India, China, and Japan's Responses to Western Imperialism

Introduction: European Expansion and Asian Responses

European exploration of the world was undertaken in the 1500s in an attempt to reach the markets of Asia. Once they reached the East, Europeans quickly found that their technological superiority gave them a strategic advantage over the Asian countries they encountered. As a result, the West entered a period of colonial imperialism whereby European nations, followed later by the Americans, occupied and administered entire regions of Asia as colonies to be economically exploited. The Asian countries of India, China, and Japan reacted differently to the predations of the West, with markedly different results. India was completely conquered, China was conquered to a degree, and Japan ultimately started conquering others. These three different outcomes were due in part to the stability of each nation and in part to the ability of each to adapt and modernize.

India: Conquest, Exploitation, and the Rise of Nationalism

The origins of British rule in India began with the British East India Company, which established trading posts in India in the early 1600s. At that time the Mughal Empire, which had ruled most of India for centuries, was in a period of decline, and by the early 1700s had fragmented into several small, independent states each ruled by a Maharaja (McLeod, 2002). The British East India Company, using its military technological superiority, embarked on a policy of "divide and conquer" by which it expanded its direct control over Indian territory. Sometimes through war and other times by insinuating itself into local conflicts, the British consolidated their hold on India. The Indian people's divisiveness gave the British the opportunity to conquer all.

At first, the British East India Company was in direct control, complete with company troops to enforce company policy. However, the Company's rule was more profit-oriented than administratively sound; it abused and plundered local populations with no regard for the Indians or their culture. The Indian people rebelled in 1857, and the British government was forced to assume direct control in 1859 (Danielou, 2003). Under British government leadership, India was transformed into a colony of the British Empire — a place to be exploited for raw materials and used as a market for British goods. Britain introduced the railroad, which allowed for the transportation of people and raw materials as well as the introduction of new products. The British also destroyed local industries. For example, India had possessed a thriving textile industry before the British arrived, but due to British concerns for their own textile sector, the Indian textile industry was dismantled. India became a place to grow cotton, opium, and other cash crops for the British to use in manufacturing finished products, which were in turn sold back to the Indians.

The influx of British products brought another change to India. Between the years 1859 and 1914, it partially transformed India into a modern country. "By 1914, India showed some features of a developed Western economy, such as technological modernization…" (McLeod, 2002). India was slowly modernized through the introduction of railroads, steam engines, the telegraph, and other Western technology. Railways and telegraphs made administration and transportation easier for rulers and merchants alike. Steam engines generated more efficient production, but primarily for the benefit of British industrialists rather than the Indians themselves.

The wave of nationalism that spread around the world at the end of the First World War generated feelings of independence throughout the British Empire, particularly in India. The transportation and communication infrastructure built for the benefit of the conquerors now became the means to spread nationalist ideas. During the colonial period, the British had used economic means to control the Indians — for example, the production of certain necessities of life, such as salt and cloth, was regulated by the British. As a means of protest, Indians began to produce some of these simple products themselves, reintroducing native industries. Indeed, the father of Indian nationalism, Gandhi, "threw himself into preaching the gospel of cotton spinning to the peasantry" (James, 1998). Industry became a tactic of opposition to British rule, and in 1947 Britain granted Indian independence.

Unlike the situations the Westerners encountered in China and Japan, the British came to India at the beginning of a period of chaos and disunity, and exploited that fragmentation to expand their control. They then destroyed all native industries and used India as a source of raw materials and a market for finished British products. However, the British introduction of modern infrastructure would eventually form the basis for a resurgence of Indian nationalism. That nationalism in turn became the source of an extraordinary wave of modernization. Since India gained its independence in 1947, it has engaged in a series of economic development plans which, under government direction but in conjunction with private industry, have successfully raised India to the rank of a global economic power.

China: Isolation, Humiliation, and Delayed Modernization

The Chinese response to the arrival of Westerners was very different from that of the Indians, or later the Japanese. First, China was a large, stable, and prosperous empire, making the "divide and conquer" strategy ineffective as a means of gaining territorial or economic concessions. Unlike the fragmented remnants of the Mughal Empire that the British were able to conquer piece by piece, during the eighteenth century the Chinese were neither divided nor militarily impotent, and could bring enormous numbers of troops to bear against the West's technological advantage. As a result, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries — before the Industrial Revolution widened the technological gap to an insurmountable degree — Western nations were forced to accept what became known as the Canton System.

This system of trade was limited to a single port, Canton, and was completely controlled by the Chinese. "Contact was maintained through a selected group of merchants known as the Cohong…who were answerable to the imperial superintendent of commerce for the region, known as the Hoppo" (Gelber, 2007). By limiting contact between foreigners and the general Chinese population, the Chinese government hoped to curtail the influence of Western technology and ideas. But, as the Japanese would later discover, Westerners could not be kept out forever; their ever-increasing military advantage would eventually be turned against the native populations of Asia. The one-sidedness of the Canton System — allowing Chinese goods to be exported while blocking the import of Western goods — forced the West to devise a means of trade with China that did not require large transfers of silver to Chinese coffers. Unlike India, where the British government assumed direct control, the Chinese had to be bargained with, and they wanted only silver. The answer came in the form of opium. After several imperial edicts, the first issued in 1729, failed to stop the importation of opium into China, the Chinese were compelled to act (Beeching, 1975).

What began as a conflict over opium expanded into a battle for Chinese independence — and China lost. The British, followed by other Western powers, forced the Chinese government to grant humiliating economic and territorial concessions. Entire regions of China came under foreign rule, sparking waves of popular resistance. After several uprisings, the Chinese government finally responded to foreign influence by undertaking a modernization initiative known as the "Self-Strengthening Movement," aimed at bringing China into the industrial age. However, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 and a subsequent uprising in 1900 known as the Boxer Rebellion (Dugdale-Pointon, 2004) exposed the failure of that movement, precipitating a second wave of humiliating concessions that all but ended the last Imperial Chinese dynasty. Unable to successfully modernize, the final imperial dynasty collapsed in 1911 when the Chinese ousted their Manchu rulers, who had occupied the imperial throne since the mid-1600s.

Much like the Manchu before them, the new democratic leadership was unable to implement a successful modernization program or maintain control over the entire country. As a result, much of China fragmented into regions controlled by local warlords with little or no loyalty to the national government. And as some within the national government strove to impose unity, the Japanese attacked. Beginning in the 1930s, China was once again invaded and controlled by a foreign power — only this time the conquerors were an Asian people. The Japanese had started from a position similar to that of the Chinese but had successfully modernized, creating an industrialized economic base capable of constructing and supporting a modern military. Like those they sought to emulate, the Japanese turned this military toward China, conquering whole regions and engaging in a brutal occupation that lasted until their defeat at the end of the Second World War.

Even after the war ended, China remained unable to either unify or modernize effectively. A civil war raged across the country, and then decades of Communist rule — including modernization programs such as the "Great Leap Forward" — did little to actually industrialize the nation. It was not until the 1970s that China made a serious effort to industrialize and modernize that began to show real advances. Consequently, it was not until the end of the twentieth century that China finally emerged as a global economic power. China, like its neighbor Japan, first attempted to ignore the outside world; but unlike Japan, when the Westerners finally broke through, China was unable to adapt and modernize in time. The result was that China was vulnerable to conquest, while the Japanese would ultimately embrace the West and its modern ways.

Conclusion: Industrialization as the Common Goal

As the world enters the twenty-first century, all three nations — India, China, and Japan — have successfully become global economic powers. They have, after centuries of foreign-influenced stagnation, taken the steps that allowed them to emerge as industrialized nations. When Westerners first arrived in the 1600s, all three nations were less technologically advanced and suffered because of that deficiency. India, because it was fragmented, was conquered. China tried to isolate the foreigners, which worked for a time but ultimately led to conflict and the conquest of parts of the country. Japan, for two and a half centuries, ignored the outside world, but when confronted with superior Western military might, it rapidly modernized and imitated its rivals.

The ability to change and adapt was at the heart of Japan's success, while China's inability to change ultimately caused its conquest and occupation. The Imperial throne's refusal to acknowledge this reality left China a weak, industrially primitive nation, vulnerable to those more technologically advanced. The British occupation of India had the effect of partially modernizing Indian society and, as a result, left India poised to industrialize rapidly after independence. Much like the Japanese, the Indians embarked on a massive modernization program — under government control but in conjunction with private interests — which transformed India into one of the world's economic powerhouses. And while the Japanese were most successful at imitating the Western imperialists, their destruction during World War II gave them a second chance at economic success. All three nations reacted differently to the appearance of the Western imperialists and suffered different fates; but in the end there was really only one goal that could secure their futures: industrialization and modernization. Though all three followed very different paths, they have all, in the twenty-first century, reached that goal.

References

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