Raising the Curtain
As yet the distinctive call of the East had been heard only along the byways of Turkestan, and even those who had responded had ventured no further than the provinces of Cathay. Thus the isles of the Yellow Sea were to the Western mariner at the dawn of the sixteenth century as much a terra incognita as the Arctic and Antarctic regions are to the sailor of to-day. The spectacle of Japanese junks sailing gaily across the heaving waters of the Spanish Main and rounding the heel of India aroused the interest of the Western traders, who at once embarked for the fortunate lands of the East, arranging relations there even before they had been welcomed by the Chinese.
With the arrival of Portuguese traders off Japan in 1542, a curtain was raised which was never quite to descend. In the interval a commercial entrepôt was established on the island of Hirado, and an intercourse set afoot that encouraged a visit from a Spanish squadron towards the close of the sixteenth century. This visit was returned in 1602 by the despatch of a ceremonial embassy to the Governor-General of the Philippines.
Untold Wealth of Asia
Throughout the first half of that century Japan continued to attract the adventurous, and the Dutch now followed in the wake of the Portuguese and Spanish ships. The reception of the bold spirits was unequal, and in 1624 all foreigners except the Dutch and the English were banished. By 1641 no traders were allowed but Dutch, who, in spite of being restricted to the island of Deshima, enjoyed a monopoly of the trade with Japan until 1867. In the meantime, abroad, rumours of the untold wealth of Asia had brought the Indies, together with Cathay and Japan, into distinct prominence. Under the Chinese Emperor Kien-Lung, whose reign of sixty years, 1735–1795, was remarkable for its conquests and successful administration, commercial intercourse with the West was regularised, and the founding of recognised trading settlements on the China coast ended the era of furtive attempts to open trade relations with this exclusive people. From these early trading stations have sprung the several commercial capitals that now grace the China coast. Hong Kong, Canton, Shanghai, Tientsin, and Newchang are the links existing to-day between the magnificence of the merchant princes and the sway of the “John Company.” Of course conditions are now much altered, yet the memories of the past find a very splendid setting in the size, dignity, and importance of the modern treaty ports. Although the Far East was already manifesting its powers of holding the attention of the civilised world, the centres of interest there were concerned for many years solely with the kingdoms of China and Japan.
CALM IN THE FAR EAST: THE SETTING OF THE SUN IN THE MONGOLIAN DESERT
LARGER IMAGE
China on the Western Horizon
Australasia was a great unknown when the high latitudes of Asia were the fount of many conquering races. Obviously, therefore, the magnet of acquisitiveness pointed to the value of investigating the bleak northern steppes. Once started, the Pacific and the Amur were reached within eighty years under the impetus of an unrelenting progress which swept from west to east across the regions of North Asia. Begun at the instigation of Stroganoff, who pushed the hesitating footsteps of Yermak across the Urals in 1580, by 1584 this gallant freebooter was offering to Ivan IV. with no uncertain voice the wide dominions of Siberia as the price of pardon. Khan after khan was unseated, tribe after tribe dispossessed, for neither Tartar nor Turk, Buriat nor Tunguse, could offer effective resistance to the Cossacks from the Don. In the end this all-conquering advance was stayed by the Chinese, who, in the treaty of Nertchinsk, 1689, contracted their first formal convention with a foreign Power. For nearly two centuries Russia faithfully observed the terms of this engagement, apprehensive of endangering the Kiachta trade if she continued her encroachments upon Manchu territory. By this action the trade of China, which has now made the problem of the Far East of dominating importance, became of more than passing interest to a Western Government. As generations passed, however, the advance of Russia, to the Pacific in one direction, and in search of a warm-water harbour in another, was resumed. First Eastern Siberia and then Northern Manchuria were added to her Asiatic satrapy, and the Amur ceased to be the containing line. Ultimately her frontier rested on the ocean to the north, the east, and the south; Vladivostock, Port Arthur, Harbin, and Mukden becoming the centres from which her Far Eastern dominions were administered.