Introduction

The 1920s and 1930s saw many problems over trade and trade policy, and using Japanese Consular reports, Katsuhiko Kitagawa examines Japanese commercial policy towards Central, Southern, and East Africa between the wars. The chapter begins with H. I. H. Crown Prince Naruhito on the navigation and traffic of the upper Thames in the eighteenth century. In medieval England rivers were used more as sources of power than as waterways and were dammed to turn the wheels of flour mills. Weirs were also constructed to trap fish. The chapter focusses on the integration of Asia with the international economy. Despite the crucial economic changes which were beginning to take place in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Japan did not have any diplomatic contacts, even with the rest of South Asia. Japanese commercial strategy in Africa in difficult years must be seen in the context of the wider international commercial diplomacy of the day.