3 ms·
I'm not sure I understand the comparison being made in that sentence. Europe and the US dominated the world at that point, Japan although a force in asia had a
by cpleppert 14y ago
I'm not sure I understand the comparison being made in that sentence. Europe and the US dominated the world at that point, Japan although a force in asia had a minuscule economy compared to the west. The world is far more multipolar now than it was a hundred years ago and it will continue to be so.
- caf 14y ago"Europe and the US" were not one pole, they were a collection of large competing trading empires.
- anigbrowl 14y agoEurope wasn't a unified entity in 1913.
- smacktoward 14y agoEurope in 1913 was a collection of feuding empires rather than a semi-unified entity like it is today. Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia all had commercial and geopolitical interests that conflicted with each other, and a long history of fighting major wars in pursuit of those interests. Additionally, the United States at the time was coming out of a long period of isolation and beginning to flex her muscles in Latin America and the Pacific. The American victory over Spain in the Spanish-American War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War) demonstrated that the US was willing to fight established European powers, and could win. Similarly, Japan was relatively small economically, but by 1913 she had inflicted a major defeat on Russia in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Japanese_War), making her another rising power.