Lecture 4 notes for the module Making Modern Japan (Great Expectations and Hard Times) PO52026A taught by Professor Rajyashree Pandey at Goldsmiths, University of London in the second year as an option module for students studying on the following degrees: BA (Hons) Politics, BA (Hons) Internationa...
Module: Making Modern Japan: Great Expectations and Hard Times
Lecturer: Professor Rajyashree Pandey
Lecture 4 – Imperial Japan
In this lecture, we will be looking at Japan's emergence as an imperial power. We
will be discussing Japan as the latecomer; how it seeks to make up for lost time, and
seeking to take its place as a major world power through colonialism and annexation.
Contextualising Japan
(Background summary – general view about imperialism)
By the end of the 19th century, there was a recognition that the form and structure of
colonial growth and expansion had generated something new whose characteristics
needed diagnosis. From the beginning of the 20th century, there were writings that
attempted to analyse what this might be, and the term that people had come up with
to describe these characteristics was imperialism.
Many major figures have wrote about what this new thing (imperialism) is:
For example, see what Rosa Luxemburg wrote in The Accumulation of Capital,
published in 1913.
Book: Nikolai Bukharin - Imperialism and World Economy
The most famous writing on imperialism comes from Vladimir Lenin, called
Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin's analysis of imperialism was
one in which he spoke about it as a specific new face of capitalism, which among
other things led to "The territorial division of the world among the great capitalist
powers include a set of formal and informal colonies. Overseas expansion, economic
expansion and exploitation was crucial for capitalist countries. It was an era of
monopoly capital. Colonies were important at every stage in the reproduction of
capitalism. It was now the desire and aim of all the advanced capitalist nations and
some of the less advanced ones to have colonies. Colonies were now even more
vital, not only for things like raw materials, but for setting up investments". For
example, see Britain's railway investment in India.
In their writings, all three writers had the same starting point, describing it as a
phenomenon, which although has its historical roots, they all recognised that the
intensity, pace and acceleration was something new and unprecedented, and
therefore something that needs to be theorised. It's not just colonialism expansion
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