Question

I'm completing a study guide, and one of the answers is not in my notes. The question is:

Why did China and Japan react as they did to Europeans desire to trade with them?

Answer 1

-The rise of the West from the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries involved distant explorations and conquests resulting in a heightening and redefining of relationships among world societies. During the classical era, larger regional economies and culture zones had developed, as in the Chinese Middle Kingdom and the Mediterranean basin, but international exchanges were not of fundamental importance to the societies involved. During the postclassical period, contacts increased and were more significant. Missionary religions—Buddhism and Islam—and trade influenced important changes. The new world relationships after 1450 spelled a new period of world history. The Americas and other world areas were joined to the world network, while older regions had increased contacts. Trade became so significant that new relationships emerged among societies and prompted reconsideration of existing political and cultural traditions.
The West's Commercial Outreach. Westerners, because of their superior military might, dominated international trade, but they did not displace all rivals. Asian shipping continued in Chinese and Japanese coastal waters, Muslim traders predominated along the East African littoral, and the Turks were active in the Eastern Mediterranean. Little inland territory was conquered in Africa or Asia; the Europeans sought secure harbors and built fortifications to protect their commerce and serve as contact places for inland traders. When effective indigenous states opposed such bases, Europeans gained protected trading enclaves within their cities.
East Asian civilizations did not need European products; they concentrated on consumption or regional commerce. China was uninterested in international trading involvement and remained mainly outside the world economy until the end of the eighteenth century. China was powerful enough to keep Europeans in check

Answer 2

Thank you very much. :)

Answer 3

welcome