whatever the United States thought Cuban Independence was, one way or the other.

More like yellow journalism and propaganda spread by industrialists/unseen interests/frank imperialists stirred up the American people for a war against Spain....

 

[Leistungsfähiger Amerikan]

Have the Japanese-British Alliance keep going strong would the best way to have the Japanese Empire survive

That's hard because of the USA. IOTL, the Canadians were screaming for the alliance to be ended, because Japan could have dragged them into a war with the USA(not unlikely), at which point Canada would be occupied. A good POD would be to make Britian more anti-american, perhaps a failed treaty of Washington, and then to support Japan over the USA.

 

[Bill Cameron]

More like yellow journalism and propaganda spread by industrialists/unseen interests/frank imperialists stirred up the American people for a war against Spain....

PLO-Style,

It may seem naive to us in our far more cynical times, but the majority of Americans were actually incensed over Spanish behavior during the on-going rebellion in Cuba. The US population had been bombarded with stories about Spanish outrages for over two decades. Spain and the US had even come close to war during the Virginius incident in 1873 when Spain executed the 30 man crew of that US-flagged vessel when it was caught running guns to Cuban insurgents.

Yes, Pulitzer and Hearst used the building crises to sell newspapers and, yes, industrialists were interested in selling the US warships and other arms, and, yes, a few loud imperialists wanted additional coaling bases in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Pacific, but no one ever seriously suggested that the US seize and keep the Philippines.

That acquisition was something only a no one in 1898 prior to the war either foresaw or desired. Even Teddy Roosevelt, who dispatched Dewey and his forces to Hong Kong with an eye towards an attack on Manila and then later sent Dewey orders to for that attack, never dreamed the US would gain the Philippines. US peace negotiators in Paris had been dispatched with instructions to ask for coaling bases alone until McKinley got his "message from God" and told them to press for full cession.

The underlying causes were already there. The "yellow journalism and propaganda spread by industrialists/unseen interests/frank imperialists" you mention didn't create it, they merely managed it for their own ends.


Bill