First Japanese Embassy to Europe (1862)
The First Japanese Embassy to Europe was sent to Europe by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1862. The head of the mission was governor of Shimotsuke Province; the head of the mission staff was Shibata Takenaka Sadataro. Fukuzawa Yukichi was a member of the mission, acting as one of the two translators; the mission numbered 40 men. Despite the name, it is more the third Japanese embassy to Europe, being preceded by the Tensho Embassy and the expedition led by Hasekura Tsunenaga between 1613 and 1620. Leaving Shinagawa, Tokyo on 21 January 1862, the mission was sent in order to learn about Western civilization, ratify treaties, delay the opening of cities and harbours to foreign trade. Negotiations were held in France, the UK, the Netherlands, Prussia and Portugal; the mission returned to Tokyo on 30 January 1863. The members of the mission were extensively photographed by Nadar. In London, the Mission visited the 1862 World Fair. Five years Japan would formally participate to the 1867 World Fair in Paris.
The mission was concluded by the London Protocol, signed on 6 June 1862, which recognized that Japan needed time to "overcome the opposition now existing", accepted the postponement of the opening of Osaka, Hyogo and Niigata by five years, to 1 January 1868. Japanese Embassy to the United States Second Japanese Embassy to Europe Iwakura mission France–Japan relations Shin Jinbutsu Ōrai-sha, eds.: Ikokujin no Mita Bakumatsu–Meiji Japan, Aizō-ban. Tokyo, 2005. ISBN 4-404-03252-8, ISBN 978-4-404-03252-2 Medzini, Meron French Policy in Japan Harvard University Press 1971, ISBN 0-674-32230-4 First Embassy to Europe
Taiwan
Taiwan the Republic of China, is a state in East Asia. Neighbouring states include the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the northeast, the Philippines to the south. Taiwan is the most populous state and largest economy, not a member of the United Nations; the island of Taiwan was inhabited by indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the 17th century, when Dutch colonialists opened the island to mass Han immigration. After a brief rule by the Kingdom of Tungning, the island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty of China, ceded to Japan in 1895. Following the surrender of Japan in 1945, the Republic of China, which had overthrown and succeeded the Qing in 1911, took control of Taiwan; the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the loss of the mainland to the Communists and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. Although the ROC government continued to claim to be the legitimate representative of China, since 1950 its effective jurisdiction has been limited to Taiwan and several small islands.
In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of industrialisation. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship to a multi-party democracy with a semi-presidential system; as a founding member, the ROC represented China in the UN until it was replaced by the PRC in 1971. The PRC has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and refused diplomatic relations with any country that recognises the ROC; as of 2019, Taiwan maintains official ties with 16 out of 193 UN member states. Most international organisations in which the PRC participates either refuse to grant membership to Taiwan or allow it to participate only as a non-state actor. Most major powers maintain unofficial ties with Taiwan through representative offices and institutions that function as de facto embassies and consulates. In Taiwan, the major political division is between parties favouring eventual Chinese unification and promoting a Chinese identity contrasted with those aspiring to independence and promoting a Taiwanese identity, though both sides have moderated their positions to broaden their appeal.
Taiwan is a high-income advanced economy, with a skilled and educated workforce. It has the 22nd-largest economy in the world, its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy, it is urbanised, is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with most of the population concentrated on the western coast. The state is ranked in terms of civil and political liberties, health care and human development. Various names for the island of Taiwan remain in use today, each derived from explorers or rulers during a particular historical period; the name Formosa dates from 1542, when Portuguese sailors sighted an uncharted island and noted it on their maps as Ilha Formosa. The name Formosa "replaced all others in European literature" and remained in common use among English speakers into the 20th century. In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company established a commercial post at Fort Zeelandia on a coastal sandbar called "Tayouan", after their ethnonym for a nearby Taiwanese aboriginal tribe Taivoan people, written by the Dutch and Portuguese variously as Taiouwang, Teijoan, etc.
This name was adopted into the Chinese vernacular as the name of the sandbar and nearby area. The modern word "Taiwan" is derived from this usage, seen in various forms in Chinese historical records; the area occupied by modern-day Tainan represented the first permanent settlement by both European colonists and Chinese immigrants. The settlement grew to be the island's most important trading centre and served as its capital until 1887. Use of the current Chinese name became official as early as 1684 with the establishment of Taiwan Prefecture. Through its rapid development the entire Formosan mainland became known as "Taiwan". In his Daoyi Zhilüe, Wang Dayuan used "Liuqiu" as a name for the island of Taiwan, or the part of it closest to Penghu. Elsewhere, the name was used for the Ryukyu Islands in general or Okinawa, the largest of them; the name appears in the Book of Sui and other early works, but scholars cannot agree on whether these references are to the Ryukyus, Taiwan or Luzon. The official name of the state is the "Republic of China".
Shortly after the ROC's establishment in 1912, while it was still located on the Chinese mainland, the government used the short form "China" to refer to itself, which derives from zhōng and guó, a term which developed under the Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne, the name was applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state during the Qing era. During the 1950s and 1960s, after the government had withdrawn to Taiwan upon losing the Chinese Civil War, it was referred to as "Nationalist China" to differentiate it from "Communist China", it was a member of the United Nations representing "China" until 1971, when it lost its seat to the People's Republic of China. Over subsequent decades, the Republic of China has become known as "Taiwan", after the island that comprises 99% of the territory under its control. In some contexts ROC government publications, the name is written as "
Saint-Tropez
Saint-Tropez is a town on the French Riviera, 100 kilometres west of Nice in the Var department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of southeastern France. Saint-Tropez was a military fishing village until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the first town on this coast to be liberated during World War II as part of Operation Dragoon. After the war, it became an internationally known seaside resort, renowned principally because of the influx of artists of the French New Wave in cinema and the Yé-yé movement in music, it became a resort for the European and American jet set and tourists. The inhabitants of Saint-Tropez are called Tropéziens, the town is familiarly called St-Trop. In 599 B. C. the Phocaeans founded established other coastal mooring sites in the area. In 31 B. C. the Romans invaded the region. Their citizens built many opulent villas in the area, including one known as the "Villa des Platanes"; the first name given to the village which became Saint-Tropez was Heraclea-Caccaliera, the mouth of its gulf was named the Issambres.
The town owes its current name to the semi-legendary martyr Saint Torpes. The legend tells of his decapitation at Pisa during Nero's reign, with his body placed in a rotten boat along with a rooster and a dog; the body landed at the present-day location of the town. Toward the end of the ninth century, long after the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and privateers began a hundred years of attacks and sackings. In the tenth century, the village of La Garde-Freinet was founded 15 km to the North of Saint-Tropez. From 890 to 972, Saint-Tropez and its surroundings became an Arab Muslim colony dominated by the nearby Saracenic settlement of Fraxinet.. From 961 to 963, son of Berenger, the pretender to the throne of Lombardy, pursued by Otto I, hid at Saint-Tropez. In 972, the Muslims of Saint-Tropez held the abbot of Maïeul, for ransom. In 976, William I, Count of Provence, lord of Grimaud, began attacking the Muslims, in 980 he built a tower where the Suffren tower now stands. In 1079 and 1218, Papal bulls mentioned the existence of a manor at Saint-Tropez.
From 1436, Count René. He created the Barony of Grimaud and appealed to the Genoan Raphael de Garezzio, a wealthy gentleman who sent a fleet of caravels carrying sixty Genoese families to the area. In return, Count René promised to exempt the citizens from taxation. On February 14, 1470, Jean de Cossa, Baron of Grimaud and Grand Seneschal of Provence, agreed that the Genoan could build city walls and two large towers which still stand: one tower is at the end of the Grand Môle; the city became a small republic with its own fleet and army and administered by two consuls and twelve elected councillors. In 1558, the Captain of City was empowered to protect the city; the Captain led a militia and mercenaries who resisted attacks by the Turks and Spanish, succored Fréjus and Antibes, helped the Archbishop of Bordeaux to regain control of the Lérins Islands. In 1577, the daughter of the Marquis Lord of Castellane, Genevieve de Castilla, married Jean-Baptiste de Suffren, Marquis de Saint-Cannet, Baron de La Môle, advisor to the Parliament of Provence.
The lordship of Saint-Tropez became the prerogative of the De Suffren family. One of the most notable members of this family was the vice-admiral Pierre André de Suffren de Saint Tropez, veteran of the War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, the American Revolutionary War. In September 1615, Saint-Tropez was visited by a delegation led by the Japanese samurai Hasekura Tsunenaga who were on their way to Rome but obliged by weather to stop in Saint-Tropez; this may have been the first contact between the French and the Japanese. The local noblemen were responsible for raising an army which repulsed a fleet of Spanish galleons on June 15, 1637. Count René's promise in 1436 to not tax the citizens of Saint-Tropez was honored until 1672, when Louis XIV abrogated it as he imposed French control. During the 1920s, Saint-Tropez attracted famous figures from the world of fashion like Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli. During World War II, the landing on August 15, 1944 began the Allied invasion of southern France, Operation Dragoon.
In the 1950s, Saint-Tropez became internationally renowned as the setting for such films as And God Created Woman, which starred French actress Brigitte Bardot. In May 1965, an Aérospatiale Super Frelon pre-production aircraft crashed in the gulf, killing its pilot. On March 4, 1970, the French submarine Eurydice, whose home port was Saint-Tropez, disappeared in the Mediterranean with 57 crew aboard, after a mysterious explosion; the English rock band Pink Floyd wrote. Saint-Tropez was mentioned in David Gates's 1978 hit "Took the Last Train", in Aerosmith's "Permanent Vacation". Rappers including Diddy, Jay-Z and 50 Cent refer to the city in some of their songs as a favorite vacation destination reached by yacht. DJ Antoine wrote a song called "Welcome to St. Tropez", which talks about people going there and spending all the money they have. MottoAd usque fidelis, Latin for "faithful to the end". After the dark age of plundering the French Riviera, Raphaël de Garesio landed in Saint-Tropez on February 14, 1470, with 22 men
Hokkaido
Hokkaido known as Ezo, Yeso, or Yesso, is the second largest island of Japan, the largest and northernmost prefecture. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaido from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel. The largest city on Hokkaido is its capital, its only ordinance-designated city. About 43 km north of Hokkaido lies Russia. To its east and north-east are the disputed Kuril Islands; the Nihon Shoki, finished in 720 AD, is said to be the first mention of Hokkaido in recorded history. According to the text, Abe no Hirafu led a large navy and army to northern areas from 658 to 660 and came into contact with the Mishihase and Emishi. One of the places Hirafu went to was called Watarishima, believed to be present-day Hokkaido. However, many theories exist in relation to the details of this event, including the location of Watarishima and the common belief that the Emishi in Watarishima were the ancestors of the present-day Ainu people. During the Nara and Heian periods, people in Hokkaido conducted trade with Dewa Province, an outpost of the Japanese central government.
From the Middle Ages, the people in Hokkaido began to be called Ezo. Hokkaido subsequently became known as Ezogashima; the Ezo relied upon hunting and fishing and obtained rice and iron through trade with the Japanese. During the Muromachi period, the Japanese created a settlement at the south of the Oshima Peninsula; as more people moved to the settlement to avoid battles, disputes arose between the Japanese and the Ainu. The disputes developed into a war. Takeda Nobuhiro killed the Ainu leader and defeated the opposition in 1457. Nobuhiro's descendants became the rulers of the Matsumae-han, granted exclusive trading rights with the Ainu in the Azuchi-Momoyama and Edo periods; the Matsumae family's economy relied upon trade with the Ainu. They held authority over the south of Ezochi until the end of the Edo period in 1868; the Matsumae clan rule over the Ainu must be understood in the context of the expansion of the Japanese feudal state. Medieval military leaders in northern Honshū maintained only tenuous political and cultural ties to the imperial court and its proxies, the Kamakura Shogunate and Ashikaga Shogunate.
Feudal strongmen sometimes located themselves within medieval institutional order, taking shogunal titles, while in other times they assumed titles that seemed to give them a non-Japanese identity. In fact, many of the feudal strongmen were descended from Emishi military leaders, assimilated into Japanese society; the Matsumae clan were of Yamato descent like other ethnic Japanese people, whereas the Emishi of northern Honshu were a distinctive group related to the Ainu. The Emishi were conquered and integrated into the Japanese state dating back as far as the 8th century, as result began to lose their distinctive culture and ethnicity as they became minorities. By the time the Matsumae clan ruled over the Ainu most of the Emishi were ethnically mixed and physically closer to Japanese than they were to Ainu; this dovetails nicely with the "transformation" theory that native Jōmon peoples changed with the infusion of Yayoi immigrants into the Tōhoku rather than the "replacement" theory which posits that one population was replaced by another.
There were numerous revolts by the Ainu against the feudal rule. The last large-scale resistance was Shakushain's Revolt in 1669–1672. In 1789, a smaller movement, the Menashi–Kunashir rebellion, was crushed. After that rebellion, the terms "Japanese" and "Ainu" referred to distinguished groups, the Matsumae were unequivocally Japanese. In 1799–1821 and 1855–1858, the Edo Shogunate took direct control over Hokkaido in response to a perceived threat from Russia. Leading up to the Meiji Restoration, the Tokugawa Shogunate realized there was a need to prepare northern defenses against a possible Russian invasion and took over control of most of Ezochi; the Shogunate made the plight of the Ainu easier, but did not change the overall form of rule. Hokkaido was known as Ezochi until the Meiji Restoration. Shortly after the Boshin War in 1868, a group of Tokugawa loyalists led by Enomoto Takeaki temporarily occupied the island, but the rebellion was crushed in May 1869. Ezochi was subsequently put under control of Hakodate Prefectural Government.
When establishing the Development Commission, the Meiji Government introduced a new name. After 1869, the northern Japanese island was known as Hokkaido; the primary purpose of the development commission was to secure Hokkaido before the Russians extended their control of the Far East beyond Vladivostok. Kuroda Kiyotaka was put in charge of the venture, his first step was to journey to the United States and recruit Horace Capron, President Grant's Commissioner of Agriculture. From 1871 to 1873 Capron bent his efforts to expounding Western agriculture and mining with mixed results. Capron, frustrated with obstacles to his efforts returned home in 1875. In 1876, William S. Clark arrived to found an agricultural college in Sapporo. Although he only remained a year, Clark left a lasting impression on Hokkaido, inspiring the Japanese with his teachings on agriculture as well as Christianity
Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company was an early megacorporation founded by a government-directed amalgamation of several rival Dutch trading companies in the early 17th century. It was established on March 20, 1602 as a chartered company to trade with India and Indianised Southeast Asian countries when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on the Dutch spice trade, it has been labelled a trading company or sometimes a shipping company. However, VOC was in fact a proto-conglomerate company, diversifying into multiple commercial and industrial activities such as international trade and both production and trade of East Indian spices, Formosan sugarcane, South African wine.. The Company was a transcontinental employer and an early pioneer of outward foreign direct investment; the Company's investment projects helped raise the commercial and industrial potential of many underdeveloped or undeveloped regions of the world in the early modern period. In the early 1600s, by issuing bonds and shares of stock to the general public, VOC became the world's first formally-listed public company.
In other words, it was the first corporation to be listed on an official stock exchange. It was influential in the rise of corporate-led globalisation in the early modern period. With its pioneering institutional innovations and powerful roles in global business history, the Company is considered by many to be the forerunner of modern corporations. In many respects, modern-day corporations are all the'direct descendants' of the VOC model, it was their 17th century institutional innovations and business practices that laid the foundations for the rise of giant global corporations in subsequent centuries — as a significant and formidable socio-politico-economic force of the modern-day world – to become the dominant factor in all economic systems today. They served as the direct model for the organisational reconstruction of the English/British East India Company in 1657; the Company, for nearly 200 years of its existence, had transformed itself from a corporate entity into a state or an empire in its own right.
One of the most influential and best expertly researched business enterprises in history, the VOC's world has been the subject of a vast amount of literature that includes both fiction and nonfiction works. The company was an exemplary company-state rather than a pure for-profit corporation. A government-backed military-commercial enterprise, the VOC was the wartime brainchild of leading Dutch republican statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and the States-General. From its inception in 1602, the Company was not only a commercial enterprise but effectively an instrument of war in the young Dutch Republic's revolutionary global war against the powerful Spanish Empire and Iberian Union. In 1619, the Company forcibly established a central position in the Indonesian city of Jayakarta, changing the name to Batavia. Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory. To guarantee its supply, the Company established positions in many countries and became an early pioneer of outward foreign direct investment.
In its foreign colonies, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, establish colonies. With increasing importance of foreign posts, the Company is considered the world's first true transnational corporation. Along with the Dutch West India Company, the VOC was seen as the international arm of the Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the Dutch Empire. To further its trade routes, the VOC-funded exploratory voyages, such as those led by Willem Janszoon, Henry Hudson, Abel Tasman, revealed unknown landmasses to the western world. In the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography, VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape geographical knowledge of the world as we know it today. Socio-economic changes in Europe, the shift in power balance, less successful financial management resulted in a slow decline of the VOC between 1720 and 1799. After the financially disastrous Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, the company was nationalised in 1796, dissolved in 1799.
All assets were taken over by the government with VOC territories becoming Dutch government colonies. The company has been criticised for its monopolistic policy, colonialism, uses of violence, slavery. In Dutch, the name of the company is Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, abbreviated to VOC; the company's monogram logo was the first globally recognised corporate logo. The logo of the VOC consisted of a large capital ` V' with a C on the right leg, it appeared on various corporate items, such as coins. The first letter of the hometown of the chamber conducting the operation was placed on top; the monogram, flexibility, simplicity, symmetry and symbolism are considered notable characteristics of the VOC's professionally designed logo. Those elements ensured its success at a time when the concept of the corporate identity was unknown. An Australian vintner has used the VOC logo since the late 20th century, having re-registered the company's name for the purpose.
The flag of the company was red and blue, with the company logo embroidered on it. Around the world, in Engl
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, a part of the Ottoman Empire; the French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense, it has been noted that the causes, in one case involving an argument over a key, have never revealed a "greater confusion of purpose", yet they led to a war noted for its "notoriously incompetent international butchery". While the churches worked out their differences and came to an agreement, Nicholas I of Russia and the French Emperor Napoleon III refused to back down. Nicholas issued an ultimatum that the Orthodox subjects of the Ottoman Empire be placed under his protection.
Britain arranged a compromise that Nicholas agreed to. When the Ottomans demanded changes, Nicholas prepared for war. Having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia in October 1853; the war started in the Balkans in July 1853, when Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities, which were under Ottoman suzerainty began to cross the Danube. Led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the advance at Silistra. A separate action on the fort town of Kars in eastern Anatolia led to a siege, a Turkish attempt to reinforce the garrison was destroyed by a Russian fleet at Sinop. Fearing an Ottoman collapse and Britain rushed forces to Gallipoli, they moved north to Varna in June 1854, arriving just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra. Aside from a minor skirmish at Köstence, there was little for the allies to do. Karl Marx quipped, "there they are, the French doing nothing and the British helping them as fast as possible".
Frustrated by the wasted effort, with demands for action from their citizens, the allied force decided to attack Russia's main naval base in the Black Sea at Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula. After extended preparations, the forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and marched their way to a point south of Sevastopol after the successful Battle of the Alma; the Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, but at the cost of depleting the British Army forces. A second counterattack, at Inkerman, ended in stalemate; the front led to brutal conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller military actions took place in the Baltic, the Caucasus, the White Sea, the North Pacific. Sevastopol fell after eleven months, neutral countries began to join the Allied cause. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued, Russia sued for peace in March 1856. France and Britain welcomed this development; the Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, ended the war.
It forbade Russia from basing warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became independent. Christians there were granted a degree of official equality, the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute; the Crimean War was one of the first conflicts in which the military used modern technologies such as explosive naval shells and telegraphs. The war was one of the first to be documented extensively in written photographs; as the legend of the "Charge of the Light Brigade" demonstrates, the war became an iconic symbol of logistical and tactical failures and mismanagement. The reaction in the UK was a demand for professionalisation, most famously achieved by Florence Nightingale, who gained worldwide attention for pioneering modern nursing while treating the wounded; the Crimean War proved to be the moment of truth for Nikolaevan Russia. The humiliation forced Russia's educated elites to identify the Empire's problems and to recognize the need for fundamental transformations aimed at modernizing and restoring Russia's position in the ranks of European powers.
Historians have studied the role of the Crimean War as a catalyst for the reforms of Russia's social institutions: serfdom, local self-government and military service. More scholars have turned their attention to the impact of the Crimean War on the development of Russian nationalistic discourse; as the Ottoman Empire weakened during the 19th century, Russia stood poised to take advantage by expanding south. In the 1850s, the British and the French, who were allied with the Ottoman Empire, were determined not to allow this to happen. A. J. P. Taylor argues that the war resulted not from aggression but from the interacting fears of the major players: In some sense the Crimean war was predestined and had deep-seated causes. Neither Nicholas I nor Napoleon III nor the British government could retreat in the conflict for prestige once it was launched. Nicholas needed a subservient Turkey for the sake of Russian security. Mutual fear, not mutual aggression, caused the Crimean war. In the early 1800s, the Ottoman Empire
Jules Brunet
Jules Brunet was a French Army officer who played a famous role in the Japanese Boshin War. He was sent to Japan with the French military mission of 1867, after the defeat of the shōgun had an important role in the Republic of Ezo, he became a General and Chief of Staff of the French Minister of War in 1898. Brunet was born in Belfort in the Alsace region of eastern France, his father was a military veterinary doctor. He graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1859, joined the artillery school, graduating as a lieutenant in 1861. Brunet participated in the French intervention in Mexico from August 1862 to June 1864, received the Légion d'honneur in October 1864. In 1863 he was posted to the prestigious Horse Artillery Regiment of the Imperial Guard. Napoleon III sent a group of military advisors to Japan to help modernize the Shogun's army. Brunet was sent as an artillery instructor, selected in September 1866; the mission trained the Shogun's troops for about a year. While in Japan, he was promoted to captain.
In 1868 the Shogun was overthrown in the Boshin War, Emperor Meiji was nominally restored to full power. The French military mission was ordered to leave Japan by Imperial decree. However, Brunet chose to remain, he did not join his new posting in the French army, while not formally resigning, left for the north of Japan with the remains of the Shogunate's armies in the hope of staging a counter-attack. In a letter to Napoleon III, Brunet explained the plan of the alliance, as well as his role in it: A revolution is forcing the Military Mission to return to France. Alone I stay, alone I wish to continue, under new conditions: the results obtained by the Mission, together with the Party of the North, the party favorable to France in Japan. Soon a reaction will take place, the Daimyos of the North have offered me to be its soul. I have accepted, because with the help of one thousand Japanese officers and non-commissioned officers, our students, I can direct the 50,000 men of the Confederation. Brunet took a active role in the Boshin War.
Brunet and Captain André Cazeneuve were present at the Battle of Toba–Fushimi, near Osaka. After that Imperial victory, Brunet and the Shogun's Admiral, Enomoto Takeaki, fled to Edo on the warship Fujisan; when Edo fell to the Imperial forces and Brunet fled to the northern island of Hokkaidō, where they proclaimed the Ezo Republic, with Enomoto as President. Brunet helped organize the Ezo army, under hybrid Franco-Japanese leadership. Otori Keisuke was Commander-in-chief, Brunet was second in command; each of the four brigades were commanded by a French officer, with Japanese officers commanding each half-brigade. The final stand of the Shogun/Ezo forces was the Battle of Hakodate; the Ezo forces, numbering 3,000, were defeated by 7,000 Imperial troops. In an interesting postscript to his involvement in the Boshin War, Brunet spoke of Shinsengumi vice-commander Hijikata Toshizō in his memoirs. Praising Hijikata's ability as a leader, he said that if the man had been in Europe, he most would have been a general.
Brunet and the other French advisers were wanted by the Imperial government. But they were evacuated from Hokkaidō by a French warship and taken to Saigon by the Dupleix. Brunet returned to France; the new Japanese government requested. But his actions had won popular support in France, the request was denied. Instead, he was suspended for six months and rejoined the French army in February 1870 with only a slight loss in seniority. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, he was taken prisoner at the Siege of Metz. After the war, he played a key role as a member of the Versailles Army in the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, he was made an officer of the Légion d'honneur in September 1871 and posted as aide de camp to the Minister of War. Brunet's former ally, Admiral Enomoto, joined the Imperial government and became Minister of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Through Enomoto's influence the Imperial government not only forgave Brunet's actions but awarded him medals in May 1881 and again in March 1885.
The medals were presented at the Japanese Embassy in Paris. Brunet led a brilliant career in the French Army; as a colonel, he commanded the 11th Artillery Regiment between 1887 and 1891. Promoted to Brigade General in December 1891, he commanded the 48th Infantry Brigade between 1891 and 1897 the 19th Artillery Brigade. In 1898, his former senior officer in the Japan mission, was Minister of War and Brunet became his Chief of Staff with the rank of Divisional General, his actions inspired the character of Captain Nathan Algren in the 2003 movie The Last Samurai. Brunet was a talented painter who left numerous depictions of his travels in Japan. Franco-Japanese relations The Last Samurai Naval Battle of Hakodate Polak, Christian.. 函館の幕末・維新 "End of the Bakufu and Restoration in Hakodate." ISBN 4-12-001699-4. __________.. Soie et lumières: L'âge d'or des échanges franco-japonais. Tokyo: Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie Française du Japon, Hachette Fujin Gahōsha. __________.. 絹と光: 知られざる日仏交流100年の歴史 Kinu to hikariō: shirarezaru Nichi-Futsu kōryū 100-nen no rekishi.
Tokyo: Ashetto Fujin Gahōsha, 2002. ISBN 978-4-573-06210-8.
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