United States: Civil War;

Russia: Russian serfdom reform;

Japan: Meiji Restoration.

The Civil War, also known as the American Civil War, was the only large-scale civil war in American history. The two sides involved in the war are the United States in the north and the United States in the south. The war ended in a union victory. About 750,000 soldiers were killed in the war, and the number of civilian casualties is unknown. Historian John Hudson estimates that 65,438+00% of northern men aged 20-45 and 30% of southern white men aged 65,438+08-40 died in the war. The Civil War was the second bourgeois revolution in American history, which safeguarded national unity, abolished slavery, further removed the obstacles to the development of capitalism, and made the United States quickly become an industrialized power. However, racial discrimination has not been completely eliminated, and blacks are still treated unfairly. This war not only changed the political and economic situation in the United States at that time, but also led to the final abolition of slavery in the southern United States, which also had a great impact on the later American civil society.

The reform of Russian serfdom, that is, the abolition of serfdom, was the inevitable result of the feudal serfdom crisis caused by the contradiction between the development of new productive forces and the backward feudal production relations in Russia at that time and the sharp class struggle caused by it. Russian serfdom reform took place in 186 1 year, which was promoted by Russian czar Alexander II. It was a top-down bourgeois reform to safeguard the interests of aristocratic landlords and was forced by the revolutionary situation. The reform of Russian serfdom is a turning point in the development of Russian history, which has enabled farmers to gain personal freedom, provided a large number of free labor for the development of capitalism and accumulated a large amount of funds for the development of capitalism. Since then, Russia has embarked on the road of capitalist development. At the same time, the reform of 186 1 year also retained a large number of feudal remnants, which had a negative impact on the development of Russian society later.

Meiji Restoration (Japanese name: めぃじぃんんんんん) refers to Japan's national unification and westernization reform movement with the new government established by the reformists as the core during the1860s to1880s. It was a political revolution in Japanese history, which overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate, returned the major policies to the emperor, carried out major political, economic and social reforms, and promoted Japan's modernization and westernization. The main leaders of Meiji Restoration were some young warriors who tried to build a country that could keep pace with the West under the slogan of "Rich Qiang Bing". This reform is the beginning of Japan's modernization, but it also puts Japan on the militaristic road of foreign aggression and expansion, causing heavy disasters to its Asian neighbors.