TY - BOOK ID - 3386971 TI - Defining engagement : Japan and global context, 1640-1868 AU - Hellyer, Robert I. AU - Harvard University Press PY - 2009 VL - 326 SN - 9780674035775 9781684174997 PB - Cambridge, Mass. Harvard University Press DB - UniCat KW - Japan KW - Foreign relations KW - J4810.60 KW - J3363 KW - Japan: International politics and law -- international relations, policy and security -- Kinsei, Edo, Tokugawa period, early modern (1600-1867) KW - Japan: History -- Kinsei, Edo period -- seclusion, sakoku (1639-1854), 18th century general UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:3386971 AB - Presenting fresh insights on the internal dynamics and global contexts that shaped foreign relations in early modern Japan, Robert I. Hellyer challenges the still largely accepted wisdom that the Tokugawa shogunate, guided by an ideology of seclusion, stifled intercourse with the outside world, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Examining diplomacy, coastal defense, and foreign trade, this study demonstrates that while the shogunate created the broader framework, foreign relations were actually implemented through cooperative but sometimes competitive relationships with the Satsuma and Tsushima domains ... Successive Tokugawa leaders also proactively revised foreign trade, especially with China ... In the nineteenth century, the system of foreign relations continued to evolve. The two domains of Satsuma and Tsushima subsequently played key roles in Japan's transition from using early modern East Asian practices of foreign relations to the national adoptation of international relations. -- Book Jacket. ER -