Japan went on to sign the Japan-US Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858. Similar accords soon followed with Britain, Russia, and the Netherlands. Seeing no other option, in 1854 the shogunate’s leaders agreed to the Japan-US Treaty of Peace and Amity, which opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to US ships.
In 1853, however, Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy, the commander of the East India squadron, arrived with a fleet of “black ships” and demanded the opening of the country. The Tokugawa shogunate, in power since the beginning of the seventeenth century, refused all these requests.
Foreign ships appeared in the seas around Japan, occasionally coming to shore with the aim of establishing trade ties.
In the nineteenth century, after the world’s great powers successfully industrialized, they began expanding their influence to Asia in search of new markets.
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