The Perryverse Timeline

The Perryverse is copyright @ 2009 by Robert Schmidt and Ryan Crierie.

Note: I haven't looked into this universe too deeply or cleaned up it's timeline yet; but at some point I will.

1854

During his Second Visit to Japan, Commodore Matthew Perry anchored off Formosa for about ten days, and Perry recommended that the United States occupy the island as a convenient mid-way trade point and that it was a very defensible position. President Franklin Pierce turned down his suggestion on the grounds that such a remote location would drain resources and would be unlikely to receive the consent of Congress.

Aftereffects of the Point of Divergence

1.) Easy Defensibility: Formosa (Taiwan) being a single largish island of 13,892 square miles with a coastline of only 973 miles; would have been much easier to defend than the Phillipine Archipelago of 7,107 islands (of which eighty are major islands) with a total of 22,549 miles of coastline.

2.) An Earlier Pacific War is a Possibility: A very likely time for a war is the 1890-1904 timeframe, when the U.S. Navy was still very much small, and Japan sort of had a Modern Army that wasn't hopelessly outclassed by European standards.

3.) Limited invasion of China: Due to the closeness of such a major (by then) U.S. Territory/Naval Base, the Japanese invasion of China in the thirties would probably have been limited, for fear of annoying the United States.