Foreigners in Hire: Two Advice, Two Empires: Roche and Parkes Divide Japan's Course at the End of the Edo Period (Late 1860s)

Foreigners in Hire: Two Advice, Two Empires: Roche and Parkes Divide Japan's Course at the End of the Edo Period (Late 1860s)
Japan at the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate was embroiled in a struggle for power between the British, French, and other powers, as well as domestic political strife. French Minister Roche emphasized the importance of maintaining Japan as a stable and unified nation, and supported the concept of transforming the shogunate into a modern state with Tokugawa Yoshinobu at its core. The Keio reforms, which included a six-branch cabinet, bureaucratic system, fiscal reform, and industrial development, were a comprehensive institutional design modeled after the French-style centralized state, and were an attempt to achieve external independence by strengthening domestic politics. On the other hand, British Minister Parkes prioritized trade and diplomatic initiative over a stable system, and developed a diplomacy that took advantage of the currents of power reorganization while maintaining a distance from both the shogunate and anti-shogunate forces. The difference between the two came
not from personal qualities, but from differences in imperial strategy. As a result, Keio's reforms did not materialize due to the Great Restoration, and Parks succeeded in building a relationship with the new government. However, it was Roche who laid out the first concrete blueprint for Japan's conception of a modern state as an institution, and this contrast reveals that the Bakumatsu Restoration was not only a domestic revolution, but also a process of restructuring international politics at the intersection of the powers' views of the state.