by Tom Anderson
After the Treaty of London in 1785 and the end of the war, the chief issue at hand was the strain on the French treasury and the need for reform. Despite the apparent need for restraint on spending, La Pérouse nonethele4ss succeeded in obtaining royal funding from Louis XVI for a voyage of discovery, which set out late in the year 1785. This consisted of his former task force from the war, four frigates plus a single supply ship. The force would be led by his new flagship Amiral d’Estaing, named after the hero of Trafalgar— Jean Baptiste Charles Henri Hector, comte d'Estaing.
The intent of La Pérouse’s voyage was to expand French knowledge of the Pacific, particularly the rich Asian markets, and perhaps to lay down new trade connections. It certainly succeeded in all three aspects, though the final consequences of these actions could not have been predicted at the time.
The fleet initially sailed to Buenos Aires, in which La Pérouse famously smoothed over relations between the newly independent republic (not yet having taken the name UPSA) and France by throwing a grand banquet for the leaders now drawing up their new constitution. Having made reports on the radical thoughts now sweeping the country amid these constitutional arguments—not dreaming of what effects these reports would ultimately have on his own mother country—La Pérouse proceeded to sail around Cape Horn. He journeyed to the Columbus Islands and Easter Island in 1786, making recommendations that they be suitable for whaling bases.[98]
The Amiral d’Estaing’s crew complement included one Pierre-Simon Laplace, a respected common-born natural philosopher who had elected to accompany this voyage in order to escape his angry peers at home, as well as the Roman Catholic Church due to his controversial views. An astronomer, Laplace used the voyage to make the famous Laplacian Austral Catalogue of the stars of the southern night sky. He also collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a former soldier who had recently published several works on the flora of France and accompanied the mission due to its opportunities for research. Lamarck and Laplace’s Observations on the Fauna of the Îles de Colomb[99] was a seminal work in the history of evolutionary theory and is credited with bringing back the evolution debate in France, whereas previously Voltaire and other writers had mainly focused on the related Racialism movement brought about by Linnaeus’ works on humans.
La Pérouse was rebuffed from Japan thanks to the latter’s isolationist policies. His expedition to China was also a failure, with the Qing Dynasty government being paralysed at the time, the Daguo Emperor being on his deathbed and concerns over the succession abounding. Fortunately, these fears turned out to be unfounded…this time. However, La Pérouse’s voyages through the East Indies nonetheless resulted in long-lasting changes for both France and the world.
He rediscovered the islands then called New Zealand by the Dutch, who had dismissed them as inhabited by savage natives. La Pérouse, though, was able to establish mostly peaceful relations with the Mauré natives, and went on to popularise Autiaraux, the native name for the islands, as the definitive one.[100] La Pérouse’s voyage was responsible for an increased interest in the outside world by the Mauré, in particular because La Pérouse had introduced them to gunpowder. Though the French left behind only a few muskets with the Mauré iwis (tribes) they had had contact with, those iwis were swift to realise their usefulness. They initially lacked the industrial base to make their own weapons, but were able to duplicate the gunpowder. They both used this to keep their small number of muskets in use, and also to make crude bombs capable of breaking through the palisades of the pa forts of rival iwis. This dramatically changed the balance of power of the islands, with those iwis being first to adopt gunpowder weapons achieving an early dominance, and many longstanding powerful iwis being cast down and assimilated or enslaved by the powder users. A complex series of events followed over the next few decades (q.v.) ultimately ending in the national unification of the islands as a single Mauré state. This meant that the Mauré were one of the few classically ‘native’ peoples well prepared to resist any European or American attempts at colonialism later on.
La Pérouse famously mapped the southern coast of ‘New Holland’, discovering the more fertile lands there and planting the settlement of (Nouvelle) Albi, named after his birthplace.[101] He returned to France in 1789, a France by that time seething with the birth pangs of unrest, but was nonetheless able to obtain more funding and ships to expand the budding colony. La Pérouse left again for Nouvelle Holland, increasingly now called ‘Terre de la Pérouse’, mere months before the flames of revolution would ignite in 1794...
Chapter #14: A Man, a Plan, a Han—Japan!
“Writers of speculative romances seem, to my mind, overly enamoured with the Yapontsi islands. To presuppose that this cultural backwater could ever produce a great imperialistic power, as they fancifully see it, I believe speaks for itself in its absurdity.”
- From a 1970 speech by Dr Sanjaï Mathieu, Université de Trivandrum (English translation)
*
From—“A History of Russian Expansionism in the East, Volume II” (various authors, 1987):
After the Treaty of Stockholm in 1771, a new paradigm for the political spheres of influence in Central and Eastern Europe had emerged. Austria had been excluded from Polish affairs, save Galicia and the city of Kraków (then usually known by its German name of Krakau). The old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, noted for its unique governmental structure but having become sluggish and a puppet for outside powers, finally came to its end. Poland was brought into personal union with Prussia, while the Grand Duke of Lithuania became an ally of Russia, its Grand Duke being a hereditary post occupied by the current Russian Tsarevich. Sweden had been neutralised during the war by being promised Courland and the retention of northern Ducal Prussia, including the city of Königsburg, and this was confirmed by the Treaty.
Some commentators had predicted that this state of affairs was shaky and would only last a few years, inevitably leading to a second war. But events conspired against such forecasts. The Poles were certainly suspicious of their new Prussian rulers, given the two states’ history, and there were several uprisings in following years, mainly over the privileges of the Polish nobility (szlachta). A temporary settlement was soon reached with the most senior members of the szlachta being given the same rights as Prussian nobility. However, the unusual system of nobility in pre-partition Poland had meant that many even relatively poor people had szlachta status: fully ten percent of the population, in fact. The vast majority of these were excluded by necessity from the upper classes of the combined Prussian-Polish union, and remained a disenfranchised and restless minority for years to come.
If anything, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seemed an even more volatile proposition. Contemporary commentators’ general position was that the Lithuanians would sweat under Russian bull-in-a-china-shop demands for a few years, rise up, be crushed and the country finally be directly annexed to Russia. This was not an unreasonable suggestion, based on previous historical examples, but it failed to take into account just how seriously the Russian Tsarevich Paul (Pavel) took his new job as Grand Duke Povilas of Lithuania.[102] Although his relationship with his father Tsar Peter III remained relatively good, he continued to defend independent Lithuanian interests in the face of attempts by the court in St Petersburg to subordinate them to those of Russia and her own political factions.
Paul’s motivations in this seem to have been to carve out his own position of power not directly dependent on his father, for which he needed the support of the Lithuanians—d rather than it being the product of a genuine belief in the ideals of a fully independent Lithuania. His successors would differ in this respect, but years would pass before this became apparent. Paul promoted the Lithuanian language against the formerly prevalent Polish without trying to impose the Russian language as anything other than an equal alternative. He also limited the activities of the Orthodox Church, only giving it equal status alongside the Catholic Church rather than trying to impose Russian Orthodox pra
ctices on the population. The Lithuanian people were pleasantly surprised with this unexpectedly light-handed rule. There were still some uprisings, of course, but on the whole it seemed that against all the odds, a Russian ruler gave Lithuania more freedom to be Lithuanian than a Polish (or German, in the last few years) ruler had. At the same time, the new positions of the Orthodox Church and Russian language were gratefully received by the White Russian (or Belarusian) component of the Grand Duchy, effectively ensuring Paul enjoyed a broad range of support.
Paul instigated several national prestige projects during the 1780s to help feed the idea of the new Lithuania standing on its own two feet. One of the most important of these projects was the construction of a Lithuanian navy, known as the Patriotic Fleet. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had previously been too consumed by its own internal strife to construct much in the way of a Baltic navy of late, and had thus suffered somewhat in the wars for being unable to intercept raids from Sweden or other Baltic naval powers. Although Russia and Prussia had successfully bought off Sweden in the War of the Polish Partition, both governments, and particularly the Russians, were quite certain that this state of affairs was not sustainable. In particular, the Russians still had ambitions to conquer Finland, which would eventually require another war with Sweden. Sweden already had one of the largest and most powerful Baltic fleets, and the Swedish possession of the shipyards at Königsburg and Libau would only make this worse. Unless the Russians wanted to attempt to fight a war with Swedish troops able to land near St Petersburg with impunity, it was time to rectify the situation.
While Tsar Peter’s own shipyards were simply expanded and the existing Russian Baltic fleet renovated, the situation was more difficult for Grand Duke Paul. Lithuania had not had a history of shipbuilding for some years, although the territorial revisions at the Treaty of Stockholm had awarded her the valuable port of Memel, now known by its Lithuanian name of Klaipeda. While the city was vulnerable to Swedish attack from both north and south, Paul decided to build up Klaipeda into a major shipbuilding centre in order to give Lithuania a Baltic fleet of her own. This was both to supplement the Russian force in the event of war, and to be a patriotic project (hence the name) that would create jobs for Lithuanian workers and reinforce the idea that Lithuania was an independent ally of Russia, not merely a puppet.
Just as Peter the Great had when Russia had built her first navy, Paul decided to look to a more established nation of shipbuilders, the Dutch. Rather than going to the Netherlands himself as his great-grandfather had, Paul simply brought in Dutch (and other European) shipwrights, builders and sailors to expand Klaipeda and train his Lithuanian volunteers in shipbuilding and naval affairs. This ambitious project was surprisingly successful, though it is questionable whether the Dutch would have been so ready to help if they had known the long-term consequences of Lithuania gaining such naval power.
In the event, the much-anticipated Baltic war was postponed. In Sweden, the Cap party was enjoying a long period of dominance at the Riksdag, with the Hats’ policy of anti-Russian alignment and war largely discredited.[103] Austria suffered financial crises in the 1770s and 80s and, when she finally recovered a few years before the French Revolution, now had a government (led by Emperor Ferdinand IV) more interested in centralising the Holy Roman Empire and expanding Hapsburg influence in Italy than having another stab at Poland. Prussia remained too weak and too consumed with holding down Poland to make another attempt at recovering Silesia from Austria. Tsar Peter opposed, in the short term at least, a war with the Ottomans or trying to conquer the Crimean Khanate.[104] So, the potential catalysts of war lay largely silent for many years, and Russia and Lithuania were left with shiny new fleets and nothing to do with them.
Being Baltic forces, these navies consisted of a large number of oar-driven galleys, though these were finally starting to become obsolete, and a smaller number of sail-driven high seas vessels. From around 1784, the Patriotic Fleet adopted a policy of sending the latter oceanic navy on voyages around European ports, both to give their sailors more high seas experience and to ‘fly the flag’ for Lithuania abroad. These voyages succeeded in broadly changing former foreign impressions that Lithuania was nothing more than a puppet state of Russia, but they were also expensive propositions.One mission in 1788 even reached the Empire of North America, and carried a Lithuanian ambassador to attend the opening of the first Continental Parliament by George III.
That ambassador was born Benyovszky Móric, but has gone down in history by the Russified form of his name, Moritz Benyovsky.[105] His actual ethnic background is fiercely debated, with everyone from Germans to Poles to Slovaks trying to claim him, but scholarly opinion suggests he identified primarily as a Hungarian. This enigmatic character is one of the most colourful in Russian, or indeed world, history. Initially fighting for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Prussians during the War of the Polish Partition—commanding one of the few Commonwealth forces to achieve any coherent success during that conflict—he escaped from the Prussians and settled in Lithuania in 1772. He joined the new Lithuanian army and rose rapidly to the rank of colonel thanks to both the ramshackle nature of the makeshift army and his educated background. Possibly he initially intended to use this position of power to turn the army against the Russians in an uprising, but he caught the eye of Grand Duke Paul. Benyovsky entered the Lithuanian government, going from acting Minister for War to Foreign Minister and then leading the 1788 expedition to the Empire of North America.
However, Benyovsky’s greatest achievements were yet to come. Since the 1770s, Tsar Peter had become paranoid about equalling the achievements of his namesake, Peter the Great, and had decided that, like his grandfather, he must expand Russian power and control in the Far East. He balked at an ambitious invasion of Outer Manchuria drawn up by his generals: at the time, Qing China, though leaning towards a path of isolationism and decay, was still a formidable military power. Furthermore, such a plan would destroy the careful trade system with China that Russia had set up a century earlier at the Treaty of Nerchinsk. China was notoriously hard to open up to trade and it was foolish to risk the Russians’ earlier unusual success with this treaty. Even a victory and the conquest of Outer Manchuria could only lead to a loss of trade wealth from the rest of China. Peter instead decided on a course of action probably just as ambitious—to attempt to open up the land then known as Japan, closed to trade for a hundred and fifty years under the Tokugawa Shogunate.
An expedition from Yakutsk led by Pavel Lebedev-Lastoschkin had already failed to establish trade links with Japan in 1774. The Japanese feudal fiefdom in Edzo,[106] the Matsumae Han, had received him favourably but simply stated that they did not have the authority from the Shogun to trade. Japanese trade was restricted to two southern ports, Kanagawa which traded with China and Nagasaki which traded with the Netherlands—both of which were inconveniently far away from any Russian holdings.
Lebedev’s disappointing report spurred the Russian government to consider other approaches. Grand Duke Paul agreed to contribute three Lithuanian ships, his best crews, to add to four Russian vessels. These would set out from the Baltic to sail around the Old World with the supplies needed to expand the port at Okhotsk, and then would carry diplomats from both countries to attempt to establish trade links both at Matsumae-town in Edzo and, if necessary, in Nagasaki or in the capital Edo itself. As a logical progression from the Lithuanian flag-flying missions around Europe, the ships carried a fair number of elite troops with the intention of impressing the Japanese authorities. Peter took the opportunity to get rid of numerous Leib Guards whose competence was unquestioned but whom he thought, quite possibly accurately, still supported his exiled wife Catherine.
The Russian side of the mission was placed under the command of Adam Laxman, a Finnish-born officer who had formerly served in the Swedish navy; using foreign-born emissaries was a common practice in eighteenth-century Russia. The Lithuanian portion could have no other lead
er but Benyovsky, and Paul was quietly relieved to have the man safely a long way away. He was supremely capable but also ambitious and volatile. As the Japanese would learn...
The missions set sail in 1792 and, with the assistance of hired Dutch navigators, made the first recorded Russian and Lithuanian rounding of the Cape of Good Hope and passage of the Malacca straits.[107] This was a new approach to the previous overland attempts at establishing trade with the East, although scarcely less inconvenient. After observing Nagasaki from a distance in late 1794, the joint fleet proceeded to Okhotsk and began building up the port as ordered. By this point, the Jacobin Wars had broken out in Europe, but in faraway Okhotsk, this was not learned until almost five years later.
Laxman was dutiful, but the bombastic Benyovsky became impatient with the preliminaries and sailed directly to Edzo in 1795 in an attempt to establish a trade mission. Blown off course and with his men unfamiliar with the waters, they failed to find Matsumae-town and ended up making landfall elsewhere in Edzo. This meant that Benyovsky, exploring as usual, soon ran into a group of the indigenous Aynyu[108] people of the island. Viewing the experience as an opportunity to practice his negotiating skills with an alien people, he did manage to establish trade with them, mainly raw materials and food in exchange for Russian manufactured goods.