Question

In the period from circa 1200 to circa 1450, governments responded to a variety of internal and external factors in order to develop administrative institutions and centralize power. Develop an argument that evaluates the extent to which levels of centralization in China and in European states differed in this period.

Answer 1

Answer:

• Certainly the growing military and political power of Western states after the Industrial Revolution and their determination to gain influence in each society provided a larger historical development that shaped responses.

• However, internal problems shaped individual responses.

• For instance, the weakened imperial state in China and the social problems that led to serious peasant revolts like the Taiping Uprising speak to the internal problems that shaped the response of China.

• The loss of territories, the weakening of the central state, the increasing obsolescence of the army, the increasing indebtedness of the state, the decline of its centrality in Eurasian trade, and commercial competition from industrial Europe were internal problems that shaped the Ottoman Empire's response.

• Corruption within the Tokugawa regime, social change, and a mounting wave of local peasant uprisings and urban riots all shaped Japan's response to demands by the West.

Explanation: