Meiji Restoration:

Meiji Restoration:
- In 1868 the Tokugawa shôgun ("great general"), who ruled Japan in the feudal period,
lost his power and the emperor was restored to the supreme position.
- The emperor took the name Meiji ("enlightened rule") as his reign name; this event was
known as the Meiji Restoration.

When the Meiji period ended, with the death of the emperor in 1912, Japan had
- a highly centralized, bureaucratic government;
- a constitution establishing an elected parliament;
- a well-developed transport and communication system;
- a highly educated population free of feudal class restrictions;
- an established and rapidly growing industrial sector based on the latest technology; and
- a powerful army and navy.

Causes of the Japanese Industrial Revolution:

- External: Warships sent by the USA as a threat to start trading with the Western world
- Internal: hierarchy destroyed, daimyos going against shoguns, artisans revolting,
peasants revolting
- External Fear of getting invaded by European powers

Political Reforms:
- Modernizing Japan
- Assemblies
- Jobs for all classes specific
- Democracy
- Only rich men could vote

Military Reforms:
- The Navy in Britain was the best so I took inspiration from them
- Protect borders to avoid invasions
- Colonizing Different countries: Korea, Manchuria

Social Reforms:
- Improve in infrastructure
- Transportation, roads, railways improvement
- Fural hierarchy was destroyed, and new social systems were introduced
- The economy was open, parents sent students to a foreign school
- Equality and fairness
Economic Reforms:
- Policies made for industries
- Investments in infrastructure
- Abolished monopolies
- Increase in foreign trade
- Sakoku: policy of keeping a closed economy

Treaty of Kanagawa - Unfair Treaty:

- The USA didn’t allow to put tariffs on imports
- USA citizens were allowed to commit crimes and would not be punished
- The USA wanted to be known as the most ‘Powerful Country’, preventing Japan from
being able to industrialize more than it already had

Impacts of Unequal Treaties: Japan

1. Lead to political changes → falling of shoguns → new empire
2. 14 years of disturbance → Meiji took over (dictator)
3. Meiji moved from Kyoto to Tokyo and made Tokyo the capital
4. Meiji enhanced the country and improved its military
5. Japan sent a delegate to the West to negotiate for an unequal treaty - the mission failed
because they were unable to negotiate - rapidly started industrialization and finished
within 30 years

Japanese Industrial Revolution:

In 1839 and 1856 Asian nations were shocked by Britain's crushing victories over China in the
two Opium Wars. Industrialization—it was now pretty clear—gave massive advantages to
European nations, including more money and better weapons. In Asia, China had been the
dominant power and richest economy. But the British navy, using new artillery and gunboats,
easily defeated China's much larger military. These wars demonstrated that European
technology had far outpaced China's. Across the East China Sea, the Japanese were
determined not to fall behind the Europeans the way China had. The result was the 1868
political transformation known as the Meiji Restoration. Drawing from both Western models and
Japanese traditions, the Meiji Restoration allowed Japan to develop into a modern industrial
nation-state that rivaled European nations in both military and economic power.
By the nineteenth century, an emperor had reigned in Japan for around 1,500 years. But from
1185 to 1868, the actual emperor held very little power. It was the shogunate (government run
by a shogun) that dominated Japanese politics. The shogun was a military leader who held
power as a hereditary dictator. While the emperor reigned as a "god on Earth", he was really
just a figurehead with some religious authority. Japan was divided into several different
regions controlled by daimyo. Daimyo were feudal lords who controlled their lands with the
aid of samurai. The samurai were an educated military class who were granted land in return
for military service to a daimyo.
The Tokugawa family took control of the shogunate around 1600, bringing some welcome
stability after a period of unrest. The Tokugawa shogunate established strong control over
local daimyo, and enforced traditional, Confucian policies. This prohibited peasants (around
80% of the population) from working any job other than farming. The Tokugawa were also
extremely suspicious of European influence. In 1636, the shogun announced the Act of
Seclusion, which made it illegal for Westerners to trade in Japan. (Well, the Dutch were
granted a single trading outpost in Nagasaki, but they were treated with suspicion.) Though
Japanese merchants could still trade in China and Korea, the Act of Seclusion effectively cut
the Japanese off from Europeans.
Japan's isolationist policies worked for over 200 years, but the Tokugawa shoguns couldn't block
foreign interference forever. On July 8, 1853, four American naval ships under the command of
Commodore Perry anchored in Tokyo harbor as a kind of "shall we trade or shall we fight?"
message. Since the Japanese didn't have a navy, they knew they couldn't fight Perry's small
squadron. Instead, they opened up negotiations with the Americans. Through Perry, US
President Fillmore forced Japan to open its harbors to US trade, breaking the centuries-long
prohibition against foreign trade. This opened up Japan to European ideas, but the introduction
of foreign money into Japanese markets happened too quickly. It destabilized the economy.
Japan had just witnessed the Opium Wars in China—an apparent outcome of doing business
with the West—and were now on high alert to avoid a similar conflict.
The shogun's domestic polices made matters worse and tensions arose as people blamed the
shogun for their problems. The shogun appointed many lower-ranking samurai to official
government positions. Normally this was a great promotion, but Japanese society had a rigid
hierarchy that prevented these men from actually having samurai-level power. Many of these
lower-ranking samurai became disillusioned. They already felt like the upper class was abusing
them, and now they believed that the Tokugawa shogun was endangering Japanese
sovereignty by letting in foreign influence. So they used their loyalty as a weapon. The
lower-ranked samurai undermined the shogun by glorifying the emperor. Their slogan was
sonnō jōi—"Revere the emperor, Expel the barbarian." These rebellious factions attacked
foreigners at Japanese ports, and caused local uprisings against the shogun. The attacks alone
could not end the shogunate, but they greatly weakened the shogun's position among the elites.
Meiji Restoration: Samurai leaders from southern regions began to advise the new emperor,
Meiji. The emperor was only 14 at the time, and the samurai used their influence over him to
politically restructure Japan. They increased pressure on Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last
shogun, stressing the shogunate's failure to protect Japanese interests. Yoshinobu stepped
down, then soon rebelled against those who had replaced him, only to be even more firmly
defeated. The emperor's position as the sovereign leader of Japan had been reasserted… in
theory. In reality, the Japanese government was now controlled by the emperor's new
samurai advisors.
Unlike many of the revolutions in Europe and the Americas during the long nineteenth century,
the Meiji restoration was not a liberal, democratic event. The uprising was not led by oppressed
masses fighting for more rights. Instead, it was the elites (okay, lower-ranking elites, but still
much higher status than most of the population) who forced a change in the existing political
organization of Japan. Though the new government adopted Western technologies and
instituted reforms based on Western models, Japan didn't become a European-style state.
Rather, the reformers used Western ideas to reconfigure and reorganize the government while
still holding on to some Japanese traditions. In many ways, Japan became a model for
colonized people around the world. They had learned from their enemies' strategies and beaten
them at their own game. The Meiji Restoration transformed Japan. The government became
centralized around the figure of the emperor, and the political system now allowed people to
pursue new opportunities. Japan also underwent rapid industrialization. That meant the
Japanese people experienced social changes, including better education and increased rights
and opportunities. At the same time, it created new tensions as focus (and money) was
concentrated on urban industrialization at the expense of rural farmers. Japan was so
committed to keeping pace with Western developments, it quickly became recognized as a
world power.

Britain Industrial Revolution:

Why Britain?:
- An increasing population boosted demand for food and goods, for example cloth
- Britain had extensive resources that were put to no use
- Britain had an expanding economy to support industrialization
- Highly developed banking system → encouraged by the availability of bank loans to
invest in new machinery and expand their operations.
- Political stability
- They had land, labour, and wealth

Inventions of agricultural revolution:

Crop rotation - Used to prevent nutriants for plants, crops, and soil
enclosures (fenses, barriers) - People covered their land
Impact of industrialization on normal lives:
- People could earn higher wages than they could in farms
- They could afford to heat their houses
- Living Conditions Because England’s cities grew rapidly, they had no development
plans, sanitary codes, or building codes.
- They lacked adequate housing, education, and police protection for the people who
poured in from the countryside to seek jobs.
- Workers lived in dark, dirty shelters, with a whole family living in one room

The Luddites: A secret organization in which people violently opposed to technological change
and the riots put down to the introduction of new machinery in the wool industry. Luddites were
protesting against changes they thought would make their lives much worse.

Labour Unions: Group of workers that would fight against poor working conditions in factories,
and if the government does not take action, the labour unions will move on to strikes and would
stop working which would cause the entire country to struggle.

Benefits:
- Efficient and time saving
- Faster production
- Increase in trades
- Innvention of new products
- Improved Economy

Disadvantages:
- Poor working conditions
- Pollution
- Unemployment
- Difference between rich and poor increases
- Child labour