Although their approach to modernization and imperialism was different China and Japan agreed that

• Both China and the Ottoman Empire became more reliant on Western finance than Japan.
• Both China and the Ottoman Empire experienced occupation of some of their territory by Western military forces; Japan did not.
• China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan all were forced by Western powers to sign unequal treaties or capitulations, but Japan eventually was able to renegotiate its treaties in its favor.
• All three launched modernization programs, but Japan's was more thorough and more successful than those of China and the Ottoman Empire, turning Japan into a modern, united, industrial nation.
• A number of factors can explain the differences in how they experienced Western imperialism, including the amount of internal strife within each state, the strategic and economic importance to European powers of the Ottoman Empire and China as compared to Japan, and the relatively late and fortuitous timing of Japan's interactions with Western powers.

• The accomplishments of the Industrial Revolution, including the unlocking of the secrets of nature and the creation of a society that enjoyed unprecedented wealth, led Europeans to develop a secular arrogance that fused with or in some cases replaced their long-standing notions of religious superiority.
• Increasingly, Europeans viewed the culture and achievements of Asian and African peoples through the prism of a new kind of racism, expressed now in terms of modern science. Europeans used allegedly scientific methods to classify humans, concluding that whites were more advanced. Collectively, these studies created a hierarchy of race, with whites on top and less developed "child races" beneath them.
• The belief among Europeans that they were the superior race led to a further set of ideas that European expansion was inevitable and that Europeans were fated to dominate the "weaker races." They saw it as their duty to undertake a "civilizing mission" that included bringing Christianity to the heathens, good government to disordered lands, work discipline and production for the market to "lazy natives," a measure of education to the ignorant and illiterate, clothing to the naked, and health care to the sick, while suppressing "native customs" that ran counter to Western ways of living.
• The idea of social Darwinism made imperialism, war, and aggression in Africa and Asia seem both natural and progressive, for they served to weed out the weaker peoples of the world, allowing the stronger to flourish.

• China's population grew rapidly between 1685 and 1853, but agricultural production was unable to keep up; this led to growing pressure on the land, smaller farms for China's huge peasant population, and, in all too many cases, unemployment, impoverishment, misery, and starvation.
• China's centralized bureaucratic state did not enlarge itself to keep pace with the growing population and lost influence at the local level to provincial officials and local gentry, who tended to be more corrupt and harsh.
• Peasants frequently embraced rebellion, finding leadership in charismatic figures who proclaimed a millenarian religious message.
• Peasants also increasingly articulated their opposition to the Qing dynasty on account of its foreign Manchurian origins.
• The Taiping Uprising between 1850 and 1864 found its inspiration in a unique form of Christianity.

• It launched a program of "defensive modernization" that included the establishment of new military and administrative structures alongside traditional institutions as a means of enhancing and centralizing state power.
• Ambassadors were sent to the courts of Europe to study administrative methods, and European advisers were imported.
• Technical schools to train future officials were established.
• The Tanzimat, or reorganization, emerged in the several decades after 1839 as the Ottoman leadership sought to provide the economic, social, and legal underpinnings for a strong and newly recentralized state. Manifestations of this process included the establishment of factories producing cloth, paper, and armaments; modern mining operations; reclamation and resettlement of agricultural land; telegraphs, steamships, railroads, and a modern postal service; Western-style law codes and courts; and new elementary and secondary schools.
• The legal status of the empire's diverse communities was changed in an effort to integrate non-Muslim subjects more effectively into the state. As part of this process, the principle of equality of all citizens before the law was accepted.

• The Young Ottomans defined the empire as a secular state whose people were loyal to the dynasty that ruled it, rather than a primarily Muslim state based on religious principles. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, this group argued that the empire needed to embrace Western technical and scientific knowledge, while rejecting its materialism. In pursuit of these goals, the group argued that it was possible to find in Islam itself the basis for freedom, progress, rationality, and patriotism.
• During the reactionary reign of Sultan Abd al- Hamid II, a second identity took shape, in which the empire was defined as a despotic state with a pan- Islamic identity.
• Opposition to Abd al-Hamid II coalesced around another identity associated with the Young Turks, who were led by both military and civilian elites. They largely abandoned any reference to Islam and advocated instead a militantly secular public life. Some among them began to think of the

empire as neither a dynastic state nor a pan-Islamic empire, but rather as a Turkish national state.

• Japan enjoyed internal peace between 1600 and 1850.
• Japan agreed to a series of unequal treaties with various Western powers in order to avoid the problems of China, which initially resisted such treaties.
• Japan, unlike China or the Ottoman Empire, sought in the aftermath of the Meiji restoration to save Japan from foreign domination by a thorough transformation of Japanese society, drawing upon all that the modern West had to offer.
• The Meiji restoration was less destructive than the Taiping Uprising, which left Japan in a better position to reform.
• Japan was of less interest to Western powers than either China or the Ottoman Empire, allowing it to reform while under less pressure.
• The reforms instituted following the Meiji restoration transformed Japan far more thoroughly than even the most radical of the Ottoman or Chinese efforts.
• Japan industrialized more thoroughly than either China or the Ottoman Empire.
• Japan did not become as dependent on foreign capital as the Ottoman Empire.
Q. In what ways was Japan changing during the Tokugawa era?
• The samurai, in the absence of wars to fight, evolved into a salaried bureaucratic or administrative class.
• Centuries of peace contributed to a remarkable burst of economic growth, commercialization, and urban development.
• Japan became perhaps the world's most urbanized country.
• Education led to high rates of literacy.
• Merchants prospered but enjoyed little rise in social status. This, coupled with samurai who enjoyed high social status but were often indebted to inferior merchants, led to social tension.
• Peasants often moved to the cities to take on new trades.
• Corruption undermined the Tokugawa regime.
• A mounting wave of local peasant uprisings and urban riots expressed the grievances of the poor.

• Its cumulative effect was revolutionary because it included an attack on the power and privileges of both the daimyo and the samurai and their replacement with governors responsible to the central government.
• It dismantled the old Confucian-based social order through the abolition of class restrictions on occupation, residence, marriage, and clothing, and dismantled limitations on travel and trade.
• It was revolutionary in Japan's study of the science and technology of the West and of its various political and constitutional arrangements, its legal and educational systems, and its dances, clothing, hairstyles, and literature.
• It was characterized by a selective borrowing of Western ideas, combining foreign and Japanese elements in distinctive ways.
• It resulted in a state-guided industrialization program. And, of course, industrialization was as revolutionary in Japan as it was in any other agricultural society of the world.

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