SocietyEast Asia
The Meiji Restoration
Japan industrialises within one generation
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The Iwakura mission travelled for two years through the United States and Europe to study what worked and choose selectively: a Prussian army, a British navy, French law, American schooling. Japan is the clearest case that industrialisation did not require Western rule. The other side came fast: victory over China in 1895 and Russia in 1905, and then a colonial empire of its own.
For children
After American warships forced Japan open, the Japanese chose to change everything themselves: they abolished the samurai class, built railways and factories, and sent people abroad to learn. Within thirty years Japan was a great power.
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Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org