Reform from Within: Meiji Japan, Qing China and the Ottoman Empire

Reform or be ruled

By the mid-1800s, leaders in Asia and the Middle East could see what had happened to India and what was happening to China. Industrial powers had steamships, modern rifles and huge economies. Many rulers asked: how can we become strong enough to keep our independence? Their answer was defensive modernization: adopting new technology, armies, schools and laws, while trying to keep their own identity. The results varied enormously.

Japan: the Meiji Restoration

From the 1630s, Japan's Tokugawa shoguns had strictly limited contact with Europeans. In 1853 and 1854, US Commodore Matthew Perry arrived with steam-powered warships and forced Japan to open ports. Treaties in 1858 were unequal, like China's: foreigners gained extraterritoriality and low fixed tariffs.

Many samurai blamed the shogun for weakness. In 1868, rebels from the domains of Satsuma and Chōshū overthrew the shogunate and "restored" power to the young Emperor Meiji. In practice, a group of reforming leaders ran the government. Their slogan was "rich country, strong army". Another popular phrase, "Japanese spirit, Western technique", expressed the hope of borrowing Western methods without losing Japanese identity.

Major reforms:

• Centralization: in 1871 the old feudal domains were replaced by prefectures governed from Tokyo.
• End of the samurai class: samurai lost their privileges and stipends. Some rebelled; the government's new conscript army crushed the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877.
• Conscription (1873) created a national army of commoners.
• Education: a national school system (from 1872) aimed at universal elementary education.
• Learning from abroad: the Iwakura Mission (1871–1873) toured the United States and Europe; Japan hired foreign experts and sent students overseas.
• Industry: state-built railways (Tokyo–Yokohama, 1872), model factories such as the Tomioka silk mill (1872), and later large family-run business groups (zaibatsu).
• Constitution: the Meiji Constitution of 1889, influenced by Prussia's, created an elected Diet (parliament) but kept great power with the emperor and the army.

By the 1890s, Western powers agreed to end extraterritoriality. Japan defeated China in 1894–1895 and took Taiwan. Japan had become an imperial power itself. Expansion also had a domestic side: Japan annexed the Ryukyu Kingdom (Okinawa) in 1879 and colonized Hokkaido, where the Indigenous Ainu people lost land and faced assimilation policies. Ainu communities continue to work for recognition of their rights and culture today.

Qing China: Self-Strengthening and its limits

After the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion, Qing officials such as Zeng Guofan, Li Hongzhang and Prince Gong launched the Self-Strengthening Movement (about 1861–1895). They set up a foreign affairs office, a school for translators, modern arsenals and shipyards (such as the Jiangnan Arsenal and the Fuzhou Navy Yard), steamship and mining companies, telegraphs, and a modern navy, the Beiyang Fleet. The guiding idea, later summed up by the official Zhang Zhidong, was to keep Chinese learning as the foundation while using Western learning for practical purposes.

The reforms produced real results, but they were limited:

• They were led by regional officials, not a united central government, and were often underfunded.
• The court, increasingly dominated by the Empress Dowager Cixi, resisted deep political change, and the civil service examination system still trained officials in the Confucian classics.
• China was huge, its government was under financial pressure from indemnities, and foreign powers kept intervening.

Defeat by Japan in 1895 was a shock. In 1898 the young Guangxu Emperor, advised by reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, issued decrees for sweeping change in education, government and the economy: the Hundred Days' Reform. Conservatives led by Cixi ended it with a coup and put the emperor under house arrest. Deeper reforms came only after 1901, too late to save the dynasty (see The World since 1900).

The Ottoman Empire: the Tanzimat

The Ottoman Empire faced nationalist revolts (Greece, Serbia), a powerful Russia, and the near-independence of Egypt. Sultan Mahmud II destroyed the old Janissary corps in 1826 and built a new army. Then came the Tanzimat ("Reorganization"):

• The Gülhane Edict (1839) promised security of life and property, fair taxation and regular conscription for all subjects.
• The Reform Edict (1856) promised equality of Muslims, Christians and Jews before the law.
• New courts, law codes, schools, a modern bureaucracy, and the telegraph and railways strengthened the central state.

A group of liberal intellectuals, the Young Ottomans, pushed for a constitution, and in 1876 Sultan Abdülhamid II granted one, with an elected parliament. But after war with Russia, he suspended both in 1878 and ruled as an autocrat for thirty years, while continuing to modernize schools, railways and the telegraph. Financial trouble was severe: the empire defaulted on its debts in 1875, and from 1881 a European-controlled Ottoman Public Debt Administration collected key revenues. In 1894–1896, mass killings of Armenians, mainly in eastern Anatolia (estimates of the dead range from about 100 000 to 300 000), showed the deadly limits of the promise of equality. Opposition grew among the Young Turks, whose story continues in the next unit.

Egypt and Siam

• Egypt: Muhammad Ali (ruled 1805–1848) built a modern army, state factories and schools, sent students to France, and expanded cotton exports. His successors built railways and the Suez Canal (opened 1869), but borrowed heavily. Debt led to European financial control, and after a nationalist revolt led by Ahmed Urabi, Britain occupied Egypt in 1882.
• Siam (Thailand): Kings Mongkut and Chulalongkorn reformed government, schools and the army, gradually abolished slavery, and played Britain and France against each other. Siam stayed independent as a buffer between British Burma and French Indochina, though it gave up some territory.