Strange isolation: The Dutch, the Japanese, and the Asian economy in the seventeenth century

If the predominant trend in scholarship on this period is to view Japanese political history from the viewpoint of a country isolated from the larger world, the same is all the more true in the case of economic history. This, however, is even more misleading since the Japanese economic influence on Asia was tremendous, especially in the seventeenth century. Even when the Japanese government decided to limit its contact with the Europeans by expelling first the Spanish and then the Portuguese and also decided to prohibit its own citizens from traveling abroad, the Japanese economy remained a force in Asia and indeed played a significant role in the world economy as well. The seventeenth century economy of Japan, however, was an "economy by proxy" since the agents that exchanged Asian and European luxury goods for Japanese products and precious metals were not Japanese but rather Dutch, Chinese, Korean, and Ryukyu Islanders. These peoples moved in to fill the economic gap left by the forced exclusion of the native Japanese merchants from an active role in the foreign economy of Japan. This dissertation will show the tremendous impact that the Japanese economy had on Asia and on the foreigners trading in Japan in the seventeenth century.