Japanese Imperialism

Japanese Imperialism

We often think of Europe and imperialism together. However, Europe wasn’t the only continent that was expanding at this time. The question is was the Japanese government's efforts to build an empire similar or dissimilar to those of the British in Asia. In this essay, I will be explaining how the Japanese government's efforts to build an empire were dissimilar to those of the British in Asia.

There were many reasons that accounted for the expansion of western countries into Asia. Asia provided a vast quantity of economic interests. For one, by this time the Western markets were relatively closed, while the Asian markets remained fairly wide open. Another reason for imperialism in Asia was that they could not compete with the western scales of production, quality and prices. During this time, there was a definitive link between industrialization and imperialism and Asian needed to catch up with the industrialized parts of Western Europe. The final reason is that the western societies believed that further industrialization and economic growth could only occur if in the east if Asia served as both the source of raw materials and markets for Japanese goods.

Western imperialism in Asia was important extremely important. European countries believed three things with about their colonies in Asia. One, there was a protection of economic interests. The colonies were not contiguous with their home countries, but the abundance of raw materials proved too important to pass on. Two, they

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viewed it as a place for excess population. Unwanted people from the crowded cities of Europe could simply be moved to the new colonies. Thirdly, they used nationalism as a way to deflect lower classes from class conflict. Imperialism was also not seen as evil in the nineteenth century. Western imperialism was rationalized in name of promoting and spreading civilization. This was called the “White Man's Burden.”

The reasons for Japanese imperialism were much different from the ones of the west. The expansion of Japan was to help their defense against other nations. They acquired territories in a ring around Japan’s main islands for the sake of a defensive perimeter. They wanted to protect their own continental economic interests. They were also to protect new territories,