The aim of the book, edited by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yavuz ÇİLLİLER and Assist. Prof. Dr. Emre GÜNDOĞDU, is to provide an up-to-date textbook for students of “Comparative Modernisation”. Nevertheless, it is designed to be of use to general readers with an interest in the subject by offering a compact history of the modernisation of various political systems.
As Rustow pointed out, an initiative to understand modernisation with a single analytical framework in each political unit is impossible. A common framework would not neatly fit cases in different geographies and societies. Research on the Middle East may stress the influence of the Ottomans, Islam and the Eastern Question while research about Africa may involve the process of decolonisation, African socialism, and blackness. To this end, the book consists of eight chapters to be as possible as inclusive in terms of different experiences and processes of modernisation with the following titles: “The Historical and Conceptual Content of Modernisation”, “Emergence of Western Modernisation: The Case of France”, “History of Turkish Modernisation (1699-1938)”, “Modernisation in Russia”, “Chinese Modernisation During the Late Quing and Early Republican Era from the Perspective of Elites”, “The Modernisation of Iran”, “The Modernisation in Japan: From Feudal System to Modern Nation-State”, “The Modernisation of Hungary”.
Concordantly, each book chapter about the modernisation of a political unit in this study comprises both the chronological advances in this unit in light of its unique historical conditions and a comparison of them with the intellectual, economic, social, and political developments in the West in order to identify similarities and differences.
