Compare and contrast the responses of Japan, China, and India to Western Imperialism - Essay Example

China sort of made the rules and had the technology and was powerful, so they were able to fend off Western intervention for a long time. But when their defenses finally broke down in the nineteenth century, China collapsed. Japan fended it off almost entirely. That's why Japan is the one area of the Third World that developed. That's striking. The one part of the Third World that wasn't colonized is the one part that's part of the industrialized world. That's not by accident” (Chomsky, 1993).

India, China and Japan demonstrate that there is a direct correlation between degree of involvement and colonization and ultimate success. India is the most colonized of the three: It was largely controlled by the British by the 1700s (Keay, 2001; Chomsky, 1993). In the 16th century, it was already dealing with extensive incursions from Portugal, the Netherlands, France and Britain, and the Europeans eventually emerged victorious over Muslim and Hindu kings, with the East India Company taking much of the country's control until the Sepoy Mutiny brought it under direct control of the crown (Keay, 2001, 250-500).

India is a very complex country: A leader of the non-aligned movement, one that tried to balance between Communism and capitalism, Leninism and free markets. (Khilnani, 1999). Nonetheless, it was in many ways uniquely devastated by colonization. It had burgeoning industries of large-scale sophistication, with good quality in crops and shipbuilding and prosperity in many ways comparable to the Europeans (Keay, 2001; Chomsky, 1993). That was consciously destroyed. The result is that “India's rural landscape looks rather different from that of most tropical ex-colonies” (Keay, 2001, 448).

Two crops were developed, indigo and poppy, across the country, and tea and cotton is still grown in Assam and Kerala, but in most areas, small cottages still produce without much capitalization or integration (Keay, 2001, 448-449). Nehru, in a review of Indian development, found a direct correlation between poverty and length of European control: “ When the British first moved into Bengal, it was one of the richest places in the world. The first British merchant warriors described it as a paradise.

That area is now Bangladesh and Calcutta—the very symbols of despair and hopelessness” (Chomsky, 1994, 56). Of course, it's an important point to make that at least in India, the native population wasn't simply exterminated, like in North America. India is a growing economy now, but with a billion people, it is still nowhere near as prosperous as countries with one-fifth or less of its population size. In 2009, the United States had $45,989 per capita, the UK had $35,165 and India had $1,134.

For comparison, China has $3,744 GDP per capita and Japan $39,738 (World Bank, 2009). Per capita income variation among these three countries is thirty fold: India was totally integrated and is now a Third World country; China resisted to some extent and is a Second World country; and Japan kept the Europeans at bay almost entirely and is a First World country. India was explored because of tea, cotton, indigo, and for the standard reasons for colonization: A market for cheap goods and cheap employment (Keay, 2001).

However, unlike many other colonies, India was also colonized to destroy its native industries so as to prevent competition (Chomsky, 1993). Meanwhile, China was not fully colonized, but major efforts were made