From the international environment. Japan's Meiji Restoration took place in the late 1860s. At that time, the world was still in the period of free competition and capitalism, and the climax of seizing colonies had not yet begun. The main target of Western powers' aggression in East Asia is China, which has a vast territory and abundant resources. In addition, the national liberation movements in Asia, especially the Chinese Taiping Rebellion, have restrained the power of Western powers. This has provided a more favorable international environment for Japan's Meiji Restoration. The Japanese reformers themselves also pay more attention to diplomatic struggle strategies and try to take advantage of the contradictions between Britain, France, and Britain and Russia. China has a large land and a large population, and its development is unfavorable to other countries, and the world's resources are limited. Other countries also serve their own interests, so it doesn't matter whether they are good or bad in evaluating their aggressive behavior. Precisely in order to prevent China, the sleeping lion, from waking up, the West strongly supported Japan's reforms and took sabotage actions against the Reform Movement of 1898 in the late Qing Dynasty. Therefore, from the perspective of national interests, the West's suppression of China's development began when the East and the West first collided. The West's policy of suppressing China is still continuing and will continue in the foreseeable future. The West's suppression of China has nothing to do with China's sexual seal, sexual capital or sexual society. Japan has a small land area and will not pose a serious threat to the West no matter how much it develops. This is why the West has been supported by the West since the Meiji Restoration, using a powerful Japan to control China's development.
1861 Serfdom Reform in Tsarist Russia
1. In the mid-19th century, capitalist factors continued to expand in Russia, the serfdom economy gradually collapsed, and the commercial agricultural economy developed rapidly. However, the dominant serfdom severely restricted the development of Russian capitalism.
2. As the landlords continued to intensify their exploitation of the serfs, the serfs could not bear it and rebelled one after another. Under the influence of the peasant movement, workers' uprisings also broke out one after another. The massive workers' uprisings and peasant riots made it difficult for serfdom to continue to exist.
3. After the failure of the Crimean War, the rural economy declined even more, the class struggle between farmers and landlords became increasingly acute, and a revolutionary situation gradually took shape. The Tsarist, aristocratic, landlord class and bourgeoisie were worried about the coming revolutionary storm and decided to make appropriate reforms to the serfdom system in order to ease class contradictions.
(2) The main contents and achievements of the reform
On March 8, 1861 (February 19 in the Russian calendar), Alexander II (Александр Ⅱ) signed the "On The Decree on the Dissociation of Peasants from Serfdom and the Special Edict on the Abolition of Serfdom carried out reforms from top to bottom. The main contents are as follows:
1. From the date of promulgation of the decree, farmers can obtain the right to personal freedom and can freely handle personal and family affairs. Landlords cannot buy, sell or mortgage farmers as commodities. Transfer; recognize farmers’ rights to own property, hold public offices, engage in industrial and commercial activities, etc.
2. Retain the private ownership of land by landlords. Peasants had to pay high ransoms to redeem their allotments from landowners. Before redemption, they were still temporary obligated farmers and paid servitude rent or shake rent to the landlord.
3. After the reform, farmers were organized into village communities controlled by local nobles, and a "continuous guarantee" system was implemented to supervise farmers to complete various obligations on time.
After the decree was promulgated, when demarcating land boundaries, landlords deprived farmers of 1/5 to 2/5 of their original land ("cut land") and allocated barren land to farmers. This reform caused massive peasant unrest.
(3) The nature and significance of the reform
The 1861 serfdom reform was a top-down bourgeois reform. It "liberated" serfs from their physical dependence on landlords and provided labor, markets, and capital for capitalist development. But the reform was far from thorough, and it did not fundamentally shake the land ownership of the aristocratic landlords. After the reform, Russia still retained a large number of feudal remnants, and the development of productive forces was still hindered. Reforms further intensified class struggle. Lenin said: "1861 gave birth to 1905."