Just a reminder for local UB students my theory about how the school really changed world history.
This is in the compound posting on this blog, "Investigations" December 2018 as 20) THE UNIVERSITY RECRUITING DRIVE THAT REALLY CHANGED THE WORLD
A world-changing event in history really requires some analysis. It is the U.S. naval mission to Japan in 1852. It was intended to force Japan open to trade with the U.S. But there are just so many questions about it.
First, unlike European nations, the United States was not a colonial power. It opposed colonialism. The Philippines would become a quasi-colony of the U.S., after it was inherited following the Spanish-American War, but that was nearly fifty years later.
Second, Japan was an isolated and feudal country, or at least that was the way it was usually perceived, and it wanted to keep it that way. What would Japan have to trade, in 1852, that would interest the U.S.so much? It didn't have significant manufacturing of goods to export, and it wasn't known for resources that could be traded for imports. Neither was it known for spices or any specialized agricultural products, such as tea or cacao, that could be exported.
Third, as far as the situation in the U.S., this did not take place during the "Gilded Age" when there were wealthy industrialists seeking either markets, resources or, labor. That era was decades away. In 1852, the Civil War was still ahead and it was not even certain that the union would hold together. It becomes difficult to understand what sense this adventure to the other side of the world could make.
Fourth, The U.S. had just gained, by way of the Mexican War, the vast territories of the west. With all of that to be explored and settled, and all of the resources that it contained, why would the U.S. need to send this expensive mission to the other side of the world to force a feudal country open to trade? It could not be a need for laborers from Asia because there were settlers from China, which was much more populous than Japan. In 1882 a law was actually passed actually banning immigration from China.
Japan was closed because, with all of the foreign ships seen passing by, it considered outsiders as barbarians and was wary of being made into a colony. It had the historical memories of two attempted invasions by the Mongols. But it didn't want to be completely isolated. There was one thing that it had a voracious appetite for from the outside world. That one thing was knowledge.
The leaders of Japan knew that the outside world was making progress. They realized that cutting Japan off from that progress would only make it more vulnerable. There had been a policy of acquiring knowledge for quite some time, known as Rangaku. The only westerners that were allowed to land by ship were the Dutch, and they were only allowed one trip per year. Actually, there was a law that no foreign ships could land in Japan at all but an artificial island, called Dejima, was created at Nagasaki for the Dutch to land on.
The Japanese sought all the knowledge that they could get from their Dutch visitors. They had many Dutch books about science, technology and, world geography translated. The Dutch brought all manner of technical devices to Japan, from machines and clocks, to telescopes and microscopes.
As a result of this U.S. naval mission, Japan did open up and set about modernization but it would bring very wide-reaching and unexpected changes to the world.
In Japan the change would bring the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and restore the emperor to full power. This is known as the Meiji Restoration. Kyoto had been the capital of Japan for a thousand years but, in the sign of the new era the emperor chose to move the capital to Tokyo, where the shogunate which held the real power had been based although the emperor ruled from Kyoto, and that is why Tokyo is the great city that it is today.
Russia had the potential to be a great naval power but was hindered in that it lacked a port that was free of ice all year. Before the development of modern China, in the final years of the Qing Dynasty, Russia leased a naval base from China. But nearby Japan felt threatened by the arrangement and a naval battle ended up being fought over this location that changed the course of the world. The naval battle in 1905 between Japan and Russia, as well as a great battle on land, would bring major changes to the world.
It led to the rise of Japan as a world power. But this would put it technologically ahead of it's Asian neighbors. The Second World War in the Pacific, as well as the far-reaching changes that followed the war, would not have happened without this. There would have been no attack on Pearl Harbor and no dropping of atomic bombs. This battle can also be considered as the beginning of modern naval warfare.
It weakened the Romanov Dynasty in Russia, opening the way for the October Revolution to succeed twelve years later. The immediate result of this lost battle was the 1905 Revolution. It didn't topple the Romanov Dynasty but two years after that, Lenin, Stalin and, Trotsky met in London to plan the coming revolution.
Without this naval battle, the October Revolution likely would not have succeeded even if it had happened. This would probably have meant no Communism and the very different course of the Twentieth Century that would have brought about.
We can scarcely imagine what the world might be like today had there not been this 1905 battle that is really not well-known, and wouldn't have happened without Japan being forced open by this U.S. naval mission, after which it set about modernization. Without Germany and Austria-Hungary taking this battle as a sign of the weakness of the Romanov position, the First World War might never have happened.
Since the Second World War sprang from the First, that wouldn't have happened either. Since the development of nuclear weapons was spurred by the Second World War we might not have those, or nuclear power at all. Since it was the changes brought about by the world wars that ended the colonial era, there seems to be no reason why it wouldn't have continued until today.
The relationship between the races would be different. The white race had largely convinced the world, as well as itself, that it was the superior race. But the hideous slaughter of World War One, which almost exclusively involved the white race, began to cast doubt on that. All races have shown themselves to be capable of barbarity but this was unlike anything the world had seen before.
But that brings us back to why the forcing of Japan open in the first place was necessary or how it could really be beneficial to the U.S. The mission had been ordered by a little-known U.S. president named Millard Fillmore. He had been vice-president and became president upon the death of Zachary Taylor. He did not even get the nomination of his party for the following election. Millard Fillmore is remembered today primarily around Buffalo, where a hospital and a main avenue are named for him.
The Buffalo connection can be seen in that Commodore Matthew Perry was chosen to lead the naval mission to Japan. He was the younger brother of Oliver Hazard Perry, who was a hero of the War of 1812 in the Buffalo area and today has a housing development named for him.
The opening of Japan would likely have eventually happened in time anyway but Millard Fillmore completely changed the world by sending this mission, if only it was clearer why.
But maybe a look at what Millard Fillmore did before he became president might provide an answer. We know that while it might have been difficult to see a basis for trade with Japan that would justify the naval mission that was sent, what Japan had long sought from the outside world was knowledge. Just as soon as it was opened up by force it began sending students abroad to study, although not to America as it was by then preoccupied with it's Civil War.
Before becoming president, Millard Fillmore had founded a university. He had been the chancellor of the university, and a teacher there. The only conclusion that I can come to is that filling his university with eager Japanese students is at least a major part of the reason for this mission to Japan in 1852. That makes more sense than any other reason. It was the university recruiting drive that really changed the world.
This is Millard Fillmore's university today, the University of Buffalo known in local parlance simply as UB. There are actually two separate campuses. This is the older South Campus. There is also the larger North Campus, in Amherst NY.
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