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Podcast: Age of Conquest: A Kings and Generals Podcast
Episode: Fall and Rise of China: China & Japan & Korea
Description: Last time we spoke about the modernization efforts of Big Brother and Little Brother, aka China and Japan. Both nations went about the process of modernization in vastly different ways. Japan began its Meiji restoration, an incredible hyper modernization process done to thwart colonization by western powers. Yet China was hampered by hardline conservatives like Empress Dowager Cixi who sought instead to restore the Qing Dynasty's symbolic grandeur over technological innovations such as railways. China's greatest leaders like Zuo Zongtang, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang did all they could to usher in some form of modernization. Li Hongzhang emerged...