ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ability of bakufu officials to adroitly navigate the initial years of Nagasaki as a treaty port, channelling through their hands the most lucrative sectors of Japanese-Chinese trade while also manipulating to their advantage the flows and use of bullion. It considers the formation of the Western merchant community and detail the political factors whereby trade in ships and arms came to upstage Japanese-Chinese trade, thereby weakening the position of the institutional merchant community. The chapter examines how the goal of enhancing domain economic and military strength brought Iwasaki and Tosa representatives to Nagasaki, where they traded with Alt and other Western merchants. Finally, It deals with chart connections into the Meiji period by outlining how the commercial enterprises created by William Alt and Iwasaki Yataro in the 1860s developed into established companies that capitalized in different ways as Japanese foreign trade grew to become more centred on Western markets.
