AHC: Korea "pulls a Meiji", Japan doesn't

Mind elaborating on what you mean by them starting in the 17th century?


The economy of contemporary Tokugawa Japan, had a high degree of centralization, an integrated market, and a advanced transport network. The Japanese merchant did not have to cope with internal toll barriers. Two-way trade between town and country was an established fact of Japanese life already in the seventeenth century. Technological progress, helped by a very high level of literacy, was a feature of Tokugawa agriculture which had a firmly established rate of growth long before the Meiji restoration. And, in so far as relevant, the Japanese elite since the seventeenth century held an active curiosity about western science and technology, now all these do not add up to a possibility of spontaneous industrialization. But the society and economy of pre-Meiji Japan gave her a great potentiality to respond to the opportunity.
 
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