Japan and China, 1860s—1870s

Beyond Australia, western navies were particularly active in Japan and China in the second half of the century. As western trade with Asia grew following the lapse of the Dutch and then the British East India Company monopolies, so did western appetites for access to further markets, particularly in China and Japan.

Frustration with the Chinese government’s strict regulation of western trade in Canton, and especially its rejection of British Indian opium as a commodity to be exchanged for the much-desired Chinese tea, led British warships to attack. The resulting Anglo-Chinese or ‘Opium’ Wars (1839—1842, 1856—1860) demonstrated the clear superiority of western naval forces, and further strengthened Britain’s naval position in the region through the long-term lease of the superb natural harbour of Hong Kong (1842). While Britain thereby consolidated its position as the world’s leading maritime power, other western powers—and their navies— also benefited. Following Britain’s lead, France, Prussia, Russia and the U.S.A signed ‘most favoured nation’ trade treaties with China. In turn, they devoted more naval resources to Chinese waters. A similar story unfolded in Japan. U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry’s famous ‘opening’ of Tokyo Bay in 1854 was merely one of a series of ongoing efforts by western powers to use naval force to enforce trade agreements. The term ‘gunboat diplomacy’ is often used to sum up western navies’ role in nineteenth-century Japan and China. While it may accurately describe western navies’ relations with local rulers, it fails to account for their dependence upon one another.

British Admiral Henry Keppel’s memoirs provide useful insight into western naval relations in Asian waters. The year 1868 was a typically busy one. Between February and April, for example, the Head of the Royal Navy’s China Station recorded in his journal the comings and goings of warships in Yokohama Harbour in Japan.

In turn, he noted his performance of courtesies owed to foreign navies and their officers. This included firing a ‘Royal Salute’ to compliment the Americans on the anniversary of General Washington’s birth, saluting a Prussian frigate under her new flag and cheering a departing U.S. commodore at the end of his tour of duty. A few months later, in Hong Kong, Keppel acknowledged the help provided by ‘the ever kind Captain du Petit Thou[a]rs’ and his French sloop in rescuing the crew of a wrecked British warship commanded by Keppel’s own nephew. Yet at the same time, Keppel reassured himself privately that British warships and their crews continued to outshine the competition.³⁰

These entries point to the growing western naval presence in contemporary Japan, as foreign powers pressed Japan to open further ports to international trade. Certainly western governments including Britain, France, the United States and Prussia cooperated to show Japan (then in the throes of civil war), in Keppel’s words, ‘an imposing force’. But Keppel’s journal also points to the ways in which individual naval officers on foreign stations throughout Asia-Pacific engaged with one another, forging personal and professional networks throughout the nineteenth century. Far from home and loved ones, naval officers had to make the most of local opportunities and communities. Thus Keppel took tea and played whist with Russian naval officers and their wives in Manchuria, and hunted deer with the commandant of Vladivostok. Back in Japan he entertained American and Dutch naval officers and honoured foreign admirals and their national holidays.³¹ International relations were also neighbourly relations.

Yet while Keppel was clearly satisfied with the manner in which the British navy honoured America’s national holiday in Yokohama in 1868, the Americans were less than impressed the following year. They noted with displeasure that while other nations dressed their ships at sunrise on the Fourth of July, the British waited till 8 a.m.

(Admittedly in that year the holiday fell on a Sunday, a day when naval crews were expected to keep themselves occupied quietly and unobtrusively aboard ship.) Even worse was the perceived slight inflicted not quite two months later by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria and a captain in the British navy. When Alfred’s ship, HMS Galatea, entered Yokohama Harbour, she saluted Keppel’s flag but did not, as was expected, extend this courtesy to the American and French admirals. It was not until days later (an eternity in terms of naval protocol), when the exasperated Americans finally decided to retaliate by boycotting a British social event, that the flag was saluted.³² Manners mattered to nineteenth-century western navies, perhaps especially to those personnel serving on a politically volatile station far from home, where even a slight misunderstanding might trigger violence. These examples demonstrate the larger point that naval ceremony and protocol were seen as important to the smooth operations between western navies, as well as within individual forces.

On other occasions, indeed, western navies in Japan demonstrated their willingness to drop everything to help one another. Following the disastrous night-time sinking of the U.S. warship Oneida after a collision with the P&O steamer Bombay just off Yokohama in 1870, for example, British, French and in particular Russian naval vessels searched valiantly (if unsuccessfully) for more survivors—the latter for over a month. This was more than just conventional maritime courtesy. Indeed the behaviour of the P&O steamer master suggests an apparent contrast between commercial and naval values—or at least the great pressure steamship masters were under to keep to precise timetables. Whereas the British master did not even report the accident, let alone come to the Oneida's assistance (citing his need to proceed to port as quickly as possible in order to assess damage to his own vessel), British naval officers were not so quick to forget.

Perhaps moved by the fact that they had just farewelled the Oneida's 186 homeward-bound officers and crew, whom they knew well, from the station a few hours earlier, British officers sprang into action. Not only did two serve on a court of enquiry quickly convened by the British consul at Yokohama, but with their fellow military officers they turned out en masse for the funeral of the four Oneida crewmembers whose bodies were recovered. In turn, the American commander Roe noted the great courtesy shown to him by his British counterpart.³³ Such actions demonstrate more than just British eagerness to ensure that the accident (which many Americans believed was caused by the recklessness of the British master of the steamer) did not poison their working relationship with the Americans. Rather they indicate mutual professional respect and recognition of the dangers they shared as naval personnel. As well, it suggests the ways in which naval officers saw themselves as part of a shared ‘family’.

Similar assistance was given by western naval forces in Apia, Samoa, in 1889 when a hurricane devastated the British, German and American warships stationed there. Despite being fully occupied trying to save their own ships, the other naval personnel cheered HMS Calliope when (thanks to its access to scarce coal supplies) the British warship alone managed to use steam power to escape to the relative safety of the sea.³⁴ In turn, naval personnel helped each other to recover bodies and repair or at least salvage items from the wrecked ships afterwards. Again the sense of naval brotherhood was enhanced by the shared experience of danger. Their fellow feeling was boosted further by frustration with their awkward position, as they presented a show of western force to the Samoans while preparing for possible war with one another.³⁵

In 1867 the British commander of HMS Serpent sought assistance from French and American naval forces to provide navigational aids on the Chinese coast for the benefit of foreign commerce.

Such was the interdependence of western navies that the British officer believed that the assistance had been approved and would be forthcoming. It had not, and the American Admiral Bell declined with genuine regret. As he reminded his unmoved superiors at the U.S. Navy Department:

Nearly every chart used by our Ships in these Seas are those issued by the British hydrographic office... the assistance thus rendered to navigation is incalculable, and the comparative safety, with which the China Seas may now be navigated, is owing chiefly to their efforts.³⁶

How do we square such peaceful activities with Admiral Keppel’s earlier reputation, like that of the uncle of ‘the ever kind Captain du Petit Thou[a]rs’, for assertive ‘gunboat diplomacy' (Keppel in China and Borneo and du Petit Thouars senior in Tahiti) against local rulers and their communities?³⁷ Partly the answer may lie in the impetuousness (and intense career ambition) of youth being replaced with greater consideration in middle and old age. More likely, however, the one activity reinforced the other. Feeling secure within the western naval community, naval officers like Keppel and du Petit Thouars could justify their treatment of Asians and Pacific islanders as the ‘other’. Alternatively, it was precisely the absence of an existing western naval community in the 1840s which enabled Keppel and du Petit Thouars to act unilaterally, a freedom which was curtailed by the 1860s when the waters had become more crowded with naval ‘friends’—and spies.

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Source: Aldrich Robert, McKenzie Kirsten (eds.). The Routledge History of Western Empires. Routledge,2014. — 542 p.. 2014

Japan and China, 1860s—1870s

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