🌊 Ripple · counterfactual
What if the Meiji Restoration had gone differently?
1868 · japan
Japan dismantles its feudal order and industrialises deliberately in a generation.
If it had gone differently: Japan stays closed and agrarian; the idea that a non-Western state can industrialise fast has no example.
What it set up
- 1870The first globalisation, The world economy stays a patchwork of regions; no belle-époque boom, and no 1914 shock when it unwinds.
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