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14 - Self-strengthening and other political responses to the expansion of European economic and political power

from Part III - Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2015

By
R. Bin Wong
Edited by
J. R. McNeill  and
Kenneth Pomeranz
J. R. McNeill
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Kenneth Pomeranz
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Summary

The nineteenth century was an era of European industrialization and empire-building. Political leaders in Asia and Africa variously succumbed to different kinds of foreign political authority or negotiated understandings with Western political and economic interests. Across South and Southeast Asia, only the Thai monarchy was a government able to contemplate a plan of political reform that acknowledged the need to change political institutions in order to survive in a Western dominated world. It is in East Asia that one can see conscious efforts to respond to Western threats. Aware of the expansion of European power into East Asia and the self-strengthening efforts made by the Chinese and Japanese, reform-minded Korean officials began to pursue some of the political changes undertaken in these two other East Asian countries. What the Chinese and Japanese did was to integrate emulation of Western practices producing power and wealth with domestic political priorities and economic institutions in ways that proved durable.

Keywords

European miracleglobal environmental sustainabilityAsian pathSoutheast Asiatechnological developmentpostwar economic developmentmultipolar perspectiveglobal industrialization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge World History , pp. 366 - 394
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2015

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References

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