that date, the free access of foreigners to most of the countries of Asia was prohibited, and commerce was carried on under very burdensome and restricted conditions. This state of affairs may be attributed mainly to two causes: first, the gross ignorance of those countries respecting the rest of the world; and, second, the violent and aggressive conduct of the Europeans who visited them soon after the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century. A review of these conditions will enable us the better to understand the difficulties encountered by the Americans in their early relations with the countries of the Orient, and the important part taken by the government of the United States in bringing them out of their seclusion and opening them up to commercial and political intercourse with the outside world.
An examination of the history of the Asiatic nations shows that the restrictive policy was of comparatively modern origin. The earliest records of Japan give accounts of embassies and intercourse with Korea and China dating from two thousand years ago to recent times. Japanese mariners had sailed their ships to all the regions of Asia, and from the time the first Europeans came into the Pacific, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Japanese vessels carried on commerce with India, Siam, Malacca, the Philippines, China, and Korea, and had even reached the coast of America.
Chinese records contain reference to intercourse with the people of the West as early as the Greek invasion of Asia under Alexander; and the classic writings, both
