But the dark side of nationalism began to appear early on. In 1869, the Meiji rulers expanded Japan's borders to include the island of Hokkaido. And in 1879, they acquired Okinawa after forcing its king to abdicate. In 1874, Japan even invaded Taiwan with an eye toward colonizing it, although they weren't successful. And in these early actions, we already see that nationalism has a habit of thriving on conflict. So often, the project of creating a nation-state goes hand-in-hand with preventing others from doing the same. This failure to imagine the other complexly isn't new, but it's about to get a lot more problematic, as we'll see next week when we discuss European imperialism.