In 1857, Townsend Harris, the first American minister to Japan, had a hard time convincing the country's feudal leaders that doing business with the United States might be a good thing. He preached the mid-Victorian gospel that foreign trade would make their nation wealthier and stronger, but his ideas were not well received in Edo (now Tokyo), Japan's capital.
For more than 200 years, the Japanese had been strict mer- cantilists, hoarding gold and silver instead of using them for trade. Under...