For over 200 years, Japan maintained a feudal society during a period of relative isolation from the rest of the world. However, in the 1850s, military pressure from the United States and other world powers coerced Japan to open itself to the global market, resulting in an end to the country's isolation. A period of conflicts and political revolutions followed due to socioeconomic uncertainty, ending in 1868 with the reunification of political power under the Japanese Emperor during the Meiji Restoration. This sparked a period of rapid industrialization driven in part by a Japanese desire for self-sufficiency. By the early 1900s, Japan was a naval power that could hold its own against an established European power as it defeated Russia.