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Lädt ... The Abacus and the Sword: The Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895-1910von Peter Duus
   Keine Keine aktuelle Diskussion zu diesem Buch.  thcson | May 20, 2019 |  keine Rezensionen | Rezension hinzufügen
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What forces were behind Japan's emergence as the first non-Western colonial power at the turn of the twentieth century? Peter Duus brings a new perspective to Meiji expansionism in this pathbreaking study of Japan's acquisition of Korea, the largest of its colonial possessions. He shows how Japan's drive for empire was part of a larger goal to become the economic, diplomatic, and strategic equal of the Western countries who had imposed a humiliating treaty settlement on the country in the 1850s. Duus maintains that two separate but interlinked processes, one political/military and the other economic, propelled Japan's imperialism. Every attempt at increasing Japanese political influence licensed new opportunities for trade, and each new push for Japanese economic interests buttressed, and sometimes justified, further political advances. The sword was the servant of the abacus, the abacus the agent of the sword. While suggesting that Meiji imperialism shared much with the Western colonial expansion that provided both model and context, Duus also argues that it was "backward imperialism" shaped by a sense of inferiority vis-à-vis the West. Along with his detailed diplomatic and economic history, Duus offers a unique social history that illuminates the motivations and lifestyles of the overseas Japanese of the time, as well as the views that contemporary Japanese had of themselves and their fellow Asians. Keine Bibliotheksbeschreibungen gefunden. |
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 Google Books — Lädt ...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)951.9History and Geography Asia China and region Korean PeninsulaKlassifikation der Library of Congress [LCC] (USA)BewertungDurchschnitt: (4.25)
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1
It's understandable that the author's inability to read Korean forced him to leave out the counterpart's perspective - a fact which he apologizes for. But a bigger omission is that even contemporary events in Japanese history fade completely to the background. When discussing Japanese commercial involvement in Korea, he suddenly mentions in an offhand comment that Japan was at this time in war with China. What? When did that happen? The 1905 war against Russia enters the discussion a little bit more, but not nearly enough to help the reader place it into the perspective of the Korean story.
This hampers the narrative because it feels like the author focuses on small details without seeing the forest for the trees. He accounts for the opinions of numerous influential Japanese persons in this period, but only insofar as they concerned Korea. But if the nation was at war somewhere, presumably these opinions on Korea would have been influenced by that war. For the most part, the author gives the impression that opinions about Korea were formed in a vacuum.
Fortunately he switches to a more relaxed mode of presentation in Part Two which discusses Japanese colonialism in Korea from an economic, sociological and ideological perspective. It's interesting to learn that free market ideas and entrepreneurship had already become a central a part of Japanese society at the end of the nineteenth century. All in all, even though this book contains sections of interesting material particularly in the beginning and at the end, it's quite long and seems to have been written primarily for experts in Japanese history, so I wouldn't recommend it to a general reader.