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Paper short abstract:

Foreign diplomats and the Daimyō were unable to officially interact in the treaty ports due to the Tokugawa’s monopoly on diplomacy. To break free, British diplomats began eroding this monopoly after 1865, turning Royal Navy ships into mobile legations that could negotiate with the Daimyō directly.

Paper long abstract:

The nature of mid-nineteenth century Japanese politics means that it is more accurate to describe Anglo-Japanese diplomacy as a relationship between Britain and one major power, the Tokugawa Shogunate, alongside many numerous minor ones, the Daimyō, rather than a strict binary relationship. This split presented both Britain and Japan more widely with a diplomatic challenge. The Shogunate understandably monopolised all diplomatic relations with the outside world to further legitimise itself as the sole polity of Japan. It profusely shut out the Daimyō from having any power or presence in the recently opened treaty ports spread along Japan’s coast. By 1865 there existed an ever-growing desire among British diplomats to make contact with the Daimyō and escape the geographical restrictions placed upon them.

My paper will show how British diplomats broke free of their diplomatic entrapment by transforming Royal Navy ships into mobile legations. British diplomats successfully took back their diplomatic agency by uprooting their own diplomatic space and adapting it to meet the needs of their present locale. By engaging with the Daimyō more formally as diplomatic equals through their mobile legations, Britain was able to initiate more positive subliminal diplomacy that could then flatter and impress. The ship became a more versatile diplomatic space where diplomats could effectively sell British power and prestige to the geographically spread and previously diplomatically excluded Daimyō.

The ramifications of this argument are twofold. We will have a better understanding of how Britain successfully expanded and rapidly evolved its diplomatic foothold across Japan during the 1860s, and more generally also see how diplomatic spaces are not always static, fixed positions, but rather places that can be shaped and challenged by diplomatic actors themselves.