Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

17 results

  • Introduction

  • Edited by Robert Hellyer, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, Harald Fuess, Universität Heidelberg
  • Book:
    The Meiji Restoration
    Published online:
    14 April 2020
    Print publication:
    07 May 2020, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    This chapter presents an overview of the book’s main arguments as well as summaries of its chapters. It begins with an accounting of recent historiographical trends, primarily in the West but also in Japan, concerning the Meiji Restoration and the creation of the Japanese nation-state. It follows with a brief discussion of the development of the fields of global and world history in the West and Japan. It then details the thematic threads - economic trends, internal conflicts that raged throughout the 1860s, and post-Restoration reconciliation/resolution - that run through the volume, highlighting the ways in which the book shows the immediate and contextual intersections of each with the nineteenth-century world. In its concluding pages, the chapter presents how the book’s three sections - global connections, internal conflicts, and domestic resolutions - are formulated, pointing out ways in which the chapters connect across the span of the volume.

  • 4 - The Global Weapons Trade and the Meiji Restoration

  • from Part 1 - Global Connections
  • Edited by Robert Hellyer, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, Harald Fuess, Universität Heidelberg
  • Book:
    The Meiji Restoration
    Published online:
    14 April 2020
    Print publication:
    07 May 2020, pp 83-110

  • Summary

    Western arms played a significant role as a new means of violence leading to the Meiji Restoration and in the ensuing civil war in Japan 1868–69. This chapter explores how industrial arms manufacturing and the global arms trade in the 1860s fueled wars in multiple locations worldwide including Japan. As domains and the Shogunate prepared for battle domestic demand for foreign arms soared precipitously overshadowing any other form of international trade. With their global and regional connections local Western merchants such as L. Kniffler & Co. in Nagasaki and the Schnell brothers in Yokohama supplied several sides in the Japanese conflict with military goods ranging in size from gunpowder to gunboats. Nevertheless, the rifle became the prevalent Western weapon for combat in Japan and it is the rifle that became the centerpiece of military strategy and social reform. Contrary to the prevalent image of arms trading limited to a few young risk takers like Thomas Glover, this study shows the widespread and short-term creation of military goods trade networks through abundant foreign supply and great domestic demand.

The Meiji Restoration
  • Japan as a Global Nation
  • Edited by Robert Hellyer, Harald Fuess
  • Published online:
    14 April 2020
    Print publication:
    07 May 2020
  • In world history, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 ranks as a revolutionary watershed, on a par with the American and French Revolutions. In this volume, leading historians from North America, Europe, and Japan employ global history in novel ways to offer fresh economic, social, political, cultural, and military perspectives on the Meiji Restoration and the subsequent creation of the modern Japanese nation-state. Seamlessly mixing meta- and micro-history, the authors examine how the Japanese state and Japanese people engaged with global trends of the early nineteenth century. They also explore the internal military conflicts that marked the 1860s and the process of reconciliation after 1868. They conclude with discussions of how new political, cultural, and diplomatic institutions were created as Japan emerged as a global nation, defined in multiple ways by its place in the world.