Samurai, Daimyo, Matthew Perry, and Nationalism: Crash Course World History #34

In which John Green teaches you about Nationalism. Nationalism was everywhere in the 19th century, as people all over the world carved new nation-states out of old empires. Nationalist leaders changed the way people thought of themselves and the places they lived by reinventing education, military service, and the relationship between government and governed. In Japan, the traditional feudal society underwent a long transformation over the course of about 300 years to become a modern nation-state. John follows the course of Japanese history from the emergence of the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Meiji Restoration, and covers Nationalism in many other countries along the way. All this, plus a special guest appearance, plus the return of an old friend on a extra-special episode of Crash Course.

Resources:

A Modern History of Japan by Andrew Gordon http://dft.ba/-GordonJapan

Giving Up the Gun by Noel Perrin http://dft.ba/-PerrinGun

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Hi I’m John Green;

this is Crash Course World History
and today

we’re going to talk about Nationalism,

the most important global phenomenon
of the 19th century

and also the phenomenon responsible

for one of the most commented upon aspects
of Crash Course:

my globes being out of date.

USSR: not a country.

Rhodesia?

South Vietnam?

Sudan with no South Sudan?

Yugoslavia?

Okay,
no more inaccuracies with the globes.

Ugh, the little globes!

This one doesn’t know about Slovakia.

This one has East frakking Pakistan.

And this one identifies
Lithuania as part of Asia.

Okay, no more globe inaccuracies.

Actually, bring back my globes.

I feel naked without them.
[many people find comfort in inaccuracy]

[Intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

[intro music]

So, if you’re into European history,

you’re probably somewhat familiar
with nationalism

and the names and countries
associated with it.

Bismarck in Germany,

Mazzini and Garibaldi in Italy, a

nd Mustafa Kemal (aka Ataturk) in Turkey.

But nationalism was a global phenomenon,

and it included a lot of people
you may not associate with it, like

Muhammad Ali in Egypt

and also this guy.

Nationalism was seen in the
British Dominions,

as Canada, Australia and New Zealand

became federated states between
1860 and 1901.

I would say independent states
instead of federated states,

but you guys still have a queen.
[and royal Corgies]

It’s also seen in the Balkans, where
Greece gained its independence in 1832

and Christian principalities fought
a war against the Ottomans in 1878,

[Christians hate foot wrests?

in India where a political party,
the Indian National Congress,

was founded in 1885,

and even in China, where nationalism ran
up against the dynastic system

that had lasted more than 2000 years.

And then of course there are these guys,

who in many ways represent
the worst of nationalism,

the nationalism that tries to deny or
eliminate difference in the efforts

to create a homogeneous
mythologized unitary polity.

We’ll get to them later,

but it’s helpful to bring them up now

just so we don’t get
too excited about nationalism.

Okay, so,

before we launch into the history,
let’s define the modern nation state.

Definitions are slippery
but for our purposes,

a nation state involves a
centralized government

that can claim and exercise
authority over a distinctive territory.

That’s the state part.

It also involves a certain degree of
linguistic and cultural homogeneity.

That’s the nation part.

Mr. Green, Mr. Green!

By that definition,

wouldn’t China have been nation state

as early as, like, the Han dynasty?

Dude, Me from the Past,

Yeah, it could be,

you’re getting smart.

and some historians argue that it was.

Nationhood is really hard to define.

Like, in James Joyce’s Ulysses,

the character Bloom famously says that

a nation is the same people
living in the same place.

But, then, he remembers the Irish and
Jewish diasporas, and adds,

or also living in different places.

But let’s ignore diasporas for the moment

and focus on territorially bound
groups with a common heritage.

Same people, same place.

So how do you become a nation?

Well, some argue it’s an organic process

involving culturally similar people
wanting to formalize their connections.

Others argue that nationalism is
constructed by governments,

building a sense of patriotism through
compulsory military service and

statues of national heroes.

Public education is often seen
as part of this nationalizing project.

Schools and textbooks allow countries to
share their nationalizing narratives.

Which is why

the once and possibly future
independent nation of Texas

issues textbooks literally
whitewashing early American history.

Still other historians argue
that nationalism was

an outgrowth of urbanization
and industrialization,

since new urbanites were the

most likely people to want to see
themselves as part of a nation.

For instance,

Prague’s population rose from 157,000 to
514,000 between 1850 and 1900,

at the same time that the Czechs
were beginning to see themselves as

separate from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Which is a cool idea,

but it doesn’t explain why other,
less industrialized places

like India also saw a lot of nationalism.

The actual business of nationalization
involves creating bureaucracies,

new systems of education,

building a large military,

and, often,

using that military to fight other
nation states,

since nations often construct themselves
in opposition to an idea of otherness.

A big part of being Irish, for instance,

is not being English.

So emerging nations had
a lot of conflicts,

including:

The Napoleonic wars,

which helped the French become the French.

The Indian Rebellion of 1857,

which helped Indians to identify
themselves as a homogeneous people.

The American Civil War.

I mean, before the Civil War,

many Americans thought of themselves
not as Americans

but as Virginians

or New Yorkers

or Pennsylvanians.

I mean,

our antebellum nation was usually called

“these united states,”

after it became “the United States.”

So,

in the US,
nationalism pulled a nation together,

but often,

nationalism was a destabilizing force
for multi-ethnic land-based empires.

This was especially the case
in the Ottoman empire,

which started falling apart in the
19th century as first the Greeks,

then the Serbs,

Romanians and Bulgarians,

all predominantly Christian people,

began clamoring for and, in some cases,

winning independence.

Egypt is another good example

of nationalism serving both to create
a new state and to weaken an empire.

Muhammad Ali

[nope, not that one]

(who was actually Albanian
and spoke Turkish, not Egyptian Arabic)

and his ruling family

encouraged the Egyptian people to imagine
themselves as a separate nationality.

But okay,

so nationalism was a global phenomenon
in the 19th century and

we can’t talk about it everywhere.

So, instead,
we’re going to focus on one case study.

Japan.

You thought I was going to say Germany,
didn’t you?

Nope. You can bite me, Bismarck.
[fingers crossed for Freedonia, actually]

Japan had been fragmented and
feudal until the late 16th century,

when a series of warrior landowners
managed to consolidate power.

Eventually

power came to the Tokugawa family who
created a military government or bakufu.

[gesundheit]

The first Tokugawa to take power
was Iyeasu,

who took over after the death of one of
the main unifiers of Japan,

Tyotomi Hideyoshi,

sometimes known as “the monkey,”

although his wife called him,

and this is true,

“the bald rat.”

[could've been worse, certainly]

In 1603 Ieyasu convinced the emperor,
who was something of a figurehead,

to grant him the title of “shogun.”

And for the next 260 years or so,

the Tokugawa bakufu was
the main government of Japan.

The primary virtue of this government

was not necessarily its efficiency
or its forward thinking policies,

but its stability.

Stability:
Most underrated of governmental virtues.

Let’s go to the Thought Bubble.

The Tokugawa bakufu
wasn’t much for centralization,

as power was mainly in the hands
of local lords called daimyo.

One odd feature of the Tokugawa era
was the presence of a class of warriors

who by the 19th century
had become mostly bureaucrats.

You may have heard of them, the samurai.

[kinda like John McCain, John Kerry and
my favorite, Daniel Inouye, etc.]

One of the things that made this
hereditary class so interesting

was that each samurai was entitled to
an annual salary from the daimyo

called a stipend.

This privilege basically paid them off

and assured that they didn’t become
restless warriors plaguing the countryside

—that is, bandits.

We tend to think of samurai
as noble and honorable,

[or as John Belushi on old skool SNL]

but urban samurai, according to Andrew
Gordon’s book A Modern History of Japan,

"were a rough-and-tumble lot.

Samurai gang wars – a West Side Story
in the shadows of Edo castle –

were frequent in the early 1600s.”

And you still say that history books
are boring.

As with kings and lesser nobles anywhere,

the central bakufu had trouble controlling
the more powerful daimyo,

who were able to build
up their own strength

because of their control
over local resources.

[like on the Sopranos?]

This poor control also made it
really difficult to collect taxes,

so the Tokugawa were already
a bit on the ropes

when two foreign events rocked Japan.

First was China’s humiliating defeat
in the Opium Wars,

after which Western nations
forced China to

give Europeans special trade privileges.

It was a wake up call to see the
dominant power in the region so humbled.

[like when Andre the Giant was sadly
bested by Hulk Hogan]

But even worse for the Tokugawa
was the arrival of Matthew Perry.

No, Thought Bubble. Matthew Perry.

Yes.

That one.

The tokugawa are somewhat famous

for their not-so-friendly policy
toward foreigners—

especially western, Christian ones—

for whom the penalty for stepping foot
on Japanese soil was death.

The tokugawa saw Christianity in much
the same way that the Romans had:

as an unsettling threat to stability.

And in the case of Matthew Perry,

they had reason to be worried.

Thanks, Thought Bubble.

So the American naval commodore
arrived in Japan in 1853

with a flotilla of ships and a
determination to open Japan’s markets.

Just the threat of American
steam-powered warships

was enough to convince the bakufu to
sign some humiliating trade treaties

that weren’t unlike the ones that China
had signed after losing the Opium Wars.

And, this only further motivated
the daimyo and the samurai

who were ready to give the
Tokugawa the boot.

Within a few years, they would.

So what does have to do with nationalism?

Well, plenty.

First off,

even though the Americans and the Japanese
didn’t go to war (yet),

the perceived threat provided
an impetus for Japanese to

start thinking about itself differently.

It also resulted in the Japanese
being convinced that

if they wanted to maintain
their independence,

they would have to re-constitute their
country as a modern nation state.

This looks a lot like what was happening
in Egypt or even in Germany,

with external pressures leading to
calls for greater national consolidation.

So, the Tokugawa didn’t give up w
ithout a fight,

but the civil war between
the stronger daimyo and the bakufu

eventually led to the end
of the shogunate.

And in 1868,

the rebels got the newly enthroned
Emperor Meiji to abolish the bakufu

and proclaim a restoration
of the imperial throne.

the Emperor didn’t have much real power,

Now,

but he became a symbolic figure,

a representative of a mythical past

around whom modernizers could
build a sense of national pride.

And in place of bakufu,

Japan created one of the most
modern nation states in the world.

After some trial and error, the Meiji leaders
created a

European style cabinet system
of government with a prime minister

and, in 1889,

promulgated a constitution that even
contained a deliberative assembly,

the Diet,

although the cabinet ministers
weren’t responsible to it.

Samurai were incorporated into
this system as bureaucrats

and their stipends were
gradually taken away.

And soon,

the Japanese government developed into,

like,

something of a meritocracy.

Japan also created a new conscript army.

Beginning in 1873,

all Japanese men were required
to spend 3 years in the military.

The program was initially very unpopular—
[shocker]

there were more than a dozen riots
in 1873 and 1874

in which crowds attacked
military registration centers.

But eventually,

serving in the army created
a patriotic spirit

and a loyalty to the Japanese emperor.

The Meiji leaders also instituted
compulsory education in 1872,

requiring both boys and girls to attend
four years of elementary school.

Oh,

it’s time for the Open Letter?

[Apparently the chair's back. Replaced it
with an evil twin, did you, Stan?]

An Open Letter to Public Education.

But first,

let’s see what’s in
the secret compartment today.

Oh, it’s a graduation hat.

Thanks, Meredith the Intern,
for letting me borrow your graduation hat.

Dear Public Education,

When you were introduced in Japan,

you were very unpopular because
you were funded by a new property tax.

In fact,

you were so unpopular that at least 2,000
schools were destroyed by rioters,

primarily through arson.

it doesn’t look good when you bring it
in close like that.

Stan,

I look like a 90-year-old swimmer.

[you do call speedos 'casual wear' @ work]

And even though public education has
proved extremely successful,

lots of people still complain about
having to pay taxes for it,

so let me explain something.
[time to fuel an internet flame war…]

Public education does not exist for
the benefit of students

or for the benefit of their parents.

It exists for the benefit of
the social order.

We have discovered as a species that it is
useful to have an educated population.

You do not need to be a student

or have a child who is a student

to benefit from public education.

Every second of every day of your life,

you benefit from public education.

let me explain why I like to
pay taxes for schools

So,

even though I don’t personally
have a kid in school.

It’s because I don’t like
living in a country with

a bunch of stupid people.

[and that's Jenga]

Best Wishes,
John Green

In Japan,

nationalism meant modernization,

largely inspired by and
in competition with the West.

So the Meiji government established
a functioning tax system,

they built public infrastructure
like harbors and telegraph lines,

invested heavily in railroads,

and created a uniform national currency.

But the dark side of nationalism
began to appear early on.

In 1869,

the Meiji rulers expanded Japan’s borders
to include the island of Hokkaido.

[you know, where the transport
apparatus was built in "Contact"]

they acquired Okinawa after
forcing its king to abdicate.

And in 1879,

In 1874,

Japan even invaded Taiwan with
an eye towards colonizing it,

although they weren’t successful.

And,

in these early actions we already see
that nationalism has a habit

of thriving on conflict.

And often the project of
creating a nation state

goes hand in hand with preventing o
thers from doing the same.

This failure to

imagine the other complexly
[i see what you did there]

isn’t new, but it’s about to
get a lot more problematic

as we’ll see next week when
we discuss European imperialism.

Thanks for watching.

Crash Course is

produced and directed
by Stan Muller,

our script supervisor is
[danica johnson]

We’re ably interned by
Meredith Danko,

and our graphics team is
Thought Bubble

Also,

the show was written
by my high school history student

John Green and myself, Raoul Meyer.
[the man, the myth, the educator]

Last week’s phrase of the week was

"Bearded Marxist"

If you’d like to guess at
this week’s phrase of the week

or suggest future ones,
you can do so in comments,

where you can also ask questions
about today’s video

that will be answered by our
team of historians.

Thanks for watching Crash Course,

and as we say in my hometown,

Don’t Forget to Break up with
your fake high school girlfriend.

[outro]

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