Event by JSOS.
Date – Monday 3rd of March 2025 at 7pm prompt start
(doors open 6.30pm)
Venue – University of Edinburgh, 50 George Square – Room G1.06
Also on Zoom (7pm prompt start)
Join us for an evening with Professor Ian Gow on the Scottish admiral who, without prompt, reopened Anglo-Japanese relations.
In 1854 Commodore Perry’s gunboats (The Black Ships) sailed into Uraga Bay Edo and forced the Japanese to sign a treaty opening Japanese ports to American ships. This marked the first major breach in Japan’s seclusion policy against affecting western powers, other than the Dutch in Nagasaki for over 200 years.
Within a year Admiral Sir James Stirling, the newly appointed Commander-in-Chief China East Indies and China station, a Scot from Drumpellier near Coatbridge, sailed into Nagasaki with a smaller squadron and emerged with a treaty, The Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty, thus reopening formal Anglo-Japanese diplomatic relations with Japan in abeyance since the English East India Company left Hirado in 1623.
Two other Scottish naval officers, Commodore Charles Elliot and Commander Frederick Stirling also played important roles in the ratification of the treaty. He was ordered to seek out and destroy the Russian Fleet. He had no orders or authority to go to Japan let alone obtain a treaty. Seeking out the Russian fleet in the vastness of the waters in the Pacific region was like chasing ghosts, so on hearing that the Russians had recently been at Nagasaki he made a strategic decision to sail into and enter Nagasaki harbour and seek an understanding from the Japanese on benevolent neutrality for belligerents nets who might seek entry to Japanese ports whilst at the same time catching the Russians if they were still in the area.
This talk will explain why the Americans and not the more powerful British got there first, why this Scottish Admiral acted without orders and authorisation caused such controversy in Hong Kong and London. It will challenge accusations of amateur diplomacy and show how, without threatening the Japanese as Perry did. He carried out complex negotiations in terms of the subject and the languages involved. It will evaluate his Japan visit in terms of strategy in the war with Russia and politically in the reopening of Anglo-Japanese relations, to show why he has not achieved sufficient recognition in Scotland and in the history books.
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About the speaker:
lan graduated from Edinburgh in 1975 after a career in the Royal Navy. He obtained his PhD from the Centre for Japanese Studies University of Sheffield. He became Scotland’s first Professor of Japanese Studies at the University of Stirling in 1987 and established the Scottish Centre for Japanese Studies and served as Chairman of the Japan Society of Scotland. He then became Chairman of the School of East Asian Studies at Sheffield. He has published in English and Japanese on Japanese Defence and Business studies. On his retirement he returned to Scotland and Edinburgh where he is Chairman of JSOS and Honorary Professor at Edinburgh University. In 2021, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun Gold Rays and Neck Ribbon, for his contribution to Japanese Studies and Japan-Scotland relations.
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