The Weapons of the West: Military Technology and Modernization in 19th-Century China and Japan

China and Japan diverged sharply in their responses to the West during the 19th century. At century's end China, still clinging to tradition, threatened to dissolve in chaos, while Japan, having traded its Confucian classics for Western technical manuals, seemed ready to assume the status of Great Power. The contrast appears all the more striking because the two societies were geographically so close and shared so many elements of a common heritage. Appearances aside, however, the differences between China and Japan were profound and perhaps nowhere more clearly attested than in the ways each reacted to Western pressures. Like other non-Western societies, China and Japan felt those pressures most decisively in military terms. For 19th-century East Asians, as for 18th-century Russians or 20th-century regimes in every developing country, weapons were the West's greatest attraction.1 Military technology has normally been the leading edge of modernization.2