scholarly journals Making reform and stability compatible with each other: elite redeployment in Meiji Japan

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Makio Yamada
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Change Agents ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Coercive Power ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Institutional Improvement ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
New Institutions

Abstract Nineteenth-century Japan remains a void in the literature on institutions and growth. Developmental institutions evolved in Japan after the Meiji Restoration despite the absence of political participation. Authoritarian change agents usually face a trade-off between reform and stability: they have coercive power to remove underproductive institutions, but at the risk of inviting instability, as politically influential deprivileged elites may engage in counteraction to recover what they perceive as their entitlement. Many authoritarian regimes, thus, coopt elites by allowing them access to rent, but such buying-off inevitably compromises institutional improvement. How did Meiji Japan overcome this dilemma and liberate major fiscal and administrative spaces for productive players who generate wealth and increase the size of the economic pie for society? This article presents a model that it calls ‘elite redeployment’ to answer this puzzle. In lieu of elite bargains in participatory polities in Europe, the revolutionary authoritarian regime in Japan coercively deprivileged traditional elites and redeployed those with financial or human capital among them in productive institutions. By doing so, the Japanese authoritarian change agents dismantled the incumbent institutions in an irreversible manner and swiftly built new institutions such as modern administrative, educational, financial, and commercial sectors, while maintaining stability.

Comte, Mill, and the Thought of Nishi Amane in Meiji Japan

1968 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas R. H. Havens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Abstract Reasoning ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
Auguste Comte ◽  
Modes Of Thought

One aspect of the intellectual upheaval which accompanied the Meiji Restoration of 1868 was the phenomenon of bummei kaika, “civilization and enlightenment.” Although it may be useful to think of the early Meiji years as a Japanese siècle de lumières, it is significant that the country's most progressive scholars derived their main inspiration from such contemporaneous Western social philosophies as positivism and utilitarianism, not the European enlightenment of the eighteenth century. It is natural that the proponents of bummei kaika turned for guidance to John Stuart Mill and Auguste Comte rather than Diderot or Rousseau, because their goal was to expose Japan to those urbane modes of thought from abroad which would bring her to the “civilized” stage of development envisaged by European social philosophy. The means to be employed consisted of empiricism, not abstract reasoning: “what we should call the truly enlightened world,” wrote Tsuda Mamichi in 1874, “is when practical studies become popular in our country and each person attains an understanding of truth.” Similarly, Fukuzawa Yukichi took nineteenth century England, not eighteenth century France, as the model for Japan's efforts to achieve “enlightenment.”

Fin-de-Siècle Salonica

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Şükrü Hanioğlu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Fin De Siecle ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
The Future ◽  
Fin De Siècle ◽  
Circle Of Friends ◽  
New Institutions

This chapter discusses Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's childhood in the ancient Macedonian capital of Salonica. The future founder of the Turkish Republic was born one winter, either in 1880 or in 1881. His upbringing was more liberal than that of most lower-class Muslims. No one in his family's circle of friends and relatives, for instance, practiced polygamy. Likewise, his father reportedly drank alcohol, which was abhorred by conservatives. The confusing dualism produced in Ottoman society by the reforms of the nineteenth century had its first imprint on Mustafa when his parents entered into a heated argument about his education. There is little doubt that Mustafa Kemal's deep-seated predilection for new institutions and practices owed much to his years as one of a handful of students in the empire who had their primary education at a private elementary school devoid of a strong religious focus.

scholarly journals The risk-return trade-off in human capital investment

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 971-986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Christiansen ◽  
Juanna Schröter Joensen ◽  
Helena Skyt Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Capital Investment ◽  
Human Capital Investment ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Risk Return

scholarly journals Impact of the Memory of Kurofune (Black Ships) on the Course of Industrialization in Early Meiji Japan

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoki Odanaka
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
United States Navy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Analytical Tool ◽  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
David Ricardo ◽  
The Impact

This paper analyzes the impact and influence of the memory of kurofune (black ships), iron-armored battleships of the United States Navy led by Commodore Matthew Perry (1794-1858) that came to Japan in 1853, exerted over the course of industrialization in early Meiji Japan, which is the period from the Meiji Restoration (1868) to the Sino-Japanese war (1894-5). Using the comparative advantage theory formalized by David Ricardo (1772-1823) as an analytical tool, we consider the arguments of major contemporary Japanese policymakers as the object of analysis. We have three conclusions. First, the economic policy adopted by early Meiji policymakers generally followed the comparative advantage theory. Second, their goal was not the monoculturization of the comparative advantage goods, but the heavy industrialization necessary for avoiding the colonization: export of comparative advantage goods was a means to collect money for it. Third, they regarded the development of transportation-related industries as important because it would hasten the “movement” of men and goods, which would lead to the increased wealth and which was symbolized by the kurofune in the collective memory.

Human Capital and Technological Transition: Insights from the U.S. Navy

2011 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 704-729 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darrell J. Glaser ◽  
Ahmed S. Rahman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Specialized Training ◽  
Naval Academy ◽  
Technological Transition ◽  
Wage Premia ◽  
Naval Officers ◽  
The U.S

We explore the effects of human capital on workers during the latter nineteenth century by examining the U.S. Navy. Naval officers belonged either to a regular or an engineer corps and had tasks assigned for their specialized training. We compile education and career data for officers from Naval Academy and navy registers for the years 1858 to 1907. Wage premia for “engineer-skilled” officers deteriorated over their careers; more traditionally skilled officers enjoyed higher gains in earnings and more frequent promotions. This compelled those with engineering skills to leave the service early, hindering the navy's capacity to further technologically develop.

Fatal Optimism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danny Orbach
Keyword(s):  
Meiji Japan ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
Japanese Military ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

This chapter focuses on one episode in the history of Japanese military insubordination: the emergence of rebels and assassins in Meiji Japan. In October 1876, almost nine years after the Meiji Restoration, there were signs that people were unhappy and imminent rebellion seemed evident. As the Meiji reforms endangered and at times even destroyed the livelihood of many, they often encountered resistance from peasants, shizoku, and former shishi. The chapter examines early Meiji rebellions and conspiracies led by figures such as Takechi Kumakichi and Saigō Takamori in order to understand the patterns of escape to the front, reliance on the hazy center, and the optimism that gave rise to active rebellions. It also considers the failure of Shizoku rebellions and why this enabled the government to enjoy more than half of a century without further military uprisings.

scholarly journals Institutional Transplant and Cultural Proximity: Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Prussia

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1060-1093
Author(s):  
Giampaolo Lecce ◽  
Laura Ogliari
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Census Data ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
Cultural Heterogeneity ◽  
Cultural Proximity ◽  
New Information ◽  
New Institutions

This article presents evidence that cultural proximity between the exporting and the receiving countries positively affects the adoption of new institutions and the resulting long-term economic outcomes. We obtain this result by combining new information on pre-Napoleonic principalities with county-level census data from nineteenth-century Prussia. We exploit a quasi-natural experiment generated by radical Napoleonic institutional reforms and the deeply rooted cultural heterogeneity across Prussian counties. We show that institutional reforms in counties that are culturally more similar to France, in terms of religious affiliation, generate better long-term economic performance.

On the Rise of Postwar Military Dictatorships: Argentina, Chile, Greece

1986 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicos Mouzelis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Parliamentary Democracy ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Sociocultural Differences ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Latin American Countries

Despite marked geographical and sociocultural differences, Greece and the two major southern-cone Latin American countries share a significant number of characteristics which distinguish them from most other peripheral and semiperipheral societies. Although they began industralisation late and failed to industrialise fully in the last century, all three countries managed to develop an important infrastructure (roads, railways) during the second half of the nineteenth century, and they achieved a notable degree of industrialisation in the years following each of the two world wars. Moreover, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, all three countries were subjugated parts of huge patrimonial empires (the Ottoman and the Iberian) and thus had never experienced the absolutist past of western and southern European societies. Finally, all three acquired their political independence in the early nineteenth century and very soon adopted parliamentary forms of political rule; and despite the constant malfunctioning of their representative institutions, relatively early urbanisation and the creation of a large urban middle class provided a framework within which bourgeois parliamentarism took strong roots and showed remarkable resilience. It persisted, albeit intermittently, from the second half of the nineteenth century until the rise of military bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes in the 1960s and 1970s and, as the Greek and Argentinian cases suggest, such regimes do not necessarily entail the irreversible decline of parliamentary democracy.

The Reluctant Transformation: State Industrialization, Religion, and Human Capital in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

2015 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saleh
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Technical Change ◽  
Data Source ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second Wave

In 1805–1882, Egypt embarked on one of the earliest state industrialization programs. Using a new data source, the Egyptian nineteenth-century population censuses, I examine the impact of the program on the long-standing inter-religious human capital differentials, which were in favor of Christians. I find that there were inter-religious differentials in reaping the benefits (or losses) of industrialization. The first state industrialization wave was “de-skilling” among Muslims but “up-skilling” among Christians, while the second wave was “up-skilling” for both groups. I interpret the results within Lawrence F. Katz and Robert A. Margo (2013) framework of technical change.

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