 Between the 1870s and 1914 (the so-called Beautiful Era, socioeconomically optimistic and innovative decades of the Second Industrial Revolution), the established colonial powers in Asia (United Kingdom, France, Netherlands) added to their empires also vast expanses of territory in the Indian Subcontinent and South East Asia.Japan was involved primarily in the so-called Meiji period (1868–1912), though earlier contact with the Portuguese, the Spaniards and the Dutch were also present in recognition of European nations as strategically important to the Japanese Empire.The traditional Japanese society was virtually overturned into an industrial and militarist power like Western countries such as the United Kingdom and the French Third Republic, and similar to the German Empire and Russian Empire.