The Emperor's Icebox: Japanese Alaska?

[Jackson Lennock]

Russia wanted to get rid of Alaska - pawning it off to whoever would buy it before somebody else took the indefensible territory by force. OTL the US was the country they sold it to, but many Americans thought it was a silly acquisition.

What if Seward had blocked the purchase and Japan bought Alaska instead? Japan would most likely make the purchase in the 1870s or 1880s, since Japan wouldn't have the money or desire to acquire Alaska before then. A purchase could perhaps come up as part of the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1875), in which Japan ceded a portion of Sakhalin in exchange for the Russian-held northern Kurils. Alternatively, the House of Lichtenstein might buy it in 1867 and then decide to sell it to Japan shortly after.

Japan would probably develop the port around today's Anchorage and settle the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Japan focusing north could perhaps mean more development in Hokkaido and Northern Japan too. Other spots like Unalaska and Kodiak island could see bigger populations. If Russia's Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky could host 200,000 people, I don't see why a focused effort by Japan on its arctic holdings wouldn't mean larger populations in various places. It'd be a good penal colony potentially, but also good for fishing and whaling. Japan might develop a taste for Salmon sooner than OTL. Believe it or not, Japan didn't use much Salmon until some Norwegians pushed for it in the late 20th century.

The Alaska-Canada border dispute might go more favorable for Canada. Britain would be more willing to take a firmer stand against Japan than against Britain, plus Japan would care a bit less about the panhandle region than America did since Japan would be interested in western Alaska - which is closer to Japan. OTL Skagway might go to Canada, since it'd be the main port for getting to the Yukon's Klondike region.

Japan being more focused on Alaska could mean it fiddles around less in Korea and China. Or maybe not. Alaska could be a source of minerals, oil, and even some agriculture (shorter growing seasons offset by longer days in some areas).

 

[Ricardolindo]

Russia wanted to get rid of Alaska - pawning it off to whoever would buy it before somebody else took the indefensible territory by force. OTL the US was the country they sold it to, but many Americans thought it was a silly acquisition.

What if Seward had blocked the purchase and Japan bought Alaska instead? Japan would most likely make the purchase in the 1870s or 1880s, since Japan wouldn't have the money or desire to acquire Alaska before then. A purchase could perhaps come up as part of the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1875), in which Japan ceded a portion of Sakhalin in exchange for the Russian-held northern Kurils. Alternatively, the House of Lichtenstein might buy it in 1867 and then decide to sell it to Japan shortly after.

Japan would probably develop the port around today's Anchorage and settle the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Japan focusing north could perhaps mean more development in Hokkaido and Northern Japan too. Other spots like Unalaska and Kodiak island could see bigger populations. If Russia's Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky could host 200,000 people, I don't see why a focused effort by Japan on its arctic holdings wouldn't mean larger populations in various places. It'd be a good penal colony potentially, but also good for fishing and whaling. Japan might develop a taste for Salmon sooner than OTL. Believe it or not, Japan didn't use much Salmon until some Norwegians pushed for it in the late 20th century.

The Alaska-Canada border dispute might go more favorable for Canada. Britain would be more willing to take a firmer stand against Japan than against Britain, plus Japan would care a bit less about the panhandle region than America did since Japan would be interested in western Alaska - which is closer to Japan. OTL Skagway might go to Canada, since it'd be the main port for getting to the Yukon's Klondike region.

Japan being more focused on Alaska could mean it fiddles around less in Korea and China. Or maybe not. Alaska could be a source of minerals, oil, and even some agriculture (shorter growing seasons offset by longer days in some areas).

Wouldn't the UK and the US be afraid of the yellow peril?

 

[TheIO]

Wouldn't the UK and the US be afraid of the yellow peril?

Depends how highly they'd rate Japan's capabilities, surely. Bear in mind that this is 1870-80 Japan, it's not yet got an amazing track record - it wouldn't acquire that reputation until at least the First Sino-Japanese War, and definitely not before the Russo-Japanese War.

 

[Yokai Man]

Technically happens in Liviu Radu’s Questionnaire for ladies who were secretaries of very good men where President Al Smith’s master plan to solve the Japanese problem is to sell them Alaska and Hawaii but only for a fair price,which dumbfounds them because they didn’t expect him to give them that much.

Literally no one cares about this apart from Wilkie and Roosevelt,who start their own third party out of anger and protest Smith selling American territories to everyone for money and Bob Taft only objecting about how the money should be used because he hates the government having power.

Note that Smith‘s default solution to solving the Recession is just “selling everything,including states,for money til things get better”.

To paraphrase Harold Macmillan,Al Smith isn’t just selling the family silver,he’s selling his youngest children and almost no one cares.
It‘s like everyone just became dumber and numb as a result of FDR not becoming Prez in ‘32.

 

[SinghSong]

Russia wanted to get rid of Alaska - pawning it off to whoever would buy it before somebody else took the indefensible territory by force. OTL the US was the country they sold it to, but many Americans thought it was a silly acquisition.

What if Seward had blocked the purchase and Japan bought Alaska instead? Japan would most likely make the purchase in the 1870s or 1880s, since Japan wouldn't have the money or desire to acquire Alaska before then. A purchase could perhaps come up as part of the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1875), in which Japan ceded a portion of Sakhalin in exchange for the Russian-held northern Kurils. Alternatively, the House of Lichtenstein might buy it in 1867 and then decide to sell it to Japan shortly after.

Japan would probably develop the port around today's Anchorage and settle the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. Japan focusing north could perhaps mean more development in Hokkaido and Northern Japan too. Other spots like Unalaska and Kodiak island could see bigger populations. If Russia's Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky could host 200,000 people, I don't see why a focused effort by Japan on its arctic holdings wouldn't mean larger populations in various places. It'd be a good penal colony potentially, but also good for fishing and whaling. Japan might develop a taste for Salmon sooner than OTL. Believe it or not, Japan didn't use much Salmon until some Norwegians pushed for it in the late 20th century.

The Alaska-Canada border dispute might go more favorable for Canada. Britain would be more willing to take a firmer stand against Japan than against Britain, plus Japan would care a bit less about the panhandle region than America did since Japan would be interested in western Alaska - which is closer to Japan. OTL Skagway might go to Canada, since it'd be the main port for getting to the Yukon's Klondike region.

Japan being more focused on Alaska could mean it fiddles around less in Korea and China. Or maybe not. Alaska could be a source of minerals, oil, and even some agriculture (shorter growing seasons offset by longer days in some areas).

Regarding places for that penal colony in Western/NW Alaska, you'd imagine that somewhere in the Kobuk Valley'd wind up ranking fairly high on the priority list, soon as a Japanese explorer finds all the nuggets of jade that've tumbled downstream around the estuary of the Kobuk River, hears about the natives' legends of "a legendary mountain of jade", and decides to venture upstream:

A Legendary Mountain of Jade; Just one of Alaska's Arctic Wonders by June Allen

And that'd probably pique a large amount of interest in establishing mining colonies in the Pacific Northwest, and surveying it for other potentially valuable deposits ITTL. Also worth noting, it'd also be a big boost to Japan's trade with China (especially with Qing China, which was notoriously obsessed with purchasing as much Jade as could be found); which could lend it more power and influence with which to fiddle around more in China (and Korea), but could also make it a lot more damaging and costly for Japan to pursue an aggressive policy of conquest against China...

 

[Jackson Lennock]

Regarding places for that penal colony in Western/NW Alaska, you'd imagine that somewhere in the Kobuk Valley'd wind up ranking fairly high on the priority list, soon as a Japanese explorer finds all the nuggets of jade that've tumbled downstream around the estuary of the Kobuk River, hears about the natives' legends of "a legendary mountain of jade", and decides to venture upstream:

I imagine this would come down to whether the Japanese learn of these stories. When did outsiders first find out about them?

 

[SinghSong]

I imagine this would come down to whether the Japanese learn of these stories. When did outsiders first find out about them?

As soon as the University of Alaska in Fairbanks found the funding to send anthropologists to explore and document findings from the hitherto largely unexplored north-western coastline of the Alaska territory, above the Alaska Peninsula, for the first time. Which wasn't until the late 1930s- when they got the required funding from the national defense budget, mostly on account of the USA's mounting tensions with the Japanese, and the USA's fears that Japanese people could've snuck over, by way of the Kurils and the Aleutian Islands, and established colonial settlements up there in the north already, without them knowing anything about it. And prior to which point, the Kobuk River itself hadn't even been mapped.

With the Japanese having purchased Alaska themselves though, you'd imagine that they'd send people to explore and document findings from the entirety of the western coastline of the region ASAP, discovering the Kobuk a lot earlier than the USA did solely on the basis of it's far greater relative proximity and accessibility from Japan (thanks to the need to circumnavigate the Seward and Alaska Peninsulas, this river estuary's actually farther away for ships from Seattle than it is for ships from northern Honshu, let alone Hokkaido). And from that point, they'd mostly likely learn of these stories in relatively short order- as soon as the local woodland Eskimos have been sufficiently 'Japanized' to communicate with them.

 

[Lidenbrock]

I wonder if any Japanese assimilation would eventually get some wider British backing as a broader anti-Russian, north Asia counterweight, if they assume Japan isn't too capable of threatening Canada (and would get swiftly hit down either way). Granted things didn't kick off until 1902 OTL but an earlier interest could be possible, courting the enemy and all.

If gold were discovered near Anchorage in the late '80s as OTL, I can see the Japanese keeping a tight lid on the inevitable rush of prospectors but having to treat them more respectfully.

 

[SinghSong]

I wonder if any Japanese assimilation would eventually get some wider British backing as a broader anti-Russian, north Asia counterweight, if they assume Japan isn't too capable of threatening Canada (and would get swiftly hit down either way). Granted things didn't kick off until 1902 OTL but an earlier interest could be possible, courting the enemy and all.

If gold were discovered near Anchorage in the late '80s as OTL, I can see the Japanese keeping a tight lid on the inevitable rush of prospectors but having to treat them more respectfully.

Were the Japanese "the enemy" for the British, back then? And if they do still get wider British backing, even with a Japanese-owned Alaska, might there be more, or less, chance of Canada having better relations with the Japanese? When the Gold Rush happened, there had been widespread fears of an American coup, with American troops openly threatening to seize Canadian gold fields, and dispatching scouts to go up the Yukon to establish forts should the United States undertake a military incursion into the region; with the dominion government in Ottawa mobilizing as many troops as it could to try and prevent this. In Canada, Interior minister Clifford Sifton’s overriding concern was to ensure the Klondike gold fields remained in British-Canadian hands, rather than American hands; with early letters from Yukon Territory commissioner James Morrow Walsh fretting over the large number of Americans, talking "about a ‘filibustering element of Americans’ that were looking to overthrow British Canadian authority in the Yukon and establish an American outpost," with frantic letters writing about "storing munitions to ensure that Americans don’t take over".

And if it hadn't been for the United States' declaration of war on Spain in April 1898, as well as mounting tensions between the British Empire and the Transvaal Republic of South Africa over gold, increasing the possibility that Canada would have to send troops to fight the Boers (i.e, if an ATL Klondike Gold Rush happened in practically any other year), there'd have almost certainly been a 'Klondike War' between the USA and Canada, in which either Alaska or the Yukon Territory could have potentially changed hands. IOTL, the border between the Alaska Territory and the Yukon Territory of Canada was fluid, especially along the panhandle, with this border dispute only being settled in 1903- when a commission of three Americans, two Canadians, and a representative of the United Kingdom convened, and the British commissioner aligned with the Americans to establish the border along the Coast Range line formed by the Mountie positions at Chilkoot and White passes, prioritizing the mollification of the Americans in order to try and secure them as allies against Germany.

The United States gave up claims to the area around Lake Bennett for a clear title to Haines; whilst the Canadians, deprived of a port at Haines Junction, Skagway, or Dyea, felt betrayed by the mother country. The Canadian judges refused to sign the award, issued on 20 October 1903, due to the Canadian delegates' disagreement with Lord Alverstone's vote. Canadians protested the outcome, not so much the decision itself but that the Americans had chosen politicians instead of jurists for the tribunal, and that the British had helped their own interests by betraying Canada's. This led to intense anti-British emotions erupting throughout Canada (particularly in Quebec) as well as a surge in Canadian nationalism as separate from an imperial identity. Although suspicions of the U.S. provoked by the award may have contributed to Canada's rejection of a free trade with the United States in the 1911 "reciprocity election", Canadians vented their anger less upon the United States and "to a greater degree upon Great Britain for having offered such feeble resistance to American aggressiveness. The circumstances surrounding the settlement of the dispute produced serious dissatisfaction with Canada's position in the British Empire." Infuriated, like most Canadians, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier explained to Parliament, "So long as Canada remains a dependency of the British Crown the present powers that we have are not sufficient for the maintenance of our rights." And while Canadian anger gradually subsided, the feeling that Canada should control its own foreign policy greatly contributed towards the Statute of Westminster, and full Canadian independence.

ITTL though, given Japan's size, level of development, relative military strength, and ability to project said strength across the North Pacific, along with how highly (or rather, how much less so than the Americans) the British valued their allegiance, if gold were discovered near Anchorage in the late '80s as OTL, the most likely outcome would see the Alaskan Panhandle reduced to a spindle, with the UK awarding pretty much everything east of the red and green lines above to Canada. Japan probably also would've been a lot more willing to settle for these borders ITTL than the USA would've been IOTL; and with the UK having stood up for, and fully secured, the territorial boundaries asserted by them, Canada would almost certainly have been far more pro-British, having closer ties with the UK and the British Empire (though this spike in Canadians' loyalty to the British crown could well wear off quicker, if relations between them and the Japanese deteriorate further or fail to improve in spite of the resolved border dispute). And without Alaska having ever been a US of American possession ITTL (given how instrumental the UK's resolution of this dispute in the US's favor was in ending the chill in Britain–U.S. relations, achieving rapprochement, winning American favor, and resolving outstanding issues), is there a chance of the Great Rapproachement falling short ITTL, and thus failing to secure a British-American alliance to persuade the USA's entry into WW1 on the Allied side? Even more so, given the added factor of British-allied Imperial Japan's colonial presence in mainland North America?

 

[Lidenbrock]

Were the Japanese "the enemy" for the British, back then? And if they do still get wider British backing, even with a Japanese-owned Alaska, might there be more, or less, chance of Canada having better relations with the Japanese?

These are all well-reasoned points and a Japan friendlier with Britain might well focus more on the North Pacific, while Taiwan and Korea remain the limit for expansion, until they move in further. I can also see this being a longterm boost to the isolationist lobby in America with a less friendly Britain and Canada seen to be colluding together, especially if they end up with the Philippines and the British give Japan a free hand in the South Pacific.

Alternatively the Americans feel hemmed in by Britain snapping up former German colonies because Japan is northward-facing, and if the wheels start coming off in Russia, Britain subtly reminds Japan not to have any southern ambitions.

If gold isn't discovered until later than OTL, Alaska might be less prioritised compared to the closer parts of Asia - if the Inuit can maintain a greater degree of independence and cultural survival relative to our OTL.

 

[Jackson Lennock]

The Anglo-American rapprochement likely still occurs without the Alaska dispute. The British will find some other matter to settle on terms more favorable to the Americans over so as to curry favor.

Canada with the bulk of the Alaskan coastline could perhaps see the formation of a province out of Northern British Columbia and the OTL Yukon.