ABSTRACT
Colonialism, in its modern context of the possession and rule of overseas territory, often assumed to be largely for the purposes and advantage of the ruling power, can be dated back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the Age of Discovery. From the early period of colonialism, territory was taken for a variety of purposes. In the seventeenth century, Caribbean islands were acquired by England to produce sugar for economic gain. These were examples of what can be termed resource-extraction colonies under 'mercantilist imperialism'. The contestation between the Western nations and the East Asian countries of China and Japan in the nineteenth century is associated with geopolitics, the 'geographic distribution of power'. This chapter has indicated something of the complex nature of political relationships between East Asia and the West between the 1840s and 1880s. Seo-Hyun Park has described the late nineteenth century as being a period of domestic and foreign-policy challenges for China and Japan.
