A demonstration of the growing power of Western civilisation, even more impressive than the expansion of the Russian Empire, was afforded during these years by the opening to Western influence of the ancient, pot-bound empires of the Far East, China and Japan.  The opening of China began with the Anglo-Chinese War of 1840, which led to the acquisition of Hong-Kong and the opening of a group of treaty ports to European trade.  It was carried further by the combined Franco-British war of 1857-58, which was ended by a treaty permitting the free access of European travellers, traders, and missionaries to the interior, and providing for the permanent residence of ambassadors of the signatory powers at the court of Pekin.  All the European states rushed to share these privileges, and the Westernising of China had begun.  It did not take place rapidly or completely, and it was accompanied by grave disturbances, notably the Taiping rebellion, which was only suppressed by the aid of the British General Gordon, in command of a Chinese army.  But though the process was slow, it was fully at work by 1878.  The external trade of China, nearly all in European hands, had assumed great proportions.  The missionaries and schoolmasters of Europe and America were busily at work in the most populous provinces.  Shanghai had become a European city, and one of the great trade-centres of the world.  In a lame and incompetent way the Chinese government was attempting to organise its army on the European model, and to create a navy after the European style.  Steamboats were plying on the Yang-tse-kiang, and the first few miles of railway were open.  Chinese students were beginning to resort to the universities and schools of the West; and although the conservatism of the Chinese mind was very slow to make the plunge, it was already plain that this vast hive of patient, clever, and industrious men was bound to enter the orbit of Western civilisation.

Meanwhile, after a longer and stiffer resistance, Japan had made up her mind to a great change with amazing suddenness and completeness.  There had been some preliminary relations with the Western peoples, beginning with the visits of the American Commodore Perry in 1853 and 1854, and a few ports had been opened to European trade.  But then came a sudden, violent reaction (1862).  The British embassy was attacked; a number of British subjects were murdered; a mixed fleet of British, French, Dutch, and American ships proved the power of Western arms, and Japan began to awaken to the necessity of adopting, in self-defence, the methods of these intrusive foreigners.  The story of the internal revolution in Japan, which began in 1866, cannot be told here; enough that it led to the most astounding change in history.  Emerging from her age-long isolation and from her contentment with her ancient, unchanging modes of life, Japan realised that the future lay with the restless and progressive civilisation of the West; and with a national