Nobunaga’s Ambition Realized: Dawn of a New Rising Sun
- Thread starter Ambassador Huntsman
- Start date
@Ambassador Huntsman , Amazing chapter and congrats for over 100 chapters on this great story! You're amazing!
Is Siege of Hooghly butterfly away? Any changes in case of Mughal Empire?
You think that’s the weirdest one? There was an attempt at an actual Genoese East India Company….Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last even long
Portuguese are far more zealous in case conversion and imposing orthodoxy. It is one of reason they unable to assert their power and second reason is their rampant looting and attack against any native traders.
Thank you!!
No and no, Aurangzeb still succeeds Shah Jahan ITTL after a civil war with his brothers.
Seems to have lasted for a couple months, I'm surprised Genoa tried their hand but not Venice.
In any case — they've shoved it off to the Spanish black legends by this point, lol.
that's true, and I think Portugal would be smarter about it as time goes by.
Now that's nutty. I could see Scotland building their own colonial empire that's not in the Darian gap would be cool asf.
Darien scheme - Wikipedia
Domrémy-Scorniçesti Axis
Banned
I find the Scottish colonial empire to be an interesting idea, especially if they focus on Canada.that's true, and I think Portugal would be smarter about it as time goes by.
Now that's nutty. I could see Scotland building their own colonial empire that's not in the Darian gap would be cool asf.
Darien scheme - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Scottish North Atlantic Company anyone?
Also wonder what the best avenues of expansion for the CIO will be once the 18th century starts?
Also wonder what the best avenues of expansion for the CIO will be once the 18th century starts?
I do wonder if there would be more expeditions to Australia in the immediate short term ITTL, instead of the IOTL 50 year gap in between Tasman's and Vlamingh's voyages, perhaps someone other than the Dutch, English and French now that there are other players in the colonizing game.
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Chapter 98: Japanese Communities and Merchants in Mid-17th Century Southeast Asia
Chapter 98: Japanese Communities and Merchants in Mid-17th Century Southeast Asia
During the Iberian-Japanese war, the Japanese diaspora was driven out of their homes in the Spanish Philippines. After the war, many would resettle in the newly annexed Japanese province of Luson, leaving former Nihonmachi pockets in the rest of the archipelago extinguished, never to achieve their prewar prominence. However, this did not mean the end of Japanese communities outside the home realm in Southeast Asia and those that still existed continued to play an integral role in projecting Japanese mercantile and cultural power where they were. These communities in turn were supported by an expansive network of Japanese merchants and trading interests whose footprint extended from the far northern frontier to the waters of the great Indian Ocean.
Ban Yipun in the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya continued to be the biggest and most significant Nihonmachi in all of Southeast Asia. Within Indochina’s biggest and most prosperous city, the Japanese community and resident merchants wielded more mercantile power and cultural influence than other outside powers and diaspora communities with the exception of the Chinese. Much of this can be attributed to the political prominence and status of the Honjo clan within the Siamese royal court. By the middle of the 17th century, the head of the clan was Honjo Masanaga (本庄政長), Nagafusa’s eldest son and the first head of the clan born in Siam. Due to his native birth in Ayutthaya, he grew up in both the Japanese and Siamese cultural spheres, speaking both languages fluently and wearing a mixture of clothing from both cultures. Under his leadership, the Honjo clan continued to be indispensable retainers to the Siamese kings particularly as elite samurai cavalry that fought nearly identically to their blood-related counterparts back in the home islands. The sizable population of Ban Yipun was also bolstered by the influx of Kirishitan exiles who chose to leave rather than abandon their Catholic faith after it was banned in 1632 amidst the politics of the Iberian-Japanese War, giving Ban Yipun a Catholic-leaning character. Overall, political and religious exiles making up a disproportionate part of this Nihonmachi made this particular Nihonmachi wary of Japanese political interests, its residents often sympathizing more with its enemies and rivals like the Spanish at times. In fact, a number of the Siamese mercenaries that aided Manila when it was besieged during the Luzon War in 1662 were anti-Oda Japanese men from Ayutthaya.
Politics, however, rarely affected the continuous trading relationships between Siam and Japan. If anything, Ban Yipun’s residents enthusiastically maintained cultural and mercantile relations with the home island, lodging Japanese merchants and supporting the warehouses and trade depots they utilized. Negotiations between the Siamese royal court and Ban Yipun’s inhabitants and merchants even granted access to certain crown monopolies. As a result, Japanese merchants did more business in Ayutthaya than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. These merchants lined their pockets with coins and packed their ships with not only native goods like sappanwood, rayskins, and tin but also goods sold by other foreign merchants like Indian textiles, Chinese porcelain, and Moluccan spices. In turn, Japanese merchants sold native goods like silver, copper, and swords. Japanese swords in particular became highly sought after, particularly by the Siamese nobility, and many would go on to utilize tachis and katanas as their weapon of choice on the battlefield. The presence of Japanese merchants in Ayutthaya also helped support periodic exchanges between Japanese and Siamese Buddhist temples and monks that had begun earlier in the century, and Ban Yipun would even witness the coexistence of Roman Catholicism and Yamato Christianity when a Yamato church was constructed in the enclave in 1647.
Ban Yipun in the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya continued to be the biggest and most significant Nihonmachi in all of Southeast Asia. Within Indochina’s biggest and most prosperous city, the Japanese community and resident merchants wielded more mercantile power and cultural influence than other outside powers and diaspora communities with the exception of the Chinese. Much of this can be attributed to the political prominence and status of the Honjo clan within the Siamese royal court. By the middle of the 17th century, the head of the clan was Honjo Masanaga (本庄政長), Nagafusa’s eldest son and the first head of the clan born in Siam. Due to his native birth in Ayutthaya, he grew up in both the Japanese and Siamese cultural spheres, speaking both languages fluently and wearing a mixture of clothing from both cultures. Under his leadership, the Honjo clan continued to be indispensable retainers to the Siamese kings particularly as elite samurai cavalry that fought nearly identically to their blood-related counterparts back in the home islands. The sizable population of Ban Yipun was also bolstered by the influx of Kirishitan exiles who chose to leave rather than abandon their Catholic faith after it was banned in 1632 amidst the politics of the Iberian-Japanese War, giving Ban Yipun a Catholic-leaning character. Overall, political and religious exiles making up a disproportionate part of this Nihonmachi made this particular Nihonmachi wary of Japanese political interests, its residents often sympathizing more with its enemies and rivals like the Spanish at times. In fact, a number of the Siamese mercenaries that aided Manila when it was besieged during the Luzon War in 1662 were anti-Oda Japanese men from Ayutthaya.
Politics, however, rarely affected the continuous trading relationships between Siam and Japan. If anything, Ban Yipun’s residents enthusiastically maintained cultural and mercantile relations with the home island, lodging Japanese merchants and supporting the warehouses and trade depots they utilized. Negotiations between the Siamese royal court and Ban Yipun’s inhabitants and merchants even granted access to certain crown monopolies. As a result, Japanese merchants did more business in Ayutthaya than anywhere else in Southeast Asia. These merchants lined their pockets with coins and packed their ships with not only native goods like sappanwood, rayskins, and tin but also goods sold by other foreign merchants like Indian textiles, Chinese porcelain, and Moluccan spices. In turn, Japanese merchants sold native goods like silver, copper, and swords. Japanese swords in particular became highly sought after, particularly by the Siamese nobility, and many would go on to utilize tachis and katanas as their weapon of choice on the battlefield. The presence of Japanese merchants in Ayutthaya also helped support periodic exchanges between Japanese and Siamese Buddhist temples and monks that had begun earlier in the century, and Ban Yipun would even witness the coexistence of Roman Catholicism and Yamato Christianity when a Yamato church was constructed in the enclave in 1647.
17th century sketch of Japanese diaspora residents of Ban Yipun in Ayutthaya
The Vietnamese port of Hoi An was also home to a sizable Japanese enclave of both permanent residents and visiting merchants. This enclave was connected with the main part of the city via the Chua Cau Temple Bridge, which was built by the earliest Japanese in Hoi An in 1595. Initially, the Japanese diaspora consisted of only a few tens of households but nevertheless wielded great economic influence over the port. Demand for silk was great, resulting in a disproportionate number of ships sailing back and forth between Hoi An and the home islands. Like Ayutthaya, Hoi An would also experience an influx of refugees from the Spanish Philippines though smaller than the former port, and this increase in the Nihonmachi’s population further strengthened the influence and presence of the Japanese in the Vietnamese port. This was short-lived, for Hoi An was soon engulfed in the Nguyen-Trinh civil war in the Dai Viet kingdom. The Nguyen-ruled port fell to the Trinh lords along with their capital of Hue in 1646, and Japanese merchants soon began dealing with the new regime more hostile to their power and less interested in overseas trade compared to the Nguyen lords. As a result, Hoi An would plateau and begin to stagnate as a trade center although the demand for silk would continue its commercial relevance among Japanese merchants.
A third significant Nihonmachi could be found in Batavia, the Javan headquarters of the Dutch East India Company. Although a Japanese merchant community certainly contributed to its establishment, many of its resident members were either retired ronin mercenaries that had fought in the service of the VOC in various expeditions or their descendants. Because of the 1622 ban on Japanese serving as mercenaries in Southeast Asia by Azuchi, these ronin found themselves booted from the home islands for good and thus chose to congregate in the VOC capital. Many subsequently married Javan women in Batavia and forged a unique Japanese subculture with influences from Javan and Dutch cultures by 1665. In terms of trade, Batavia was a hub of Dutch-Japanese exchanges on its own although most business was still conducted at Japanese ports like Kagoshima and Sakai, and generally the Dutch sought to limit Japanese mercantile power in their sphere of control and influence.
The Castle of Batavia, painted by Andries Beeckman in 1656
Aside from the 3 major Nihonmachis in the mid-17th century, smaller Japanese communities existed in Phnom Penh, Malacca, and other ports dotting Southeast Asia. Like the aforementioned major Nihonmachis, their origins lay in the visitations of Japanese merchants eager to acquire and ship back exotic, prized goods like silk, dyewood, and lacquerware, with the flight of Catholics from the home realm and the proliferation of ronin mercenaries in the early 17th centuries being secondary reasons. As they had previously, Azuchi continued to maintain economic and political ties with these various communities with the notable exception of Honjo-dominated Ayutthaya. Some Nihonmachis even hosted diplomatic missions within these Nihonmachis like in Lamitan, the capital of the Maguindanao Sultanate [1]. The maintenance of such direct relationships helped inform Azuchi of the state of commerce of the wider region which in turn influenced Japanese foreign and mercantile policies that often assisted in strengthening the hands of Japanese merchants operating in Southeast Asia. This cycle of mutual benefits aided in Japanese trade expansionism, allowing the Japanese to surpass most of its counterparts engaging in trade alongside them, only rivaled by the VOC and Ming China in the region.
It wasn’t just Southeast Asia where Japanese merchants were busy, their presence felt in waters both closer to home and farther from home. Ever since the resumption of tributary relations between Japan and Ming China, Azuchi had gained access to Chinese goods more readily than before, undercutting the previous Portuguese monopoly over Chinese-Japanese trade. After the Portuguese lost Macau, Japan even held a stranglehold over Sino-European trade before Macau was re-opened by 1638. Japanese merchants would subsequently operate in not only Macau and Guangzhou alongside their European contemporaries but also in Shanghai, a third port opened by Emperor Titian only accessible to merchants from Ming China’s direct tributaries. It was in Shanghai that Japanese merchants would concentrate their interests, finding it more comfortable to do so rather than engaging in fierce competition in Macau and Guangzhou. Here, a Japanese merchant community grew, although Beijing’s deliberate efforts to cap the size of foreign diasporas prevented it from becoming a true Nihonmachi. Chinese ports were not only crucial for accessing Ming goods directly but also for trading with merchants from Joseon. As direct trade between the Joseon kingdom and Oda Japan was de facto monopolized by the Mōri and Sou clans, Japanese traders unwilling to abide by those daimyos’ regulations went to Ming ports as an alternative.
Japanese merchants were also making strides far away in the Indian Ocean. Before the 1640s, only a few daring traders strove independently to the Indian subcontinent and struggled amidst hostility from the Portuguese and lukewarmness from the Dutch and English. However, Oda Nobutomo’s successful embassies to Constantinople and Delhi and the increasing number of pilgrimages to Buddhist sites by Japanese monks opened doors among native authorities and merchants intrigued by the prospect of trading with the Japanese and acquiring exotic goods and precious metals. By the 1650s, a small group of merchants had formed the India Trade Guild (印度商座), composed of a loose association of independent merchants that came together to invest in the building of a Japanese trade factory in Madras. This first private Japanese trading outpost as it quickly began to boom as it took advantage of increased Japanese trade in the Indian Ocean and the influx of Buddhist monks pilgrimaging to the Buddha’s holy sites. The first head of the ITG was none other than the Indian Ocean merchant Tenjiku Tokubei. He had continued his adventures in the 1640s and 1650s, landing in the ports of Aden, Basra, and Hormuz and exposing Ottoman, Persian, and Yemeni merchants to Japanese goods and culture. As the first head of the India Trade Guild, he used his connections to allow Japanese merchants access to markets and ports beyond the eastern coast of the subcontinent that they previously had no dealings in.
Portrait of Tenjiku Tokubei
Despite periods of political incompetence and instability in the Japanese realm, Azuchi’s policy of trade expansionism remained largely unfettered and by the middle of the century Japan had emerged as one of Asia’s premier maritime powers whose horizons only seemed to broaden through the ambitions of merchants from the Indian Ocean to the mouth of the Amur River, the interests and incentives of the government, and the ever-growing prosperity of the extended realm. Victories over the Spanish and Portuguese only added to Japan’s growing wealth and might. Soon, however, Azuchi would face challenges to this power, not just from the colonial appetite of European merchants but from the aspirations of native powers in the region.
[1]: ITTL, the capital of Maguindanao continues to be Lamitan.
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Nice to see Japan strengthening its merchantile and diplomatic ties. I wonder if this will drag them more into future European wars
In tandem with the chapter, I went back and changed some details regarding the 1644 Delhi embassy (see Chapter 71) to include Tenjiku Tokubei. Here's more biographical information about him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenjiku_Tokubei
Fantastic update!!! Wonder who the native powers opposed to Japanese commercial expansion could be?
I'm actually surprised that post war the Japanese colonists in the Philippines didn't repopulate the area. After all the Japanese gov/Daimyos could move their peasants into the region if they wanted to just to build up their loyal base in the region. After all no one will stop them after the Spanish Philippines have been finlandised.
On the Nihonmachis I wonder how that'd affect the SEA. I could see Japan experience population growth and a lot of low-middle class ppl moving to beiritou and Luzon at least, and the ones who become merchants could move to the nihonmachis, increasing the power of the Japanese gov and connecting with the Chinese who moved to SEA, especially as the various nations in the region start to fracture and fall apart I see various powers seeking Japanese protection and the Japanese agreeing to it while sending Japanese and Chinese settlers into their sphere of influence.
On the Nihonmachis I wonder how that'd affect the SEA. I could see Japan experience population growth and a lot of low-middle class ppl moving to beiritou and Luzon at least, and the ones who become merchants could move to the nihonmachis, increasing the power of the Japanese gov and connecting with the Chinese who moved to SEA, especially as the various nations in the region start to fracture and fall apart I see various powers seeking Japanese protection and the Japanese agreeing to it while sending Japanese and Chinese settlers into their sphere of influence.
A lot of the Japanese diaspora in the Philippines ended up settling in the new province of Luson, but many also didn’t because of their Catholic faith. I can make it more clear in the text.
The Ming are also currently quite the mercantile power ITTL, so they won't really need to go cold turkey over trade as much as they could change preferences on the merchants they are dealing with, especially with the Indochinese kingdoms being so far-off from the Japanese bases at Bireitou.
It depends upon the governments' decisions that will be taken by the time the Industrial Revolution in East Asia kicks in; if one doesn't have the captive markets or willing neighbours with cash to spare to sell finished goods over, and they don't have the raw materials that have a disproportionately low manpower cost relative to its selling prices like English wool and wheat (indigo and even opium DON'T compare to the ease in harvesting those) — why go through the trouble of enclosing lands and proletarianising peasants, then? Both lead to revolt, and the latter doesn't necessarily guarantee their employment in the cities either as they certainly can become sharecropping tenants instead — or worse — indentured servants and outright employees little better than actual slaves.
With Japan — and if they play their cards correctly — Korea and some Chinese cities being well on their way to industrialisation, only Ayutthaya has the economy of scale that can compete with their cheaper foreign competition to some extent so as provide some room for their native light industry (they will also fund the development of their own military production industries, of course). Some more stars need to align for Manila to do the same feat since — while the groundwork is already there to administrate and fund themselves so as to even declare independence ala Mexico — they would still be quite early in their population growth, let alone in making their urban economies truly cosmopolitan. It already is impossible for the Dutch Batavian colonies to do so presuming that their masters won't go ASB and stop in solely focusing on resource extraction there like they always intended to do. The rest of Southeast Asia — Maguindanao included — doesn't have the bureaucracy, economy, and financial market to do the same feat to begin with, let alone be competitive at that.
Chinese provinces are going to be the captive markets of their coastal and industrialised cities, but at least they're long used to being subjugated by the Dragon Throne and its bureaucracy anyway. Provincial funds and resources flowing to increasingly fat merchants and congregating on select cities isn't the worst thing that will happen in this world when their Imperial government can seize it back anyway — let alone tax it.
Bengal is set to become a great power ITTL should they manage to maintain their independence and not be forcibly turned to a captive economy for reasons and details I trust are widely known enough.
Should China and Japan be loathe to invade Southeast Asian countries for captive markets and extractive economies, it will be those countries' local elites that will do the jobs themselves in maintaining the agricultural and resource-extractive characters of their economies by the sole virtue of their probable and relative utter inability to compete. It's only that they'll do so as in what we would have called as neocolonial arrangements IOTL as opposed to militarily-subjugated lands, and — in your truly East Asian fashion — maintain their sovereignties mostly intact as entreatied tributaries at that!
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You're amazing man! Your story never fails to captivate me!