Osprey MAA 530 Japanese Armies 1868 1877 The Boshin War and Satsuma Rebellion By Gabriele Esposito True Pdf.pdf

(11134 KB) Pobierz

Men-at-Arms

Japanese Armies

1868–1877

The Boshin War and Satsuma Rebellion

Gabriele Esposito • Illustrated by Giuseppe Rava

CONTENTS

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

•

Bakumatsu,

1854–68 – Conflicts with Choshu, 1863–66

– European military missions

THE BOSHIN WAR, 1868–1869

• Operations January–July 1868 – the Northern Alliance, May–

October 1868 – the Republic of Ezo, October 1868–June 1869

INTERMISSION, 1869–1877

THE SATSUMA REBELLION, 1877

JAPANESE FORCES, 1840–1868

• The feudal domains – modernization: the Shogunate’s army –

the

Sampeitai

– south-western forces

ARMIES OF THE BOSHIN WAR

• The Shogunate: the

Denshutai

– police forces – Aizu forces –

Hokkaido, 1869

• Imperialist forces – Choshu forces

ARMIES OF THE SATSUMA REBELLION

• The Imperial Army – Imperial Guard – police forces

• Satsuma rebel forces

WEAPONS

• Rifles – artillery

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

PLATE COMMENTARIES

INDEX

Men‑at‑Arms • 530

Japanese Armies

1868–1877

The Boshin War & Satsuma Rebellion

Gabr iele Esposito • Illustr ated by Giuseppe Rava

Series editor

Mar tin Windrow

JAPANESE ARMIES 1868–1877

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

or some 250 years following the Tokugawa clan’s decisive victory over

their rivals at Sekigahara in 1600, Japan remained largely isolated

from the outside world beyond its immediate neighbours. That

battle had confirmed the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu as Japan’s

shogun

dictator, bringing to an end centuries of anarchic feudal warfare between

the country’s regional aristocratic clans. The emperors and Imperial

family, treated with reverent ceremonial honour but exercising few

practical functions, lived in luxurious semi‑captivity in the ancient capital

of Kyoto. Meanwhile the shoguns’ regime or

bakufu

actually governed

Japan, from the administrative centre of Edo (later renamed Tokyo).

During 15 generations of the hereditary

Shogunate between 1600 and 1868 (the ‘Edo

Period’), the shoguns forbade any contact with the

rest of the world outside East Asia, and particularly

with the European powers. The arrival in the 1540s

of Christian missionaries and Portuguese traders

had already had consequences which the Shogunate

considered to be negative. Thereafter they prevented

virtually all foreign trade (with the exception of a

tiny Dutch enclave on the artificial island of Deshima

at Nagasaki) – to the growing frustration of the

European powers and, eventually, the United States.

This isolation came to an abrupt end in May–July

1853, with the arrival of a US Navy squadron under

Cdre Matthew Perry. Under the threat of the vastly

superior military technology of his ‘black ships’,

the regime finally allowed Perry to land in Edo Bay

on 14 July and deliver a letter from US President

Fillmore, seeking the establishment of diplomatic

and commercial relations. Thus began a period

known as the

Bakumatsu

(‘the end of the shogunate’).

Bakumatsu,

1854–68

After withdrawing to the Chinese coast, Perry returned

in greater force on 13 February 1854. Finally, on

31 March 1854, the Convention of Kanagawa was

signed between representatives of Shogun Tokugawa

Iemochi and the USA: under its terms, the ports of

Shimoda and Hakodate were opened to American

merchant ships. During the years that followed, the

Shogunate signed similar treaties with Britain, France,

The Emperor Meiji (1837–1911),

photographed as a youth. After

centuries of Imperial passivity,

Meiji was the first emperor to

successfully oppose the power of

the Shogunate in order to restore

the original ruling functions of

the monarchy. It was he who

opened up the country to foreign

technologies and institutional

concepts, and consequently he

is considered today as the true

founder of modern Japan. (Public

domain/Wikimedia Commons)

Russia and the Netherlands. However, the Japanese had

been forced to open their ports only because of their military

inferiority, and a strong faction within the country intended

the arrangement to last only as long as it took to remedy this

imbalance, when they could force the foreigners to revise

the unequal treaties. (In fact, some steps had already been

taken to modernize Japanese forces – see below, ‘Japanese

Forces 1840–1868’).

The years following renewed Western contact saw the

emergence of a deep internal division within Japanese

society. On one side were the shogun’s Tokugawa clan and

its allies, who favoured a controlled opening of the country

in order to modernize its resources; on the other were

the Imperial family and its allies, who argued against any

further concessions to the foreign ‘barbarians’, and for a

stubborn defence of the homeland’s honour and traditions

against their malign influence.

To achieve their ends the isolationists planned to

restore, for the first time in centuries, the effective

power of the Emperor of Japan. The Imperial family was

supported by major aristocratic clan leaders who had

long chafed under the rule of the Shogunate, particularly

those whose domains lay in south‑western Japan, in

Satsuma on the island of Kyushu and Choshu on the

main island of Honshu. Starting in 1860, isolationists

launched a series of murderous attacks against individual foreigners,

who were by now widely active in the country. They believed that these

attacks would provoke military intervention by the Western powers,

leading to the defeat and removal of the Shogunate to the benefit of

the Imperial faction.

(For simplicity, the term ‘Western’ is used throughout this text

for the interventionist powers, although they also included Russia.

Similarly, Japanese forces that were modernized according to foreign

models are simply described as ‘Westernized’

–

though that process

was never more than partial, as they naturally retained strong

Japanese features.)

The initial results were as the isolationists had anticipated,

with demonstrations of ‘gunboat diplomacy’ against the shogun’s

bakufu.

In September 1862 Charles Richardson, a British merchant,

was killed outside Yokohama by a group of Satsuma samurai; this

‘Namamugi incident’ caused the outbreak of what became known

as the ‘Anglo‑Satsuma War’. The British government demanded

£100,000 compensation for the killing; the

bakufu

government

finally agreed to pay, in order to avoid a military move against Edo;

but the Satsuma clan neither apologized nor made any attempt to

arrest the killers. On 6 August 1863, a Royal Navy squadron sailed

from Yokohama for Satsuma’s main city of Kagoshima. The British

warships captured and burned three Satsuma merchant vessels, and

then bombarded the port (which had already been evacuated in

anticipation). The British commander decided not to land marines,

but the Satsuma clan eventually had to pay compensation to the

British government.

Plik z chomika:

brathac

Osprey MAA 530 Japanese Armies 1868 1877 The Boshin War and Satsuma Rebellion By Gabriele Esposito True Pdf.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: