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The China of tomorrow : Japan and the limits of Victorian expansion
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Fletcher, Robert S. G. (2019) The China of tomorrow : Japan and the limits of Victorian expansion. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47 (5). pp. 851-883. doi:10.1080/03086534.2019.1677338 ISSN 0308-6534.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03086534.2019.1677338
Abstract
This article contributes to the literature on the mechanisms, rhetoric, and limits of mid-Victorian expansion by asking how far late Tokugawa Japan was subject to forms of British imperialism. In September 1862 a British merchant was murdered on the high road between Edo and Kyoto; a year later, a British fleet bombarded Kagoshima in retaliation. By engaging with John Darwin’s concept of the ‘bridgehead’, this article examines the circumstances in which a lonely death on the frontiers of British commerce could be transformed into a Victorian ‘outrage’. It considers what we stand to gain by bringing an imperial history perspective to bear on what remains, for most imperial historians, a largely forgotten conflict. In positing Yokohama as a bridgehead that could gain only fitful purchase in London, it asks new questions about the conduct of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ and the fault lines of mid-Victorian expansion; the place of Japan in British political imaginaries; the nature of informal empire; and the discourses buffeting British expansion in the turbulent 1860s.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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Subjects: | D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain D History General and Old World > DS Asia H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe) |
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Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Japan -- History -- Namamugi Incident 1862 , Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- Japan, Japan -- Foreign relations -- Great Britain, Great Britain -- Foreign relations -- 1837-1901, Great Britain -- Colonies -- History, Imperialism, Japan -- History -- Restoration, 1853-1870, Harbors -- Japan | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History | ||||||||
Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0308-6534 | ||||||||
Official Date: | 2019 | ||||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 47 | ||||||||
Number: | 5 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 851-883 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1080/03086534.2019.1677338 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History on 30 Oct 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/03086534.2019.1677338 | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 January 2020 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 30 April 2021 |
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