Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/601

 1922 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 593 Japan en de Buitenwereld in de 18 de Eeuw. Door Dr. J. FEENSTRA KTJIPER. ('s Gravenhage : Nijhoff, 1921.) THIS is a careful study of the relations, both commercial and general, of Japan and Europe during the eighteenth century. It reviews first the conditions in Europe and European colonies, the decline of Dutch trade, economic and currency conditions, the state of scientific knowledge, and the moral atmosphere, and then subjects the Japanese world to a similar examination. A full discussion of trade conditions follows, beginning with a description of the position at Nagasaki and continuing with a detailed account of the trade of the Dutch East India Company with Japan and the various efforts made to improve it. These were all defeated by the ingrained conservatism of the Dutch management, the hopeless confusion of the accounts, and the peculation of officials on the one side and the exclusiveness and distrust of the Japanese on the other. Yet throughout the period, despite threats on the part of the Dutch to withdraw altogether, friendly relations were maintained, for the Dutch valued the trade in copper, and Japan felt that the Dutch, whom they knew, were a safer medium of communication with the Western world than other foreigners, whom they did not know, would be likely to be. The last two chapters give an interesting account of the influence of Europe on Japan and of Japan on Europe. Just as the Dutch East India Company, of which the views were narrowly commercial, founded unwittingly in South Africa a genuine colony, so in Japan it opened the door to the influence of the West with consequences of which it never dreamed. The nature of its relations with the Japanese is amusingly illustrated by an episode in Yoshimune's time. The Company were accustomed to give presents of various things which were not to be obtained in Japan, both animals and plants. He asked for pepper and other spice plants. They were duly dispatched from Batavia, and watered on the voyage with sea-water. In Europe the influence of Japan, interest in which was aroused by the frauds of George Psalmanazar, was not really great ; too little was known, and what was known was largely confused with what was Chinese. Dr. Kuiper has evidently studied carefully all the printed authorities, a bibliography of which he gives, and has examined the original records in Europe. He does not profess to have made an equally thorough examination of the original Japanese material, but this is probably for this period less important, and the book gives the impression of wide reading and a balanced judgement. It is illustrated by reproductions of plans and pictures of the Dutch factory at Deshima, and of Nagasaki. H. LAMBERT. Autour d'une Route. L' Angleterre, I'Isthme de Suez et VEgypte au X VHP siecle. Par FRA^OIS CHARLES-HOUX. (Paris : Plon, 1922.) THE author of this painstaking study is councillor of the French embassy in Home, where his Anglophil sentiments are well known and have enabled him here, as in his brilliant book on the Dardanelles expedition, to discuss Anglo-French relations with calm and a feeling of responsibility. He remarks upon the scanty interest shown by the British in the history of VOL. xxxvn. NO. cxLvni. Q q