Blog #14

Chapter 19 (pp.931-957) + Chapter 19 documents

Three main countries this section deals with are China, the Ottoman Empire, and Japan. All three tried to keep as much of their independence as possible, but many times this seemed impossible due to problems that each country faced. One of the main reasons that China had many problems was because of their huge population explosion which their agriculture production could not keep up with. Unfortunately this led to smaller farms for peasants, unemployment and starvation. The Taiping Uprising brought with it a unique type of Christianity, with leaders more or less not wanting anything to do with Buddhism, Daoism or Confucianism, looking for “a heavenly kingdom of great peace”. What was considered to be one of the most innovating processes of this time was how some of their thoughts changed with regard to gender roles, male and females could have equal shares of land. Yay for the fact that the Taiping officials ordered the feet of women to be unbound.  Another area where a lot of people had not dare go before was the basis for marriage; allowing marriage to be based on mutual attraction instead of some family arrangement. One of the largest downfalls on the part of the Chinese was how addicted to opium a large part of the population was. Opium was Britain’s largest export to Canton. The numbers were astounding; to go from 150,000 pounds per year to 3,450,000,000 pounds in roughly 55 years. The emperor decided enough was enough, and opium was outlawed.  This led to Opium War when the Chinese emperor decided to not trade with British for opium any further. Being that was Britain’s largest export to Canton, it is no wonder that this was very upsetting to them. Same thing happened with the Ottoman Empire as in China, both had been strong, but eventually were weakened because of gaps between themselves and the West with regards to their military and also their technological advances. Both the Ottoman Empire and China became fairly dependent on Europe. In the Ottoman Empire one thing that changed was the diversity in communities, including an emphasis on Christianity; they even went so far as to give non-Muslims equal rights. Yes they said everyone was equal, regardless of their religious affiliation. Japan had better military power and political skills than either China or Ottoman Empire, so it made sense they were better equipped to deal with the Europeans on a more balanced level.  However, at one point, Japan’s ranking of their people from samurai at the top of the status chart and merchants at the bottom did a complete turnaround later on, and while merchants were at the bottom of the status chart- they had money and their well-to-do status topper samurai often owed money to the merchants. Japan was better than China or the Turkey area with regards to staying low on the western radar. Europeans were not as eager to have control of Japan as they were for China and the Ottoman Empire. Japan did away with social order or status and wanted true national unity.  Japan also agreed with China and Ottoman empire that the way women were treated needed to be changed. Women needed more respect and to be treated equally with regards to many matters including marriage, divorce, and property rights.