Ap World History Dbq Essay

Words: 784
Pages: 4

From 1450 to 1750, both Russia and Tokugawa Japan faced incoming influence from western Europe. They handled this in both similar and different ways in the aspects of culture, global interaction, and resistance from people below the leading government on their country’s policies regarding the West.
The global interaction was probably the starkest difference between the influence of western Europe on Japan and Russia. Russia—or, really, Peter the Great—was in favor of westernization, while Tokugawa Japanese rulers were insistently against it. Russia built a navy—something they modeled off the West—and sent himself and many young nobles to the West to work on building the ships for the fleet. In 1702, in the Decree on the Invitation of Foreigners,
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Peter the Great faced his resistance from almost everyone below him because what he wanted to do challenged a great amount of Russian traditions. Namely in the beard decree, where men had to rid themselves of their “gritty” and “manly” characteristic or pay a tax that would induce financial difficulty on them to keep it. Peter faced a lot of grief from his political advisors about his words on his love for Europe in his later years and for his decision to go to Europe with the young nobles for the construction of his army, as stated in Peter the Great Westernizes Russia. Japan’s resistance came from its Christian-converts during the government’s Anti-Christian Campaign spoken about by Jerry Bentley in Traditions and Encounters. Dutch learning helped to keep the rebellious Japanese Christian-converts informed about the outside world and could remain by the Japanese government. However, the Christian religion did get banned in Japan by 1614 and people had to be very discrete in their faith. The significant difference between resistance in Russia and resistance in Japan was the population of people taking part; Russia faced a larger crowd that resisted Peter’s rules and regulations than Japan’s government