â In the context of Dejima, a trading post during the Edo period, what was its primary function regarding interactions between Japan and foreign nations?
Dejima was intentionally constructed and maintained by the Tokugawa shogunate to control and limit foreign influence, functioning as the only place where Westerners could legally conduct trade and have limited interaction with Japanese society during a period of national isolation.
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â Core Definition: Trading post
A trading post, trading station, or trading house, also known as a factory in European and colonial contexts, is an establishment or settlement where goods and services could be traded.
Typically a trading post allows people from one geographic area to exchange for goods produced in another area. Usually money is not used. The barter that occurs often includes an aspect of haggling. In some examples, local inhabitants can use a trading post to exchange what they have (such as locally-harvested furs) for goods they wish to acquire (such as manufactured trade goods imported from industrialized places).
Dejima (Japanese: ĺşĺłś; lit.â'exit island') or Deshima, in the 17th century also called Tsukishima (çŻĺłś; lit.â'built island'), was an artificial island off Nagasaki, Japan, that served as a trading post for the Portuguese (1570â1639) and subsequently the Dutch (1641â1858). For 220 years, it was the central conduit for foreign trade and cultural exchange with Japan during the isolationist Edo period (1600â1869), and the only Japanese territory open to Westerners.
Dejima was created in 1636 by digging a canal through a small peninsula and linking it to the mainland with a small bridge. The island was constructed by the Tokugawa shogunate, whose isolationist policies sought to preserve the existing sociopolitical order by forbidding outsiders from entering Japan while prohibiting most Japanese from leaving. Dejima housed European merchants and separated them from Japanese society while still facilitating lucrative trade with the West.
Trading post in the context of English overseas possessions
The English overseas possessions, sometimes referred to as the English Empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707. (In 1707 the Acts of Union made England part of the Kingdom of Great Britain. See British Empire.)
The first English overseas settlements were established in Ireland. Although there were English voyages of exploration during the reign of Henry VII of England, and further settlement in Ireland and attempts at North American settlement during the reign of his granddaughter Elizabeth I, not until the succession in 1603 of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England (ruling as James I) were permanent overseas settlements established in North America, first at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) and then the West Indies, all in areas claimed by Spain. In Asia, trading posts called "factories" in the East Indies, such as Bantam, and in the Indian subcontinent, beginning with Surat. In 1639, a series of English fortresses on the Indian coast was initiated with Fort St George. In 1661, the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza brought him as part of her dowry new possessions which until then had been Portuguese, including Tangier in North Africa and Bombay in India.
Following the de facto independence of the Dutch Republic from the Spanish Empire in the late 16th century, various trading companies known as voorcompagnie led maritime expeditions overseas in search of commercial opportunities. By 1600, Dutch traders and mariners had penetrated the lucrative Asian spice trade but lacked the capital or manpower to secure or expand their ventures; this prompted the States General in 1602 to consolidate several trading enterprises into the semi-state-owned Dutch East India Company (Dutch: Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC), which was granted a monopoly over the Asian trade.
Trading post in the context of Emporium (antiquity)
An emporium refers to a trading post, factory, or market of classical antiquity, derived from áźÎźĎĎĎΚονempĂłrion, which becomes emporium in Latin. The plural is emporia in both languages, although in Greek the plural undergoes a semantic shift towards 'merchandise'. Emporium is a term that has also been used to describe the centres of heightened trade during the Early Middle Ages.
Emporia varied greatly in their level of activity. Some seem to have functioned much like the permanent European trading colonies in China, India and Japan in the early modern period or those of the mediaeval Italian maritime republics in the Levant. Others were probably annual events for a few days or weeks like the medieval Champagne fairs or modern trade fairs.
An entrepĂ´t (English: /ËÉntrÉpoĘ/ON-trÉ-poh; French:[ÉĚtĘÉpo]) is a transshipment port, city, or trading post where merchandise may be imported, stored, or traded, usually to be exported again. EntrepĂ´t also means 'warehouse' in modern French, and is derived from the Latin roots inter 'between' + positum 'position', literally 'that which is placed between'. Typically located on a crossroads, river, canal, or maritime trade route these trade hubs played a critical role in trade during the age of sail. Modern logistics, supply chain networks, and border controls have largely made entrepĂ´ts obsolete, or reduced them in number, but the term is still used to refer to duty-free ports or those with a high volume of re-export trade.
Railways, Container Ships, Air-Freight, and Telecommunications have created a world in which commodities and manufactured goods are shifted from one part of the globe to another in regular, controlled, and reliable streams; see Just-in-Time Manufacturing. Eliminating the factors which once made the entrepot phenomenon central to trade networks. But, as pointed out by the Dutch economist T.P. van der Kooy and has been more recently restated by P.W. Klein, before the Industrial Revolution the flow of goods from one part of the world to another, even one region of a country to another, was so irregular and unpredictable that there was no possibility of achieving any sort of steady distribution, any balancing of supply and demand, or any sort of price stability except by stockpiling great reserves of commodities in central storehouses; ie entrepots.