(^36 8) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
were near to catching up. They came into contact with European
knowledge at a number of points, but these points were scattered and
all of them lay well behind the frontier. Under the circumstances, al
though the extraordinary commercial and industrial development of
the Tokugawa era prepared the Japanese, as no other non-Western
people, to receive the lessons and techniques of the European scientific
and industrial revolutions, they were still far from conceiving and mak
ing such advances.
How far is impossible to say, because the Europeans came and broke
open the carapace of isolation, preempting chance and history. The
newer historiography rejects a Eurocentric view of world history. It
stresses the autonomy and initiative of non-Western peoples and dep
recates the older focus on reactions to the imperialist challenge. In the
matter of Japan, I sympathize with that point of view, because I be
lieve—no way of proving this—that even without a European industrial
revolution, the Japanese would sooner or later have made their own.
Han, Inc.
The image of Japan as a collection of semi-independent units is
confirmed by the enterprising ban called Satsuma, southwesternmost
province, far from Edo and Bakufu control. In 1825, Satsuma's
government was bankrupt. Salaries of retainers were over a year in
arrears; grass and weeds grew rank in the ban*s compounds in Edo;
the big bankers in Osaka refused to lend another cent. In 1831, the
ban leaders summarily repudiated all debt to local businessmen and
effectively nullified obligations to merchants in Osaka and Edo by
rescheduling payments over a period of two hundred fifty years.^34 Yet
twenty years later, the ban treasury was overflowing, and merchants
were lining up to offer credit.
What happened in between? Sugar. Satsuma, blessed by a warm,
maritime climate, was made for cane. Once the ban realized the
value of sugar, it mandated increased planting and forbade all other
crops on its offshore islands. Cultivation was stringently controlled,
and those peasants who failed the quality test were severely punished.
It was the ban that set the price and then sold the sugar in Osaka at
two to five times that amount. No one, on pain of death, might
nora
(Nora)
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