Sarah Paine

Industrial Revolution or the powers that have benefited from it.

And it's watching its neighbor, China, being defeated twice in war.

And they're horrified, not just appalled.

And...

So they're looking at it and going, you know what, maybe we'll be next.

And they're right.

The United States does unto Japan what Britain and France did unto China.

What's that?

The treaty port system.

What it meant is that trade in Japan and China would take place in designated treaty ports.

that the West would set tariffs on this trade and that Western citizens in China or Japan in these treaty ports would not be subjected to Chinese or Japanese law, but home country law.

And when Chinese and Japanese citizens were in Europe and the United States, they most certainly were not dealing with home country law.

They were dealing with U.S.

or Western law.

So it was not reciprocal in any way.

In addition, each one of these treaties had a most favored nation clause in it, which said the one who's negotiating this treaty, the most favored one, whatever they negotiate will be given to everybody else.

So it meant whatever one could negotiate accrued to them all.

It meant that China lost sovereignty and Japan lost their sovereignty when these treaties go in.

And so the Japanese, unlike China, which fights war after war with these Westerners trying to defeat them militarily and it's unsuccessful, the Japanese say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

we're going to assess what the nature of the problem is.