Reading a supplied modern-history timeline
A fictional workbook provides the complete timeline for this task:1853, Perry arrives in Japan;1854, the Japan-US Treaty of Peace and Amity is concluded;1868, the Meiji Restoration;1872, the school-system ordinance known as 学制;1873, the land-tax reform begins. Below it appears an explicitly invented classroom comment: 「外国との関係が変わるなかで、政治や教育、税の仕組みも変わっていった。」 The comment is a teaching summary, not a quotation from a historical participant. Students must arrange selected events, connect the institutions being changed, and avoid claiming that a timeline by itself proves a single cause for every reform. All dates needed to answer the tasks are supplied here, and no outside document is missing.
1. Which comes between the treaty and the school-system ordinance?
Read the worked answer
The Meiji Restoration in1868 lies after the1854 treaty and before the1872 学制 in the supplied timeline.
2. Does the timeline prove that Perry's arrival alone caused every later reform?
Read the worked answer
No. It establishes a sequence. Explaining causation requires additional evidence about political, social and economic conditions and the decisions behind particular reforms.