Plausibility Check: Japan overtakes Britain industrially.

After the Meiji restoration and modernisation programmes came into effect, is it plausible for Japan to overtake Britain industrially by 1900, along with the United States and Germany?
 
Only if there is an utterly devastating war which sees the invasion of Great Britain

Not sure what your last phrase meant - did you want Japan to overtake Germany and the USA as well, or for Japan, the USA and Germany all to overtake Britain ?

You could POSSIBLY do something with a British civil war, the SDF organising an uprising against a Victorian monarchy where she never comes out of her mourning...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Only if there is an utterly devastating war which sees the invasion of Great Britain

Not sure what your last phrase meant - did you want Japan to overtake Germany and the USA as well, or for Japan, the USA and Germany all to overtake Britain ?

You could POSSIBLY do something with a British civil war, the SDF organising an uprising against a Victorian monarchy where she never comes out of her mourning...

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

What i meant was Japan overtaking britain at the same time as America and Germany.

Maybe they annex Manchuria and Korea earlier and begin to industrialise it.
 
What i meant was Japan overtaking britain at the same time as America and Germany.

Maybe they annex Manchuria and Korea earlier and begin to industrialise it.

The problem for this is capital, and they would probably need BRITISH capital in order to industrialise faster, and British capital is only coming to foreign lands once it is sated in its homeland - in addition, destroy British industry and you destroy British capital

Of course, if you alter other things you could have French or perhaps German capital instead (tho IMHO its a bit early for German in the 1880s-1890s).

The second consideration is that you cannot just "industrialise" somewhere - as well as the capital to buy the plant etc, you need the workforce and for that you need the specialist engineering schools, and you need the money to pay for these too. Otherwise, you end up with foreign-owned companies employing largely immigrant populations. Its why it takes time to build up an industrial base - access to money alone won't do it

Of course, you also need markets and a reason for the industrial development. Arms build-up is one, but for that to work in your homeland you again need the technological basis from which to build - ie China in the 1890s could build small cruisers and smaller ships at its navy yards but did not have the infrastructure to cope with larger ships. Even if it had got hold of the money and built the dockyards (and to do this it would have had to borrow from Europe) it would not have had the workforce capable of constructing the ships - look at the Ottoman attempt to build a battleship at this period, or the Hungarian yard and all the trouble it had constructing the Szent Istvan

Best regards
Grey Wolf
 
The second consideration is that you cannot just "industrialise" somewhere - as well as the capital to buy the plant etc, you need the workforce and for that you need the specialist engineering schools, and you need the money to pay for these too. Otherwise, you end up with foreign-owned companies employing largely immigrant populations. Its why it takes time to build up an industrial base - access to money alone won't do it
Grey Wolf

I thought Stalin did in 20 yeas what took britain 200.

As with mao, he did wihtin 27 years what took britain 200.
 
I thought Stalin did in 20 yeas what took britain 200.

As with mao, he did wihtin 27 years what took britain 200.

That's an outrageously false comparison for a whole multitude of reasons. To name the most obviouse, it has not yet been 200 years since the beginning of the British industrial revolution! Sweet cheese...

For another thing, the idea that Stalin started witha totally pre-industrial society is very wrong. A limited industrial base lagging behind competitors, sure, but there most certainly was an industrial base. If you look at the numbers for the late Tsarist period (1885-1916), you had everything: a railway boom, a tremendous influx of capital, a surge of migration into cities, an upswing in literacy and a growth in the middle class, agriculture declining as a share of export even while agricultural production rises in absolute terms, the whole shebang. Burgeoning industrial revolution. Of course the war and civil war inflicted considerable devestation, but then there was the NEP, which is moving away from the areas of my expertise but didn't exactly cause an industrial decline. The idea that Stalin was in the same starting position as 1820s-30s Britain is quite absurd.

And you haven't actually adressed anything Grey Wolf said.
 
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Japan's National income was 1/4 britian in 1900, and things like steel production were way furthar behind. Though during their "economic miracle", the income went up more than 10X in 15 years. If there are extrodinary circumstances and a heroic effort, I think it could be done, but it is unlikely. One thing that could help is a some intensive war in Asia with existing powers fighting each other, Japan made a killing off the korean war, so that would be similar. But the main thing is they would have to work less of their own path and cooperate with other countries.
 
Japan had a narrow technical superiority in the Sino-Japanese War, but that was as much due to Chinese mismanagement and disastrous spending policies than the equipment or leadership. If the Chinese fleet had had ammunition that worked at the Yalu, then the battle would have been a lot harder for Japan, and any victory far from total.

Any conflict that happens before this date, and the larger warships available to either side begin to disappear and you could easily get to the position where Japan is inferior to China - especially in any conflict predating the Sino-French War which destroyed the burgeoning Chinese naval forces

Japan gained as much from the indemnity paid by China in the Sino-Japanese War as from force of arms. This is an important factor because the indemnity, and the later second payment in lieu of cession of Port Arthur, helped to enable Japan's military build-up at the turn of the century (and thus enable their victory over Russia)

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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