II
AMERICA'S FIRST INTERCOURSE
The two most important factors in bringing the United States into contact with the countries of the Orient have been commerce and Christian missions. The influence of the latter will receive attention in a subsequent chapter. The extension of American commerce into the Pacific Ocean was obstructed by the policy of exclusion which had been in operation for two centuries, and in the few ports where foreign intercourse was tolerated it was conducted under very adverse conditions. The cause of this state of affairs has been indicated in the preceding chapter, so far as China and Japan were concerned. Much the same conditions existed in the other countries, brought about by similar causes.
Several of the European nations had taken possession by force of various islands in that ocean, occupied by many millions of people, and had effected permanent lodgment on the continent in India and the Malay Peninsula. From these places it was possible to establish a large trade with the enormous population of Asia; but at the date of the independence of the United States and for many years thereafter the European governments sought to reserve the trade of their colonies and dependencies to themselves. Hence it was a serious undertaking for a new nation, with a novel form of
