Blog Post 8

Blog 8: Categorizing Political Violence

Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations Mission to Rwanda in 1994, reflecting on his experiences during the genocide wrote, “I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him” (Goodreads.com). The tragic events in Rwanda, where militias and other government-sponsored irregulars killed upwards of 800,000 over only 100 days, is a particularly poignant example of political violence. The genocide in Rwanda presents an instance of political violence that is easy to categorize, but determining how to categorize political violence is often difficult and even controversial (as the reluctance of Turkey to recognize the genocide of Armenians clearly demonstrates). I will attempt to categorize the political violence that accompanied the decline of the Edo Shogunate and the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in the country of Japan.

The Edo Shogunate, established by Tokugawa Ieyasu in the early 1600s, found its influence waning in the mid-1800s. The rise of the merchant class and the presence of large numbers of unemployed samurai and the failure of various economic policies enacted by the Edo Shogunate all combined to weaken the Shogunate's hold on power. Admiral Perry's infamous forced “opening” of Japan to the West further inflamed opposition to the Shogunate and lead to the formation of a group called Sonno-Joi that wanted to re-instate the Emperor of Japan as ruler. This group, in a famous incident, assassinated Ii Naosuke, Elder Statesman of the Edo Shogunate (equivalent to Prime Minister) in the snow as Naosuke was on the way to attend to the Shogun. The Edo Shogunate was not able to recover from the loss of Naosuke. In fact, ten years later the Choshu and Satsuma domains formed a secret coalition, marched on the capital and then declared an “imperial restoration”(Morton and Olenik 2005, 137-146).

David Samuels defines revolutions as “armed conflicts within a sovereign state between insurgents and the state, in which (1) both the insurgents and the state claim the allegiance of a significant proportion of the population; (2) authority over the state is forcibly transferred from the state to the insurgents, and (3) the insurgents subsequently bring about wholesale political change” (Samuels 2012, 268) From initial appearances it would appear that the events described above fit the definition. There was conflict within the sovereign state of Japan between insurgents (the Choshu and Satsuma domains) and the state (the Edo Shogunate). In fact, the insurgents laid claim to the allegiances of a large portion of the population of Japan, marching on the capital with the support, or at least approval of, the domains of Echizen Nagoya, Tosa and Hiroshima (Morton and Olenik 2005, 145). Also, power was forcibly transferred to the insurgents with Emperor Meiji taking power. Moreover, this transfer of power opened up an era of enduring change known as the Meiji Restoration.

However, the assassination of Ii Naosuke, although it precipitated the revolution that opened the Meiji Restoration, can not be categorized as a revolution, as the assassination was carried out by a group that did not have especially strong popular support, and did not directly result in a transfer of power. I would categorize the assassination of Ii Naosuke as terrorism, as this was an act of political violence carried out against a relatively “hard” target. In fact, a special police force formed by the Edo Shogunate called the Shinseigumi eventually destroyed the Sonno-Joi, suggesting that the strength of Edo Shogunate at that time caused the Sonno-Joi to resort to terrorism instead of civil war.

REFERENCES

GoodReads.com. Romeo Dallaire: Quotes. http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/11102
.Rom_o_Dallaire (accessed November 8 2012)

Samuels, J. David. 2012. Comparative Politics. Pearson.

Morton, W. Scott and Kenneth J. Olenik. 2005. Japan: Its culture and history. McGraw-Hill.