Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Bombing of Kagoshima Map - 1863

Bombardment of Kagoshima

 * Reason:This is a lovely, informative Victorian map that sets out the details of the 1863 bombardment of Kagoshima simply and clearly. A complex series of events are made wonderfully clear and comprehensible.
 * Proposed caption:In 1862, in what became known as the Namamugi Incident, one Britishman was killed and two wounded for refusing, after being so ordered, to show respect as Shimazu Hisamitsu, a powerful Japanese nobleman, rode by. The Japanese authorities of Satsuma Province refused to apologise, pay the requested fine, or turn over the samurai responsible since execution was the accepted punishment for failure to show respect to a daimyo, and anti-foreigner sentiment in Japan made submission to British demands politcally dangerous.

The British responded by sending a fleet of seven warships to extract vengeance. When the Japanese continued to refuse their demands, the warships bombarded Kagoshima, burning and pillaging ships and fortresses as they went, but were eventually chased off by the Japanese guns. Five Japanese were killed, and eleven British, including, as shown on the map, Captain Josling and Commander Wilmot with one cannonball.

While many buildings were destroyed, politically, the incident was a success for Satsuma Province, and was even declared a victory. However, further negotiations led to the payment of a fine, in exchange for an agreement by Britain to supply steam warships to Satsuma. The incident was, ironically, the start of a close relationship between the two powers, and by the time of the Boshin War of 1868, Satsuma Province and Great Britain were allies.
 * Articles this image appears in:Bombardment of Kagoshima Kagoshima, Kagoshima
 * Creator:John Dower


 * Support as nominator Vanished user talk 21:46, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment This surely has been set to black & white. I thought it was just a usual map until I read that it's from 1863.  Why was the background edited out?  I believe it could should be downsampled, as the hand-drawn lines have aliasing throughout. Puddyglum 07:42, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It's from a newspaper. This is a scan of a photocopy, as the original may not leave the library. The newspaper has preserved well, so at worst a very slight greyness has been lost. It has not been downsampled, but tilt correction was applied. Vanished user talk 14:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Comment There is what looks like a stitching error on the top border, and I'm thinking it wasn't just poor 1863 printing because, below the border break is a label "OUNDARY & FACTORY" which I assume originally read "FOUNDARY & FACTORY" Enuja  (talk) 02:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Like that in the original, I fear. This was scanned in one go. The printing method involved breaking up the image into several blocks - I presume that's where one was slightly misaligned. Vanished user talk 16:03, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

MER-C 05:37, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
 * —Julia\talk 18:23, 20 April 2012 (UTC)