ABSTRACT
The USA took its ‘stride across the Pacific’ in the nineteenth century, yet saw its moral position in the world to be on an entirely higher plane than the self-seeking empires of the Europeans. Commodore Perry intended to carry the gospel of God to the heathen, but he also encouraged the Japanese to adopt rapid economic modernization and the protection of the USA which would act as a balance against Britain, the ‘first-chop’ power in the region.
