(A fair and judicious summary)
As the nineteenth century dawned the Ottoman empire was
shrinking. Already damaged by Vasco da Gama’s discovery of an
alternate trade route around Africa, the loss of Greece, Serbia, and especially
Egypt further damaged Ottoman prestige and economic might. Unequal trading agreements with the western
Europeans, known as capitulations,
made the economic situation even more dire.
Attempts at reform were blocked by governmental corruption and the power
of the Janissaries. Mahmud II was only able to bring about western European-inspired military
and educational reforms by first slaughtering a large number of
Janissaries. The years from 1839 to
1876, known as the Tanzimat
or “reorganization” era, brought about legal reform based on the French
model. Nevertheless, the Tanzimat reformers faced opposition from devout Muslims,
corrupt bureaucrats, and the Young Ottomans.
Sultan Abd al-Hamid II (1876–1909) suspended
the constitution and ruled despotically but also built railroads and continued
to modernize the army and educational system.
The Young Turks dethroned Abd al-Hamid II and pushed forward a program calling for
universal suffrage, equality before the law, freedom of religion, free public
education, secularization of the state, and the emancipation of women. Unfortunately, the Young Turk insistence on
Turkish as the official language of the empire caused dissension in the heterogeneous
Ottoman Turkish empire.
The humiliating loss in the Crimean War in the 1850s to a
poorly led but technologically advanced Franco-British force displayed the
weakness of Russia. Reform in Russia, as
in the other societies discussed in this chapter, was essential. At the heart of Russia’s desire for social
reform was Alexander II’s emancipation of the
serfs in 1861. However, the newly
freed serfs discovered a world with few political or economic opportunities;
serfs were required to make redemption payments to their landlords, a move
intended to maintain the aristocracy as a privileged class. Governmental innovation, with the creation of
the zemstvos or district assemblies, and judicial
reform did bring some improvements. By
the end of the century minister of finance Sergei
Witte was pushing for massive industrial expansion and the construction of the
trans-Siberian railway. Substantial
gains, however, were made difficult by an obstinate aristocratic class (who
sabotaged the effort to end serfdom), the lack of a bourgeoisie, and the fact
that over half of Russia’s industrialization was funded by European
investors. When change did occur, the
rapid pace of industrialization created an angry, suffering proletariat that
was very susceptible to revolutionary ideas.
Opposition leaders, ranging from university students and members of the
intelligentsia to anarchists and peasant revolutionaries, grew tired of the
slow pace of change. Alexander II was
assassinated in 1881 by a faction of the Land and Freedom Party. His successor, Nicholas II, relied on
oppression. The year 1905, with the
humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the Revolution after the
Bloody Sunday massacre, shook Russian confidence even more. Although a representative body, called the Duma, was created, the Tsar slowly stripped the Duma of its powers.
As it approached the First World War Russia was ripe for revolution.
The causes and consequences of the Opium War (1839–1842)
were profound for nineteenth-century China.
Beyond merely a dispute with the British over opium, the conflict
centered around questions of sovereignty and modernity. The Treaty of Nanjing
gave the British control over Hong Kong and certain very beneficial trading
concessions, but more important, the humiliating defeat revealed the weakness
of China. Quite simply, for all the
external pressure being supplied by the western Europeans, China was also
collapsing internally. Hong Xiuquan’s devastating Taiping Rebellion fed off the chaos of popular discontent and governmental
incompetence. By its end in 1864 the Taiping Rebellion had left around thirty million Chinese
dead. Attempts at reform—such as the Self-Strengthening Movement’s desire to
combine Chinese cultural traditions with European technology—met with imperial
opposition. Like the Ottoman empire, the
Qing empire lost control over valuable lands (e.g.
Burma, Vietnam, Korea) to more powerful competitors. Emperor Guangxu,
inspired by the proposals of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, embarked on the
Hundred Days reforms of 1898.
Unfortunately the empress dowager Cixi
imprisoned the emperor and squelched the reforms. The anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion in the end
came to nothing.
The story in Japan, although similar in origins, would
have a very different ending. Calls for
reform, such as those of Mizuno Takakuni in the early
1840s, became more pressing after the American show of force by Commodore Perry
in 1853. Beginning in 1868 reformers such
as Fukuzawa Yukichi and Ito
Hirobumi brought about the Meiji Restoration, which
was designed to copy some aspects of western European and American achievements
so that Japan would not meet the same fate as China. Industrialization was key to the success of
this reform. The Meiji leaders abolished
the old feudal order, revamped the tax system, and remodeled the economy. The Japanese army and navy were modernized
and restructured, and Japan embarked on a very western-style imperialistic
expansion. Victories in the
Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars signaled Japan’s rise to the status of a
world power.