Western newspapers as a globalisation network in the 1860s Japan

摘要

The purpose of my paper is first of all to indicate that thermodynamics and the new network theory can be combined into one theoretical model and secondly, that this combined model can be utilised in historical research, particularly when analysing networks and globalisation. I use as an example case an analysis of the establishment of foreign-owned English-language newspapers in Japan in the early 1860s. With the development of communication, English-language newspapers in Japan became new peripheral nodes of the global media network; they conveyed information to the rest of the world and also brought information from the rest of the world. Considering the theoretical framework formed by thermodynamics and the new network theory, we can conclude that, with the status and significance of the first English-language newspapers that appeared in Japan and with their defined objectives and operation, information produced additional resources for Great Britain and the broader Western world - the centre of that time - but in addition also for Japan, which was then the periphery. The latter fact spoke for its part of Japan's objective of coping with the new pressure created by the Western world's advancement in East Asia. When Japan became a part of the global media network, this also promoted globalisation, an increase in interdependence. Thus, in this way the new information conveyed by the newspapers could be used in both the West and the East to resist the effects of entropy. Although information is one of the main factors with which centres are able to avoid the effects of their own entropy, according to the network theory this may also be bidirectional, whereupon it may also benefit peripheries with respect to centres. In other words, the relationship between centre and periphery may be beneficial to both, so resisting the effects of entropy does not necessarily mean reaping benefits in only one direction, as the theory basically hypothesises.