EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E
A History of the World since 1300
Jeremy Adelman, Princeton University
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C O U R S E L E C T U R E 1868 Japan: The Meiji Restoration Notes taken on November 26, 2015 by Edward Tanguay |
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development of state power is a condition for national identities
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the way nations were created often showed characteristics of the entities which nations wanted to overthrow, namely, empires
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so empires didn't slide off the historic stage but get reconstituted
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three categories of regimes after Napoleon
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1. some parts of the world still had empires which were in a steady but ineluctable state of long disintegration
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China
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India
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Spain
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Portugal
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Austro-Hungarian Empire
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Ottoman Empire
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multi-cultural, multi-denominational, multi-religious, often multi-linguistic
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had great trouble with states that could re-imagine themselves with the homogenous or claimed homogenous foundations of a nation
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these older stages become weaker as nations become stronger
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2. those in internal flux
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Africa
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Spanish America
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unable to reconstitute themselves as older imperial relics
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unable to mold themselves to mold themselves along national lines
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3. process of reconstituting themselves as nations
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political systems wielding resources that could bring national formations into being
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often absorbing features of empires in new ways
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these emerging states reconstituting themselves as nation in fact begin to feed off the old, disintegrating empires
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Ottoman Empire
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Austrio-Hungarians
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to lay claim to a national grandeur
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best example was Britain
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a national empire
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Britain could imagine itself of a nation state
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with cousin members
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Canada
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India
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Australia
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South Africa
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later re-branded itself as the Commonwealth (1949)
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most countries were trying to do what the British was doing
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another example: Japan
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Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868)
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had lived for a long state of relative isolation
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the shogunate had kicked out foreigners, the Dutch and the Portuguese
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had begun the process of integrating a unified state of feudal lordship
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sovereign emperor
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was hard to keep these foreigners out
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especially with the arrival of steam
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1853: Admiral Matthew Perry
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Perry was assigned a mission by President Millard Fillmore to force the opening of Japanese ports to American trade, through the use of gunboat diplomacy if necessary
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steamships known as The Black Ships
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the military elites of Japan very quickly understood that the game had changed
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the samurai realized that they had to meet this new challenge
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there was a technological gap
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highly motivated, they played a game of catch up
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tried to get rid of the fetters of progress
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tried to strengthen the military capability
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often in fact borrowing models of modernization from Europe and other places
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1868: Meiji Restorers
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overthrow of the old Tokugawa regime
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consolidated the political system under the Emperor of Japan
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introduced the Meiji period which spanned from 1868 to 1912 and was responsible for the emergence of Japan as a modernized nation in the early twentieth century
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the idea was that Meiji would restore the splendor and grandeur of Japan
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asserting the Emperor of the controlling force
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a national regime
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centralize power
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get rid of the old, localist systems
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national business elites supported by the states
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economic and social ballast for the new centralizing, powerful integrating regime
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1890s
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were able to show off this grandeur in a series of conflicts
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took on some emperial features
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took advantage of older regimes
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1894-1895:
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extruded outwards against China and Korea
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humiliating to the Chinese
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annexed many of the mainland
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Manchuria
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Korea
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enabled the Japanese to portray itself as a larger, integrated nation
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created schools
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literacy campaigns