Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM

Portuguese Japan---A Timeline

By Eric Oppen

Point of departure: 1820.

1820: Large mineral strikes are made in Portuguese West Africa (OTL’s present-day Angola). When word of the diamond strikes reaches Europe, the Portuguese authorities sell permission to exploit the strikes to European firms, contenting themselves with a share of whatever profits the firms make. (This way, the foreign firms have to do a lot of the policing, and the Portuguese themselves don’t have to try to keep them out or keep the peace.) Much of this money is used to upgrade and improve the Portuguese army and colonial forces.

1824: James Brooke (OTL’s “White Raja of Sarawak”) is wounded in Burma. While recovering, he is converted to Catholicism, which at this time is a major handicap in the British society, and has to resign from the service of the East India Company.

Brooke accepts an offer from the Portuguese to enter their service. (Note: This was not unknown by any means; Cecil Woodham-Smith’s The Reason Why mentions a very talented cavalry officer, Anthony Bacon, who sold out and entered Portuguese service after he was prevented from attaining a command due to his lack of money to purchase the post.)

1830: Posted to Macao as assistant to the governor, Brooke rapidly becomes the real power in the colony. He weeds out a lot of incompetents and lazy people from the administration, and sets up a systematic information-gathering network that eventually covers most of East and Southeast Asia.

1835: A Portuguese opium ship, driven far off-course on her way from Macao, is driven onto the shore of Shikoku in Japan. Despite attempts by the Dutch at Deshima to get the crew released, they are enslaved or crucified for breaking the laws against Catholics entering Japan.

Later that year, Brooke, in Macao, gets the word about this from a Dutch ship’s master who has called at Macao. He has basically done all he can do as assistant to the governor, and is bored out of wit and senses. Being an idealist and a crusader at heart, he gets the germ of an idea.

When the fate of their traders becomes known in Portugal, there is great indignation at the Japanese. Other countries’ sailors have also been mistreated by the Japanese, including British and French shipwreck survivors. Brooke is behind a lot of the indignation, using a little of the money from the opium trade to subsidize journalists to take the right line against the Japanese “pirates.”

1836-1838: Recruiting troops in Portuguese Africa, as well as through Goa and East Timor, James Brooke puts together an army very like OTL’s “Ever-Victorious Army.” Basically, it is raised from the warrior peoples of India and Portuguese Africa, with European-style training (Many Portuguese veterans of the Peninsular Wars are still alive, and some of them are in need of employment). With the secret (and not-too-secret) backing of the taipans of the Western trading houses active in Macao, he obtains transportation in their ships as well as horses from New South Wales in Australia. The taipans go along in return for not getting kicked out of Macao, as well as promises of concessions in Japan.

1838: In spring, under the command of Brooke, acting in the name of the governor of Macao, ten ships (armed merchantmen in temporary Portuguese royal service) appear in Yedo Bay and commence to bombard Yedo with Congreve rockets and cannon fire. Under the cover of the confusion, troops are landed. The bakufu (Shogunal) forces try to resist, but their seventeenth-century weapons and tactics prove nearly useless against the post-Napoleonic weapons of the invaders. Yedo, or the ruins of Yedo, is shortly taken over, and more troops are landed, along with the mounts for the cavalry.

(Note: No, this is not Alien Space Bats territory. Everything I have stated so far above is based on actual historical precedent. The Portuguese forces as described would be roughly like the East India Company’s “sepoy” armies, or the “Ever-Victorious Army” which tore great chunks out of the Taiping Rebellion. As for the probable outcome of the fighting, it is important to not confuse the early-nineteenth-century bakufu with either the Meiji-period Japanese military or the early-seventeenth-century bakufu. By the 1830s and 1840s, the samurai were more like bureaucrats with martial-arts training and an attitude, for the most part. Also, putting seventeenth-century armies of any sort up against even a fourth-rate early-nineteenth-century European army was tried, repeatedly, in India, with the invariable result being annihilation of the obsolete force.)

1838, Summer: By this time, the Portuguese are in control of much of the Kanto plain of Honshu, and have taken over effective control of the seas. The Japanese have not had ocean-going ships for centuries, and their sampans and coastal junks are as helpless against European-style ships as their Chinese counterparts of the Opium War were. Nagasaki has fallen, and the Dutch have entered the war on the Portuguese side; their traders were blamed by the bakufu for the invasion, and slaughtered before the Portuguese took the town.

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, some of the “outside” daimyo clans---the Kagoshima daimyo, among others---send emissaries to the Portuguese to offer to join up. Their alliance is accepted; the Portuguese know that they’ll need native allies; it’s a lot easier to use locals if they can rather than haul troops all the way from Goa, Portuguese Africa, East Timor or Macao.

(The “outside” daimyos were the descendants of those who had been defeated last by the ancestors of the Tokugawa shoguns. They were always treated with suspicion by the central government, and considered likely focusses for rebellion. Kagoshima, in particular, responded by, inter alia, deliberately fostering a local dialect of Japanese that was very difficult for non-locals to understand, to facilitate the neutralization of bakufu spies.)

1839: With their new allies, the Portuguese complete the conquest of most of the coastal plains facing the Pacific in Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. This brings much of the main rice-growing areas of Japan under their control, and many of the cities. The Shogun, in hiding in the mountains with the Emperor, is forced to resign and commit seppuku for failing to hold off the foreign invaders.

By this time, the European powers are all very interested in what is going on in Japan. The British are secretly backing the Portuguese, who have been their allies since time immemorial (a treaty signed in the 1300s!) and the French prefer Portuguese control of Japan to British or Russian control. While the Russians are very interested in what is going on, they can’t do much at this time, since the Trans-Siberian Railroad is still decades in the future and they have little strength in the area. The Dutch have more than enough on their plate in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to worry over-much about Japan, and the Spanish are going through civil unrest at home that prevents them from taking an interest. So, by default, the Portuguese are left in effective control of most of Japan.

James Brooke sends emissaries to the Emperor of Japan to offer an opportunity for surrender. The emissaries (locally-recruited Buddhist priests) are crucified. At this news, Brooke gathers his forces for an all-out push to bring all of Japan under control, once and for all. More soldiers are recruited, and the allied daimyos’ armies are put under effective Portuguese command, with their Japanese commanders surrounded by European “advisors.”

1840: Portugal proclaims itself the sovereign power in Japan. The children of the allied daimyos are sent to Goa for schooling. Portuguese and allied forces move up Honshu, driving the remnant Shogunal/Imperial forces before them. Only lack of numbers prevents total Portuguese conquest of Honshu in this year.

The British, French, Dutch, Russians and Americans all accept Portuguese invitations to set up bases in Japan. The island of Tsushima becomes a Russian colony, while the British move in on southern Shikoku, and the French in Kyushu. American whalers establish supply depots and bases all along the eastern coast of Japan, up to the limit of Portuguese control, which is roughly along the thirty-sixth parallel. The Dutch are given the city of Nagasaki as compensation for their losses when the bakufu destroyed Deshima.

By this time, there now exist local forces trained in European-style warfare, and armed with the latest (or nearly latest) Western arms. Many ronin come in to join up, some to perfect their weapon skills on their endless “warrior pilgrimage,” and others just because the Portuguese have no qualms about hiring ronin. Command positions, as well as the more technical branches such as the artillery and engineers, remain in European hands, but the Portuguese colonial army in Japan is becoming more Japanese.

In the areas taken by Portugal, the Portuguese find that they have many natural allies in people who were marginalized or victimized by the bakufu. Besides embittered ronin, the merchants and middle classes tend to support Portuguese rule because taxes are lower, thanks to a brainstorm of Brooke’s. It is his habit, when taking a new area, to thunderously announce that the inhabitants will be paying taxes---and set the taxes far below what the bakufu and local daimyo had demanded. The merchants and middle classes are no fools, and are quite charmed, also, by the influx of European goods---there is soon quite a fad in the Portuguese areas for European clothing and artifacts.

1841: Viceroy Lin, in Macao, attempts to shut down the opium trade, setting off war between the opium-importing British and China. Brooke releases some Portuguese ships to help the British who end up taking most of Guangdong Province and setting up their own trading depot not far from Macao, at Hong Kong. Since the Portuguese did help them, Macao is still Portuguese, although with the superb Hong Kong harbor available, Macao is on its way to becoming a backwater.

1842: Inspired by the easy victories of the Portuguese and British, the French manufacture a pretext for war and make war on China, ending up in control of Shandong Province not far from the capital.

1843-55: Rebellion in China. Several large rebel armies, the Small Swords, Red Turbans and White Lotus, join forces to expel the Manchu dynasty and put a strong new native dynasty on the throne. Some of these rebels have been exposed to Western-style Christianity along the coast, or as mercenaries in Japan, and promulgate a “Chinese” version in which Jesus is thought to have been Chinese.

1843: Having massed enough force to more than take care of the job, Gobernador do Japao e Macao Brooke launches a huge offensive aimed at bringing all of Honshu under Portuguese control. By this time, the remaining enemy is divided; the bakufu has collapsed in a welter of dissension about whether resistance or submission make more sense. Smashing one daimyo’s forces after another, Brooke marches north, systematically setting up fortifications to ensure that his enemies can’t get in his rear and make more mischief. The Emperor and titular Shogun flee to southern Hokkaido, which was colonized by the Japanese earlier.

With a nearby, large, secure base in Japan, the English and French are able to recruit many Japanese as mercenaries for their armies in China, along the line of the sepoy armies of India. They are delighted with the results, and plan to snap up more and more of the Chinese coastal provinces as opportunity and excuses come up.

1855: End of the Chinese civil war. Most of the coastal provinces are under British or French control, although they remain theoretically sovereign Chinese territory. The Chinese emperor remains on the throne, but only because the Europeans supported him against the rebels after rebel attacks on European outposts.

1865: Retirement of Governor Brooke. Returning to England, he writes several books that inspire many young men to go east and try to make their fortunes.

After Brooke:

Without the example of Japan, the anti-colonial movement does not even get close to getting started until the early decades of the twenty-first century. World War One was very quiet in Asia, with the only excitement being the loss of some German colonies and outposts. The Philippines remain nominally Spanish, but Spanish control outside of Luzon is increasingly theoretical. The Dutch retain most of Indonesia, and the British rule in India undisturbed. France has to settle for most of Africa.

The cultural results are long-lasting. The impact of Iberian architecture and art on Japan produces a local variant, the “Luso-Japanese” style, which becomes very popular in climates suited for it. Japanese youth flock to Goa, and later to Lisbon, in search of Western knowledge, and many return home to set up factories and other modern industries.

Japanese religion is probably the thing least changed; Western-style rigidity and insistence that there is only one right answer is alien to the Japanese mentality. While he lived, Governor Brooke forbade missionaries to come unless they were willing to learn local languages fluently, and had no trouble throwing ones that stirred up the Japanese out of Japan on their ears. “I do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past,” he is quoted as saying.

China is all but devoured by the Western powers, with the British coming to dominate Southern China, the Russians settling thousands of their people in Manchuria, and the French and other lesser powers holding parts of the coastal provinces. The Emperor remains on the throne, but helpless to do more than be a symbol and figurehead.

With such heavy investment in Far Eastern colonies, Chinese and Japanese art and food soon become very popular in Europe and North America.