As shown later, the Japanese were able to successfully adapt use and excel successfully in using the Western technology against the other powers to repel advances and to build their own empire. Perry's mission successfully ended Japanese isolation but also indirectly brought on the very circumstances that led to the U.S.-Japanese competition in the Pacific and directly later on to World War II in the later twentieth century. In a nutshell, the Perry mission's negations were successful and the Treaty of Kanagwa was signed in Shimoda, Japan. This treaty permitted American ships to buy coal in Japan and memorialized the requested protection for shipwrecked American seaman, in particular whalers who steamed off of Japanese waters in their annual hunts at sea.
For more than two centuries previously, Japan had successfully isolated itself from the outside world by refusing to trade with other countries except Holland and China. They...
This country's people still lived under feudalism in a system that was not unlike that of the Europe of the Middle Ages. This however began to change when Commodore Perry and his troops sailors came to the Japanese islands. In doing so, they brought with them the new science technology. By embracing it, the Japanese were able to buy time and catch up to the West, becoming a Pacific military and economic power in their own right. Later, they emulated the Western powers by creating their own empire. Unfortunately, they also imitated the Western methods of imperial intimidation and racism very successfully as well.
Minke
Nyai
Works Cited
Blumberg, Rhoda. Commodore Perry in the Land of the Shogun. Trophy Publishers,
2003.
Pramoedya, Ananta,. This earth of mankind. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 1996
