Adam Laxman’s Expedition in the Colonial Conflict in the North Pacific

Abstract

This article examines the history of the emergence of official Russian-Japanese relations in the late eighteenth century. The work focuses on unique archival materials from the SARC, RSA of the Navy, MD RSL, RSAAA, etc. The article refers to collections of documents, works by V. N. Berkha and E. A. Bolkhovitinov, and modern authors. The author analyses the first contacts between Russia and Japan, which became the prerequisites for the 1792–1793 expedition of Adam Laxman to Japan. Also, he studies the role of Dembei, San’emon, Sōza, and Gonza, the first Japanese nationals who visited Russia, in the development of Russian-Japanese relations and the study of Japanese culture and the Japanese language in Russia. In light of the struggle for colonies in the North Pacific in the late eighteenth century, the article also considers a peaceful but quick way of establishing relations, characteristic of Russia at that time, opposed to Japan’s desire to ritualise and slow down this process. The optimism, widely spread in the late eighteenth century in the establishment of trade and diplomatic relations, was fuelled, on the one hand, by numerous petitions from merchants with a request to establish trade with Japan and, on the other hand, by the desire of the state to win the struggle for spheres of influence in the North Pacific, in which Great Britain actively participated in the 1790s. Despite the success of Adam Laxman’s expedition, this approach to establishing international relations between countries was not to be preserved, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, it was replaced by a military-coercive one.