Japan treated Korea as a forward logistics base for an intended invasion of Ming China. Spanish colonial governors were also writing to Philip II about conquering China because the Ming state appeared weak from abroad. The Spanish scheme was still unworkable: its enormous supply line and the difficulty of controlling such a conquest would have doomed the expedition. The comparison shows how perceived weakness could invite imperial plans without making those plans operationally realistic.
Notable Point · 48:13-49:29
Why Spain also imagined conquering Ming China
Spanish colonial officials, like Hideyoshi, could read Ming weakness as an invitation to conquest, but perception did not make a transoceanic invasion workable.