Abstract
For nearly two hundred years following the closure of the English Factory at Hirado in 1623, lack of command of the sea in eastern waters and events in Europe prevented the resumption of Anglo-Japanese relations. In 1793 the British government instructed Viscount Macartney to open relations after completing his mission to China. The outbreak of war with France stopped him from doing so. The war with France also ended voyages of exploration in the northern Pacific that had then been edging close to Japan. James Cook passed along the western side of Japan but did not land. In 1791, the Argonaut touched the coast of Niigata and in 1795–97 the Providence visited Hokkaido but was warned off.
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Notes
For the voyage see John McLeod, Voyage of H.M.S. Alceste to China, Corea, and the Island ofLewchew with an Account of her Shipwreck (London: John Murray, 1819).
Grace Fox, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates 1832–1869 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1940), p. 71.
W.G. Beasley, Great Britain and the Opening of Japan 1834–1858 (London: Luzac, 1951), p. 200.
Grace Fox, Britain and Japan 1858–1883 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 11.
Edmund Fremantle, The Navy as I Have Known It 1849–1899 (London: Cassell, 1904), p. 89.
Francis Martin Norman, ‘Martello Tower’, in China and the Pacific in H.M.S. ‘Tribune’ 1856–60 (London: George Allen, 1902), p. 236.
G.A. Ballard, The Influence of the Sea on the Political History of Japan (London: John Murray, 1921), pp. 100–1.
Captain G.J. Younghusband, On Short Leave to Japan (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1894), p. 214.
See Captain N.W.H. Du Boulay, ‘The Chino-Japanese War’, Royal Artillery Journal, vol. 22 (1896), pp. 377–98.
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© 2003 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Ion, A.H. (2003). Days of Seclusion. In: Gow, I., Hirama, Y., Chapman, J. (eds) The Military Dimension. The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378872_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230378872_1
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