Showing papers on "Westernization published in 1974"

Aborted Modernization in West Africa? the Case of Abeokuta.

Abstract: Brunschwig and Crowder have argued that many West African states on the eve of European annexation were on their way towards independent modernization and westernization, and that modernization was frustrated rather than accelerated by European rule. The paper examines the applicability of this argument to the particular case of the Egba state of Abeokuta in Western Nigeria.In Abeokuta, European religious and political ideas had gained an early foothold through the return of liberated Egba slaves from Sierra Leone and the arrival of Christian missionaries. The new, westernized elite of converts and repatriates developed ambitions for the transformation of Abeokuta into a ‘Christian, civilized’ state. Scope for the realization of these ambitions was found through co-operation with the traditional elite, particularly in the Egba United Board of Management of 1865–74 and the Egba United Government of 1898–1914. Both these organizations suffered from the incompatibility between the essentially conservative aims of the traditional elite and the modernizing ambitions of the new elite. The Egba United Board of Management was dependent for its success solely upon the support of the traditional elite, and therefore ceased to function when the chiefs lost interest in its cause. The Egba United Government succeeded in laying lasting foundations for a modern administration in Abeokuta, but in order to achieve this had to rely on British military support against internal opposition and on British financial backing for their more ambitious projects. Through its military and financial dependence on the British, Abeokuta gradually became politically dependent, so that its formal political independence was largely illusory for at least five or six years before the final British annexation in 1914.

Meiji Primary School Language and Ethics Textbooks: Old Values for a New Society?

Abstract: George Sansom once called the history of education in late nine-teenth-century Japan ‘a useful example of a reaction against foreign influence and a return to tradition in the midst of a strenuous process of “modernization”.’ Sansom and others have depicted Japanese education during the first three decades of the Meiji period (1868–1912) as follows: during the 1870s Japanese education was completely dominated by the Western philosophies and principles which were flooding a country newly opened to foreign intercourse after two and one-half centuries of isolation. This extreme Westernization led to a ‘conservative reaction’ in government and education circles during the 1880s. This, in turn, culminated in the Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 and the emphasis on ‘traditional’ moral education which was the hallmark of schooling in the 1890S. This shift in educational policy on the part of the Meiji government has been seen as ‘part of the general swing during the 1880s away from unnecessarily close imitation of the West and back towards more traditional values.’