Ryukyu Kingdom

Overview

The Ryukyu Kingdom was a kingdom in the Ryukyu Islands from 1429 until 1872, when it was reorganized as the Ryukyu Domain, before being fully abolished in 1879. It was ruled as a tributary state of the Ming dynasty by the Ryukyuan monarchy, who unified Okinawa Island to end the Sanzan period, and subsequently extended the kingdom to the Amami Islands and Sakishima Islands. The Ryukyu Kingdom played a central role in the maritime trade networks of medieval East Asia and Southeast Asia despite its small size. The Ryukyu Kingdom became a vassal state of the Satsuma Domain of Japan after the invasion of Ryukyu in 1609 but retained de jure independence until it was transformed into the Ryukyu Domain by the Empire of Japan in 1872. The Ryukyu Domain was abolished by the Meiji government in 1879 and reorganized as Okinawa Prefecture, and the Ryukyuan monarchy was integrated into the new Japanese nobility.

Wikipedia: Ryukyu Kingdom·CC BY-SA 4.0

Borders & accuracy

Solid borders are reconstructed from canonical historical-basemap data or hand-crafted from scholarly atlases.

• SOURCEhand-crafted from scholarly atlases
• DETAILhand-traced-from:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_Kingdom
• SNAPSHOT1600
• POLITY TYPEstate

Okinawa archipelago at 1600 height: Amami in north to Yonaguni in southwest. Sakishima incorporated by 1500.

Also during this period

No conflict record yet names this polity as a belligerent; these overlap its dates only.

• Taiping Rebellion1850–64
  World-changing · 30M dead
• Thirty Years' War1618–48
  World-changing · 8.0M dead
• Portuguese Conquest of Brazil1500–1750
  World-changing · 5.0M dead
• American Indian Wars1500–1800
  World-changing · 5.0M dead
• Qing Conquest of Ming China1618–83
  World-changing · 5.0M dead
• French Wars of Religion1562–98
  World-changing · 4.0M dead