THE HISTORY OF COMMERCE
from a degraded position; for, unscrupulous as were the extortions and the heavy losses suffered by them at the hands of officialdom during Ashikaga days, their potentialities as contributors to the public exchequer won for them the title of "elders" at the Muromachi Court.
Japanese trade with Europe in mediæval times need not be noticed at any length here. The religious question alone prevented it from growing steadily and bringing in its train all the responsibilities and incentives of international relations. Under such circumstances Japan's ambition would certainly have led her far. It is on record that during the brief period—little more than half a century—which separated the opening of the trade from the first restrictions imposed on it, plans were formed, and in some cases partially carried out, for the conquest of Siam, the Philippines, Formosa, the Riu-Kiu Islands, Korea, China, and even southern Europe. In few countries, indeed, has the spirit of aggressive enterprise showed itself more potent than it was in Japan at the close of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century. The map of the Far East would certainly have been altered had not the excesses of Christian propagandists, aggravated by the jealousies of her foreign visitors, shocked Japan into seclusion. The Dutch alone remained in her territories, but they purchased the privilege at a price which to men of modern times seems incredible. The
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