In 1836 they had despatched an envoy to Siam and Cochin-China, who was successful in negotiating by peaceful methods a treaty of commerce with the former state. In China, like the other western states, they had profited by the negotiations which were the outcome of the Opium War, without having to incur the odium of using force or the humiliation of finding their softer methods prove a failure in dealing with the obstinate conservatism of Chinese mandarins. For many years their eyes had been bent upon Japan, which lay on the opposite side of the Pacific fronting their own state of California, then rising into fame as one of the great gold-producing regions of the globe. Warned by the fate of all previous attempts to break down the wall of seclusion that hemmed in the 'country of the gods,' they resolved to make such a show of force that with reasonable people, unfamiliar with modern artillery, might prove as powerful an argument as theories of universal brotherhood and the obligations imposed by the comity of nations. They appointed to the chief command a naval officer possessed of both tact and determination, whose judicious use of the former qualification rendered the employ of the second unnecessary. Probably no one was more agreeably surprised than Commodore Perry at the comparative ease with which, on his second visit to the Bay of Yedo, he obtained a Treaty, satisfactory enough as a beginning. No doubt the counsels of the Dutch agent at Nagasaki were not without their effect, and we may also conjecture that the desire which had already begun to manifest itself among some of the lower _Samurai_ for a wider acquaintance with the mysterious outer world was secretly shared by men in high positions. Fear alone would not have induced a haughty government like that of the Shôguns to acquiesce in breaking through a law of restriction that had such a highly creditable antiquity to boast of.
Most men's motives are mixed, and there was on the Japanese side no very decided unwillingness to yield to a show of force, which the pretext of prudence would enable them to justify. England and Russia, then or shortly afterwards at war, followed in the wake of the United States. Next an American Consul-General took up his residence at Shimoda, to look after the interests of whaling vessels, and skilfully made use of the recent events in China to induce the Shôgun's government to extend the concessions already granted. In 1858 the China War having been apparently brought to a successful conclusion, Lord Elgin and the French Ambassador, Baron Gros, ran across to Japan and concluded treaties on the same basis as Mr. Harris, and before long similar privileges were accorded to Holland and Russia. In 1859 the ports of Nagasaki, Hakodaté and Yokohama were thrown open to the trade of the Five Powers, and a new age was inaugurated in Japan.