Description
The samurai radicals who overthrew the last shogun in 1868 promised to restore ancient and pure Japanese ways. Foreign observers were terrified that Japan would lapse into violent xenophobia. But the new Meiji government took an opposite course. It copied "best practice" from around the world, building a powerful and modern Japanese nation with the help of European and American advisors. While revering the Japanese past, the Meiji government boldly embraced the foreign and the new. What explains this paradox? How could Japan's 1868 revolution be both modern and traditional, both xenophobic and cosmopolitan? To Stand with the Nations of the World explains the paradox of the Restoration through the forces of globalization. Japan's leaders wanted to celebrate Japanese uniqueness, but they also sought international recognition. Rather than simply mimic world powers like Britain, they sought to make Japan distinctly Japanese in the same way that Britain was distinctly British. Rather than sing "God Save the King," they created a Japanese national anthem with lyrics from ancient poetry, but Western-style music. The Meiji Restoration was thus part of the global "long nineteenth century" during which ambitious nation states like Japan, Britain, Germany, and the United States challenged the world's great multi-ethnic empires -- Ottoman, Qing, Romanov, and Hapsburg. The Restoration also resonated with Japan's ancient past. In the 600s and 700s, Japan was threatened by the Tang dynasty, as powerful as the Roman empire. In order to resist the Tang, Japanese leaders borrowed Tang methods, building a centralized Japanese state on Tang models, and learning continental science and technology. As in the 1800s, Japan coopted international norms while insisting on Japanese distinctiveness. When confronting globalization in 1800s, Japan looked back to that "ancient globalization" of the 600s and 700s. The ancient past was, therefore, not remote or distant, but immediate and vital.
About the Author
Mark Ravina is Professor of History at Emory University and author of Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan (Stanford) and The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (Wiley).
Reviews
To Stand with the Nations of the World is an invaluable addition to the existing body of scholarship on the Meiji Restoration, bringing broader contextual historiography to bear on an event whose momentousness often invites overfocusing on what immediately preceded and followed it. Ravina's book also reintroduces, in a particularly skillful manner, the agency of personages and parties and does so with a deft facility for integrating that commentary with discussions about the institutional dimension of Japan's social transformation in the nineteenth century. * M. William Steele, Monumenta Nipponica *
It is rare to find a text which focuses so much on the Meiji's internationalization in the particular way which this text does...Ravina's book is rich in cultural and intellectual history, and is wide-randing geographical and temporal boundaries make for an engaging read for those interested in macro-level analyses. * Scott C.M. Bailey, Kansai Gaidai University, Journal of World History *
by accentuating a robust history of Japanese reform and global engagement, Ravina offers important clues to how a truly global history of change in nineteenth-century Japan might look * Frederick R. Dickinson, Pacific Affairs *
offers a wonderful reinterpretation of the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime and the emergence of the modern Japanese nation-state in the 19th century. The book is replete with insightful observations and contributes in many new ways to understanding this pivotal event ... Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
A timely reinterpretation of the social and political transformations of the early Meiji period, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Japan's place in the modern world. Tracing the confluence of global and local forces of change, as well as the impact of lessons remembered from the deeper past, it offers an impressively broad-ranging account of this most consequential of historical moments. * Daniel Botsman, Yale University *
This wonderful new history of the Meiji Restoration banishes once and for all the old image of a passive Japan reacting to pressures from the West. Mark Ravina emphasizes Japanese agency in its dealing with the imperialist powers as well as the continued importance of China to the Meiji leaders. In his discussion of domestic politics, he gives the Tokugawa shogunate credit for anticipating many of the modernizing reforms implemented by the Meiji state. Ravina has given us a refreshing and important new survey of one of the modern world's great revolutions. * David L. Howell, Harvard University *
To Stand with the Nations of the World releases Japanese history from East-West, tradition-modernity binaries, freeing it to participate in the global history of nation-state formation and nineteenth-century imperialism. In this enthralling reinterpretation of the Meiji Restoration, Ravina highlights the skilled political discourse that integrated universal ideals with Japan's distinctive past. * Julia Adeney Thomas, author of Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology *
By many accounts, Japan's new leaders after 1868 demonstrated an uncanny knack for creating a modern nation-state along Western lines. One of the leading experts of the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, Ravina instead reveals the considerable tensions among early modern precedents, ancient imperial models, and populist and statist visions in efforts to embed Japan in the emerging global order. * Sheldon Garon, author of Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life *
To Stand with the Nations of the World is a thought-provoking and detail-rich work that should be engaging at many levels of specialization. The writing is lively and clear and largely jargon-free except for Ravina's own conceptual contributions, no barrier to undergraduate readers. It would be entirely suitable as a reading in a mid-level Japanese or Asian history course, or any graduate-level course. * Jonathan Dresner, World History Connected *
An analysis of Japan's modern history in the full light of contemporary world history. One goal is to give non-specialists a stronger understanding that Japan's integration with the rest of the world was not abrupt or passive...To Stand with the Nations of the World is a thought-provoking and detail-rich work that should be engaging at many levels of specialization. The writing is lively and clear and largely jargon-free...no barrier to undergraduate readers. It would be entirely suitable as a reading in a mid-level Japanese or Asian history course, or any graduate-level course. World History scholars and teachers will profit from considering the transnational situations described here, as complications to the standard narratives and categories. * Jonathan Dresner, World History Connected *
To Stand with the Nations of the World...encompasses foreign relations, politics, economic history, and intellectual history...A clear, concise analytical narrative enlivened by entertaining details supports Ravina's argument. * Anne Walthall, American Historical Review *
Ravina presents an ambitious and refreshing new treatment of the [Meiji] restoration on its own terms. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and secondary scholarship, this is a work that demonstrates Ravina's long engagement with, and knowledge of, his subject-matter...By complicating existing dichotomies that continue to influence views of Japan, Ravina succeeds in placing the restoration into world history with Japan highly aware of, and active in, the events of the time...Ravina provides an excellent overview of the Meiji restoration that is both useful to scholars of Japanese history and accessible for students and interested readers from other backgrounds. * Oleg Benesch, English Historical Review *
Ravina...impressively rereads and recasts the old material to provide new interpretations of what caused Japan's course change in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji years...To Stand with the Nations of the World makes a powerful contribution. Challenging tired dichotomies (Japan versus the West, tradition versus modernity), Ravina provides a provocative framework for seeing the middle decades of the 1800s as a single whole in which leaders on all sides were determined to take 'universal' practices from both the contemporary West and their own past to create a strong nation-state. * James L. Huffman, Journal of Asian Studies *
Ravina's work, based on careful research in primary sources and informed by the latest published scholarship, is a wonderful read, providing a compelling reinterpretation of a critical turning point in Japanese history. * Steven J. Ericson, Journal of Japanese Studies *
Mark Ravina's book...is an important and timely contribution to our understanding of a complex and nested set of events. It is the first major narration of the Restoration as a whole (in English) for a generation and, as such, it is a call to us all to bring the insights of new methods of history to a classic debate...This is important and exciting work. * Ian Rapley, International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter *
Ravina's book is a fresh look at the much-studied background to the Meiji restoration. * Louis Cullen, International History Review *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies Book Prize.
Book Information
ISBN 9780195327717
Author Mark Ravina
Format Hardback
Page Count 328
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 236mm * 28mm
About the Author
Mark Ravina is Professor of History at Emory University and author of Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan (Stanford) and The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (Wiley).
Reviews
To Stand with the Nations of the World is an invaluable addition to the existing body of scholarship on the Meiji Restoration, bringing broader contextual historiography to bear on an event whose momentousness often invites overfocusing on what immediately preceded and followed it. Ravina's book also reintroduces, in a particularly skillful manner, the agency of personages and parties and does so with a deft facility for integrating that commentary with discussions about the institutional dimension of Japan's social transformation in the nineteenth century. * M. William Steele, Monumenta Nipponica *
It is rare to find a text which focuses so much on the Meiji's internationalization in the particular way which this text does...Ravina's book is rich in cultural and intellectual history, and is wide-randing geographical and temporal boundaries make for an engaging read for those interested in macro-level analyses. * Scott C.M. Bailey, Kansai Gaidai University, Journal of World History *
by accentuating a robust history of Japanese reform and global engagement, Ravina offers important clues to how a truly global history of change in nineteenth-century Japan might look * Frederick R. Dickinson, Pacific Affairs *
offers a wonderful reinterpretation of the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime and the emergence of the modern Japanese nation-state in the 19th century. The book is replete with insightful observations and contributes in many new ways to understanding this pivotal event ... Highly recommended. * CHOICE *
A timely reinterpretation of the social and political transformations of the early Meiji period, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Japan's place in the modern world. Tracing the confluence of global and local forces of change, as well as the impact of lessons remembered from the deeper past, it offers an impressively broad-ranging account of this most consequential of historical moments. * Daniel Botsman, Yale University *
This wonderful new history of the Meiji Restoration banishes once and for all the old image of a passive Japan reacting to pressures from the West. Mark Ravina emphasizes Japanese agency in its dealing with the imperialist powers as well as the continued importance of China to the Meiji leaders. In his discussion of domestic politics, he gives the Tokugawa shogunate credit for anticipating many of the modernizing reforms implemented by the Meiji state. Ravina has given us a refreshing and important new survey of one of the modern world's great revolutions. * David L. Howell, Harvard University *
To Stand with the Nations of the World releases Japanese history from East-West, tradition-modernity binaries, freeing it to participate in the global history of nation-state formation and nineteenth-century imperialism. In this enthralling reinterpretation of the Meiji Restoration, Ravina highlights the skilled political discourse that integrated universal ideals with Japan's distinctive past. * Julia Adeney Thomas, author of Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology *
By many accounts, Japan's new leaders after 1868 demonstrated an uncanny knack for creating a modern nation-state along Western lines. One of the leading experts of the Tokugawa and Meiji eras, Ravina instead reveals the considerable tensions among early modern precedents, ancient imperial models, and populist and statist visions in efforts to embed Japan in the emerging global order. * Sheldon Garon, author of Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life *
To Stand with the Nations of the World is a thought-provoking and detail-rich work that should be engaging at many levels of specialization. The writing is lively and clear and largely jargon-free except for Ravina's own conceptual contributions, no barrier to undergraduate readers. It would be entirely suitable as a reading in a mid-level Japanese or Asian history course, or any graduate-level course. * Jonathan Dresner, World History Connected *
An analysis of Japan's modern history in the full light of contemporary world history. One goal is to give non-specialists a stronger understanding that Japan's integration with the rest of the world was not abrupt or passive...To Stand with the Nations of the World is a thought-provoking and detail-rich work that should be engaging at many levels of specialization. The writing is lively and clear and largely jargon-free...no barrier to undergraduate readers. It would be entirely suitable as a reading in a mid-level Japanese or Asian history course, or any graduate-level course. World History scholars and teachers will profit from considering the transnational situations described here, as complications to the standard narratives and categories. * Jonathan Dresner, World History Connected *
To Stand with the Nations of the World...encompasses foreign relations, politics, economic history, and intellectual history...A clear, concise analytical narrative enlivened by entertaining details supports Ravina's argument. * Anne Walthall, American Historical Review *
Ravina presents an ambitious and refreshing new treatment of the [Meiji] restoration on its own terms. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources and secondary scholarship, this is a work that demonstrates Ravina's long engagement with, and knowledge of, his subject-matter...By complicating existing dichotomies that continue to influence views of Japan, Ravina succeeds in placing the restoration into world history with Japan highly aware of, and active in, the events of the time...Ravina provides an excellent overview of the Meiji restoration that is both useful to scholars of Japanese history and accessible for students and interested readers from other backgrounds. * Oleg Benesch, English Historical Review *
Ravina...impressively rereads and recasts the old material to provide new interpretations of what caused Japan's course change in the late Tokugawa and early Meiji years...To Stand with the Nations of the World makes a powerful contribution. Challenging tired dichotomies (Japan versus the West, tradition versus modernity), Ravina provides a provocative framework for seeing the middle decades of the 1800s as a single whole in which leaders on all sides were determined to take 'universal' practices from both the contemporary West and their own past to create a strong nation-state. * James L. Huffman, Journal of Asian Studies *
Ravina's work, based on careful research in primary sources and informed by the latest published scholarship, is a wonderful read, providing a compelling reinterpretation of a critical turning point in Japanese history. * Steven J. Ericson, Journal of Japanese Studies *
Mark Ravina's book...is an important and timely contribution to our understanding of a complex and nested set of events. It is the first major narration of the Restoration as a whole (in English) for a generation and, as such, it is a call to us all to bring the insights of new methods of history to a classic debate...This is important and exciting work. * Ian Rapley, International Institute for Asian Studies Newsletter *
Ravina's book is a fresh look at the much-studied background to the Meiji restoration. * Louis Cullen, International History Review *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies Book Prize.
Book Information
ISBN 9780195327717
Author Mark Ravina
Format Hardback
Page Count 328
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 1g
Dimensions(mm) 155mm * 236mm * 28mm
