Mark Koyama: belief

Transcript context

…To me, it’s striking that you have the British in China, the Spaniards in Mexico, pulling off miraculous military maneuvers. And it seems there’s some common element there, maybe lack of a conceptual scheme, almost, for the victims. Yeah, they didn’t know how to interpret it. That’s definitely true. One piece of research, which I remember — the modern histography, to the extent that I’m up to date with it, on the Japanese — it emphasizes that they’re reading Western texts, the so-called Dutch learning. They’re increasingly reading Western texts in the 19th century, and they’re paying attention to what happened to China. So, for example, when the Opium War happens, the Japanese initially think that the British can be swatted aside, and China will just destroy them. And so they’re shocked. And the Chinese — the Qing court initially sends word to the Japanese that they’ve destroyed the British. And this is like, they’re the victors. And then the Japanese find out what really happened, and that’s a shock to them. They get that shock in the 1840s, and they have 10 years or 20 years to adjust to the new realities. So maybe that gives them something of an edge. A final thing is the Chinese minority Manchu state. I think that really shapes their vulnerability. They’re really worried about a Han uprising. And they have the Taiping Rebellion to deal with. The Japanese are ethnically cohesive. Why was England such a coherent nation-state so early? Some people say 13th century.…

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