This led to a rapid increase in machinery imports in Russia, causing the originally agricultural country to surge towards a cotton industry and an increase in the use of wage labor. Although Russia seemed to be on its way to becoming industrialized, the country was still predominately agricultural with a serf labor system. It was not until the Russians lost the Crimean War that they decided to reform in order to set its own foundation towards industrialization with minimal imitation of the West. This period of reform included the end to serfdom; allowing the basis for a wage labor force to be established, more focus on basic education and health (Stearns, p 89). Late industrial comers such as Russia and Japan required more work than the West in policy making and mass motivation, causing them to move towards industrialization in …show more content…
Due to its own government’s early involvement and focus on shipping and being fairly industrial-minded earlier in its history, Japan was able to keep the West from completely controlling its commerce. In order to keep the West’s imperialist movement upon Japan, it’s government took extensive precautions to encourage native pride, loyalty, and community in order to prevent over relying on foreign investments. Along with having a sense of native pride, there did not seem to be as much unrest politically and socially in Japan as there were in Russia and even the West. According to Stearn, this might have been due to a long tradition of patriarchy, and obedience playing a part in causing workers having to deal with their dissatisfactions by themselves, and also, due to the government playing a big part in keeping a strong but group oriented management in industry to keep workers at bay (p 154).
In conclusion, non-western industrialization, mainly in Russia and Japan, would not have been possible without the extra push from the West. But, with the examples above, industrialization would not have been able to be truly successful if the non-western country at question did not have a good foundation/resolve itself in reaching towards industrialization. This can be clearly seen with Russia where it had to go through a long period of internal social and political change in itself in order