In British Engagement with Japan, 1854–1922: The Origins and Course of an Unlikely Alliance, Anthony Best, a distinguished scholar of Anglo-Japanese relations, is concerned in with exploring the increasing entanglement between Britain and Japan in the period up to and including that of their formal alliance (1902–1922). This alliance, Best argues, was quietly pivotal for both countries. For Britain, it symbolized the end of “splendid isolation” and the beginning of a process of international reengagement that would culminate in the First World War. For Japan, it marked the Meiji regime's full entry into the arena of global politics, fifty years after the end of the Sakoku policy of isolation. This debut would attract much wider attention two years later, with the successful Japanese prosecution of war with Russia in 1904–5.

For Best, the conventional narrative of the formation of this alliance, drawn from the field of diplomatic history and stressing the importance of orthodox realpolitikal considerations, is inadequate. Instead, he pushes his chronology backwards, probing the long-term causes that led powerful decision makers in both countries (as well as significant sections of their broader populations) to view the other as a potential ally. Beginning with 1853–54 and Japan's emergence from isolation, Best gives particularly full treatment to the question of what possessed Britain, the greatest power in the world, in the age of the so-called Yellow Peril and scientific racism, to hitch itself to an obscure Asian nation on the other side of the world and to maintain that alliance for two decades in the face of deep-seated cultural and racial prejudices.

Over the course of the late nineteenth century, the British came to believe that Japan was an atypical Asian country: one worthy of the trust and responsibilities embodied in a formal alliance. The emergence of this view was an incremental process, taking place over the course of half a century. Best identifies four clear stages in that development. The first of these spanned from 1854 to the late 1870s, during which Britain's view of Japan was one of mild interest in a society that seemed to be slightly less backwards than its Asian neighbors (that is, China, which, in the first throes of its century of humiliation, was rapidly spiraling downward at the time).

The tone of the relationship began to shift around 1880, as British leaders became increasingly impressed by Japan's accelerating program of modernization. This period of deepening respect was capped in 1894 by the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce. But respect soon gave way to outright admiration as a result of Japan's victory (and “responsible” behavior [91]) in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–95). Finally, Japan earned not just plaudits but Britain's trust during the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901), when it aided the Western imperial powers in subduing the turbulence in China. It was at this point that the creation of formal alliance between Britain and Japan became a realistic possibility for Whitehall.

During the years of the alliance itself, the British government worked hard to control and suppress the continued racial hostility to Japan which still existed in the public sphere. One of Best's major innovations vis-à-vis the conventional account of the Anglo-Japanese alliance is his attention to the significant role race and racism played in the story of the relationship between the two nations. He tries to square the circle of existing diplomatic and cultural historiography to explain why the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was not met with broad public outcry, when much scholarship—influenced by concepts of Orientalism and a global “colour bar” (5)—has emphasized the strength of racial prejudice against the Japanese in Britain and its colonies, ranging from the patronizing and humorous to the nakedly hostile.

Best stresses the diversity and multiplicity that existed among British responses to Japan. He emphasizes the centrality of the concept of civilization rather than race to British discourse at this time, the difference being that while racial characteristics were immutable, nations and peoples could move up and down the ladder of civil progress. Japan, to some British observers, was a prime example of a nation dedicated to advancing its place in the order of civilizations, rejecting the Asiatic barbarism of its past and embracing a modern, Westernized future. Best urges those scholars who have focused exclusively on hostile responses to Japan founded on racial animus to broaden their base of primary evidence. He himself draws on a variety of unpublished and previously unstudied sources, including diaries, letters, and travelogues, to capture a more varied range of responses and beliefs.

In particular, Best argues that greater scholarly attention ought to be paid to the formation of attitudes among the British elites. It was this group, after all, that actually had the power to shape the nature of Anglo-Japanese relations. And though most of them did not travel to the East themselves, it would be false to say that their only experience of Japan was vicarious and mediated. After all, just by staying in London in this period, elite Britons could encounter the plethora of Japanese princes, financiers, diplomats, and scholars who came to experience the capital of their new ally for themselves. Best also stresses the hitherto neglected importance of both business links and what he calls “symbolic diplomacy” (7)—the mutual extension of representations of esteem and respect, including through royal diplomacy—for the tightening of bonds between the two countries.

This valuable monograph might be read profitably in conjunction with other recent research covering similar ground. Cees Heere, over a shorter timescale, has also grappled with the centrality of the issue of race to the Anglo-Japanese relationship in Empire Ascendant: The British World, Race, and the Rise of Japan, 1894–1914 (2019), and Yu Suzuki has explored the importance of Chinese power on the course of that relationship's development in the years leading up to the First Sino-Japanese War in Britain, Japan and China, 1876–1895: East Asian International Relations before the First Sino–Japanese War (2021).