The Penguin History of the World

Yet although Japan’s dependence on imported energy meant a nasty economic shock when oil prices shot up in the 1970s, nothing seemed for a long time to affect Japan’s economic progress. Exports to the United States in 1971 were worth $6,000 million: by 1984, that total had grown ten-fold. By the end of the 1980s, Japan was the world’s second largest economic power in terms of GDP. As its industrialists turned to advanced information technology and biotechnology, and talked of running down car manufacturing, there appeared no reason to think that it had lost its power of disciplined self-adaptation.

Greater strength had already meant greater responsibilities. The withdrawal of American direction was logically rounded off in 1972 when Okinawa (one of the first of its overseas possessions to be reacquired) was returned to Japan, a large American base there notwithstanding. There remained the questions of the Kuril Islands, still in Soviet hands, and of Taiwan, in the possession of the Chinese Nationalists and claimed by the Chinese Communists, but Japanese attitudes on all these matters remained – no doubt prudently – reserved. There was also the possibility that the question of the island of Sakhalin might be reopened. All such issues began to look much more susceptible to revisions or at least reconsideration in the wake of the great changes brought to the Asian scene by Chinese and Japanese revival. The Sino-Soviet quarrel gave Japan more freedom for manoeuvre, both towards the United States, its erstwhile patron, and towards China and the Soviet Union. That too close a tie with the Americans might bring embarrassment became clearer as the Vietnam War unrolled and political opposition to it grew in Japan. Its freedom was limited, in the sense that all three of the other great powers of the area were by 1970 equipped with nuclear weapons (and Japan, of all nations, had most reason to know their effect), but there was little doubt that Japan could produce them within a relatively brief time if it had to. Altogether, the Japanese stance had the potential to develop in various directions. In 1978 the Chinese vice-president visited Tokyo. Indisputably, Japan was once more a world power.

If the test of that status is the habitual exercise of decisive influence, whether economic, military or political, outside a country’s own geographical area, then by the 1980s India was still not a world power. This is perhaps one of the surprises of the second half of the century. India moved into independence with many advantages enjoyed neither by other former European dependencies, nor by Japan in the aftermath of defeat. It had taken over in 1947 an effective administration, well-trained and dependable armed forces, a well-educated élite and thriving universities (some seventy of them); it had much international benevolence and goodwill to draw upon, a substantial infrastructure undamaged by the war and, soon, the advantages of Cold War polarization to exploit. The country also had to face poverty, malnutrition and major public health problems, but so did China. By the end of the century the contrast between them was very visible; the streets of Chinese cities were filled by serviceably dressed and well-nourished people, while those of India still displayed horrifying examples of poverty and disease.

This comparison made it easy to be pessimistically selective in considering India’s poor development performance. There were sectors where growth was substantial and impressive. But such achievements were overshadowed by the fact that economic growth was poor compared with other parts of Asia and was barely able to keep up with population growth; most Indians remained little better off than those who had welcomed independence in 1947.

It can be argued that to have kept India together at all was a great achievement, given the country’s fissiparous nature and potential divisions. Somehow, too, a democratic electoral order was maintained, even if with qualifications, and peaceful changes of government occurred as a result of votes cast. This was a massive achievement. Yet even India’s democratic record looked less encouraging after 1975 when the prime minister, Indira Gandhi, proclaimed a state of emergency and the imposition of presidential rule akin to that of viceroys in the old days (one of the two Indian Communist parties supported her). This was followed, it is true, by her loss of the elections in 1977 and her judicial exclusion briefly from office and parliament the following year, which could be thought a healthy symptom of Indian constitutionalism. But on the other side of the balance were the recurrent resorts to the use of presidential powers to suspend normal constitutional government in specific areas, and a flow of reports of the brutality of police and security forces towards minorities.