Such a drastic change was set in motion in 1852 when American warships arrived in Japan, demanding to set up trade relations. The emperor consolidated control in Japan and industrialized the nation, in a bid to compete with more advanced Western powers. Ruling from 18, Japanese Emperor Meiji combined traditional Eastern values with Western ideas of progress. The defeat of the Russians at the hands of the Japanese in 1905 signaled a shift in Western dominance in Asia. Importantly, British representatives sliced the country into separate governing regions, which helped solidify British control over vast areas, and necessitated more British soldiers on the ground. This ended native Muslim rule in India, to be replaced by de facto British rule, as the Western power then redesigned the country’s political, economic, and social environments. The British prevailed as their soldiers were better trained and better armed than local mutineers. The mutiny was an attempt to curtail this dominance, and even though the mutineers outnumbered British troops, they too lost their fight. Since the seventeenth century, the British East India Trading Company had dominated trade and exercised increasing influence over many Indian regions. As a result, Western powers benefited from a further loosening of trade restrictions and more favorable treaties.Īround the same time, the suppression of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 led to increased Western control of India. Two Opium Wars followed, from 1839 to 1842 and from 1856 to 1860.Ĭhina essentially lost its fight.
Yet the Chinese knew the situation was untenable, and what followed was the country’s attempts to end the lucrative yet damaging opium trade. Slowly, the influx of money reversed, and European powers came to dominate the Chinese economy. China exported more than it imported so to combat this shortfall, traders from the West (in particular the British) introduced an addictive narcotic – opium – to China.Īs more and more Chinese became addicted to opium, Western traders raised their prices and made a killing, while correcting the trade imbalance at the same time. What exactly were the concerns of Western powers? In the nineteenth century, economic relations between China and Western countries were imbalanced. Shortly afterward, issues of trade also drove a Western wedge into China and India, as European powers dominated the Chinese mainland following two wars sparked by the opium trade. The “subordination” of Asian countries to Western powers began in 1798, when Napoleon led a 40,000-strong French army into Egypt, ostensibly to protect French trade interests.
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