TFSmith121
Banned
Thanks - Japan is just too poor in terms of natural resources
Thanks - Japan is just too poor in terms of natural resources to compete with the Western powers in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries; their best bet is economic growth through trade and integration with the Western economies and international political order.
Basically, what they've done since 1950.
Now, having said that, Japan's geography and relative resource poverty actually made it unique in the sense of an independent, non-Western power being able to adapt to the realities of the Western system; the tragedy, from a "human potential" point of view, at least, is that the Japanese did not go far enough in terms of adaptation.
Once having adopted the idea of the Western nation state, they thought they could compete; they couldn't, but it took several decades of misery for the Japanese and their neighbors for that to change.
Not that Westerners were (or are) immune to the same idiocies, of course...
Best,
Thanks - Japan is just too poor in terms of natural resources to compete with the Western powers in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries; their best bet is economic growth through trade and integration with the Western economies and international political order.
Basically, what they've done since 1950.
Now, having said that, Japan's geography and relative resource poverty actually made it unique in the sense of an independent, non-Western power being able to adapt to the realities of the Western system; the tragedy, from a "human potential" point of view, at least, is that the Japanese did not go far enough in terms of adaptation.
Once having adopted the idea of the Western nation state, they thought they could compete; they couldn't, but it took several decades of misery for the Japanese and their neighbors for that to change.
Not that Westerners were (or are) immune to the same idiocies, of course...
Best,