Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Perry, Matthew C. Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan.... Washington DC: A.O.P. Nicholson, 1856.

Matthew C. Perry. Narrative of the Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan.... Washington DC: A.O.P. Nicholson, 1856. Title page.

Perry boasted that it was the United States, and not any European imperial power, which managed to coerce Japan to enter “into the circle of commercial nations.”

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Viewed in any of its aspects, the Empire of Japan has long presented to the thoughtful mind an object of uncommon interest. And this interest has been greatly increased by the mystery with which, for the last two centuries, an exclusive policy has sought to surround the institutions of this remarkable country. The curiosity of Christendom has been on the alert; and the several votaries of various pursuits have naturally longed to add more to the little that is known of this self-isolated Kingdom.

The political inquirer, for instance, has wished to study in detail the form of government, the administration of laws, and the domestic institutions, under which a nation systematically prohibiting intercourse with the rest of the world has attained to a state of civilization, refinement, and intelligence, the mere glimpses of which so strongly invite further investigation.

The student of physical geography, aware how much national characteristics are formed or modified by peculiarities of physical structure in every country, would fain know more of the lands and the seas, the mountains and the rivers, the forests and the fields, which fall within the limits of this almost terra incognita.

The naturalist asks, what is its geology, what are its flora and fauna? The navigator seeks to find out its rocks and shoals, its winds and currents, its coasts and harbors.

The man of commerce asks to be told of its products and its trade, its skill in manufactures, the commodities it needs, and the returns it can supply.

The ethnologist is curious to pry into the physical appearance of its inhabitants; to dig, if possible, from its language the fossil remains of long buried history; and in the affiliation of its people to supply, perchance, a gap in the story of man’s early wanderings over the globe.

The scholar asks to be introduced to its literature that he may contemplate in historians, poets, and dramatists, (for Japan has them all,) a picture of the national mind.

The Christian desires to know the varied phases of their superstition and idolatry; and longs for the dawn of that day when a purer faith and more enlightened worship shall bring them within the circle of Christendom.

Amid such a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common interest unites all m a common sympathy; and hence, the divine and the philosopher, the navigator and the naturalist, the man of business and the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting.

With so much to allure, it is not at all wonderful that the attempt to explore should have been repeatedly made. Scarce a maritime nation in the civilized world has been wanting in effort. The Portuguese, Spaniards, Dutch, English, French, and Russians, have each in turn, sought to establish commercial relations with Japan. The Portuguese and English have both so far succeeded, that, but for themselves, they might permanently have retained their positions. The first were expelled; the latter voluntarily abandoned the field. The Dutch alone, of all Christian nations, were allowed to remain for purposes of traffic, and they purchased the privilege at the price of national humiliation and personal imprisonment, for which all the profits of gainful barter offer but an inadequate compensation.

Limited, however, as have been their sources of information, it is to the Dutch chiefly that the world, until within a very recent period, has been indebted for the knowledge it has had of the Japanese. Nor is that knowledge quite as circumscribed as has sometimes been supposed. Kaempfer, Thunberg, Titsingh, Doeff, Fischer, Meylan, Siebold, and others, have certainly told us something about Japan. But they could not tell us all it is desirable to know. All were connected with the factory at Dezima, and were watched, of course, with suspicious jealousy. Their only opportunities for seeing anything beyond the town of Nagasaki were afforded at their periodical visits to the court; and Kaempfer, the first in the list, has so fully related all that an European could learn from this source, that very little has been added to our stock of knowledge by his successors, with the single exception of Siebold. He has collected new facts and materials, and the result of his observations and researches has been given to the world in his “Nippon, Archiv sur Beschreibung von Japan” (Nippon, an Archive toward the Description of Japan.) While, therefore, it is not quite correct to say that the civilized world knows nothing of Japan, it may truly be asserted that what is known is very much less than what is unknown.

Notwithstanding, however, the national efforts at exploration to which we have alluded, it was reserved for our own, the youngest of the nations, to break down at last the barriers with which this singular people had surrounded themselves; and to be the first, in modern times, to establish with them a treaty of friendship and trade which (already copied as far as was possible by other governments) is to form, as we hope, the initiatory step in the introduction of Japan into the circle of commercial nations.

May we not be permitted here to add that it seems not altogether inappropriate that the United States should be the instrument of breaking down these barriers, and of opening Japan to the rest of the world.