ABSTRACT
Japan became a field for missionary propaganda, and had trade and cultural relations with Europe when Portuguese discovered about the middle of the sixteenth century. For more than fifty years Portuguese Jesuits and traders enjoyed a monopoly. Against the protests of Japan, China had been granting concessions to the great powers that threatened to put the Far East under European control. The aim of the European powers and the United States in the development of world politics is the extension of political control to secure markets and investment or colonizing areas. Immediately after Japan became mistress in her own house and was received by the other powers on a footing of equality, she issued her first challenge to the doctrine of European eminent domain. The three powers, Russia, Great Britain, and France, posing as defenders of the integrity of China, threatened Japan with a new war unless the territory ceded by China on the mainland was relinquished.
