Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/50

 and had culminated in the United States sending in 1871 a special mission. But the American gunboats had been fired upon, and a sharp action had ensued which had resulted in Korean coast forts being captured and destroyed. This gesture was, however, fruitless, and another decade passed before Western diplomacy intervened again. China was apparently indifferent; to this day no one accurately knows whether she foresaw what must soon occur.

On Japan, however, American action in Korea had an immediate and powerful repercussion; it was borne in on her that not one day should be wasted in delay. Nearly thirty years had now passed since China had been opened by foreign treaties; nearly twenty since she herself had given effect to Perry's demands. Yet China and Japan were officially not cognizant of each other's existence, and were unrepresented at each other's Court.

In the autumn of 1871 (i.e. four months after the American gunboat affair off Chemulpo) Date, the Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs, arrived in Tientsin and signed with Li Hung Chang a treaty which materially and radically differed from all other treaties China had made. Its language and its clauses have