Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/46

 reached out for the Yellow seas; and until atrocities and arquebuses became synonymous terms the fair-faced foreigners were not restricted.

Here we have in a single sentence the history of two centuries of Euro-Chinese intercourse. The traders of Canton were not like the historic burghers of Calais who were forced to surrender the keys of their city to an alien conqueror: they merely adapted themselves to the exigencies of the hour and secured a trade monopoly by inaugurating and stereotyping a mercantile system which greatly resembled the system of medieval Europe. The emporia at Canton and at the adjacent port of Macao completely supplied the wants of buyers and sellers: in China, unlike Japan, there was no fear of foreign conquest—restriction was simply a police measure.

In religion as in commerce there is much the same story. Matteo Ricci, the first Jesuit to establish himself in China, came to Canton in 1581 and reached Peking twenty years later. He was then an accomplished Chinese scholar, and was duly presented to the Ming emperor Wan Li, who greatly welcomed him. When the Manchu cavalry entered Peking in 1644 as a result of treachery at the Great Wall and the