of the West are expending their virgin energies--he feels that it is absurd for him to censure, and impertinent in him to condemn. The East has not yet exhausted its lessons for us, and Europe may still sit at the feet of her elder sister. The No introduction is needed in presenting the Far East to an English audience,1 since, on the whole, it is better known to them already than the Near East, or than the Central East, if these geographical distinctions may be permitted. Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Persia, Beluchistan, and Transcaspia, are each a terra incognita to the majority of our countrymen compared with the coasts of China and the cities of Japan. The situation of these, on or near to the ocean highways, and the advanced state of civilisation to which their inhabitants have attained and which has long attracted the notice of Europe, and the extent to which they have in recent years been made accessible by steam-traffic by land and sea, have diverted thither the stream of travel, and have familiarised men with Tokio and Canton who have never been to Syracuse or Moscow. Comfort too plays a great part in the discrimination of travel. Were there a railroad from the Caspian to Teheran, more people would visit the capital of the Shah. Were there an hotel at Baghdad, we might shortly hear of Cook's parties to the ruins of Babylon. Nevertheless there are portions of the Far East which the precise dearth of those communications of which I have been speaking has still left isolated and almost unknown. The number of 1 It may have been forgotten by most readers, but it is nevertheless the fact, that the historical connection of England with the Far East was antecedent to her connection with India. The East India Trading Company had trading stations in the Malay Peninsula, in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo, before they had opened a single factory in Hindustan, the spice trade being the bait that drew them so far afield. The British advance of the past century has therefore been merely a reappearance upon a scene where the English flag first flew nearly three hundred years ago. Englishmen who have travelled in the interior of Korea may be counted upon the fingers of the two hands. I know of none who have selected Annam as the scene of their explorations. Perhaps, therefore, in including them in my survey of the Far East, I may help to fill a gap, at the same time that I subserve the symmetry of my own plan. There are certain main distinctions which separate this region from those parts of the Asian continent that border upon the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea. Much of it, comprising the whole of the Indo- Its idiosyncrasies. Chinese peninsula, lies south of the Tropic of Cancer, and accordingly presents us with a climate, peoples, and a vegetation, upon which the sun has looked, and which possess characteristics of their own. Greater heat has produced less capacity of resistance; and just as in India all the masculine races have their habitat above the 24th degree of latitude, so in the Far East is there the greatest contrast between the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan, lying north of that parallel, and those of Burma, Siam, Malaysia, and Annam, which lie below it. The one class has retained its virility and its freedom, the second has already undergone or is in course of undergoing absorption. Throughout the Far East there is abundance of water, and the scorched and sullen deserts that lay their leprous touch upon Persia, Central Asia, and Mongolia, are nowhere reproduced. In the Near East, i.e. west of the Indus and the Oxus, there are absolutely only two rivers of any importance, the Tigris and the Euphrates; and the main reason of the backwardness of those countries is the dearth both of moisture and of means of communication which the absence of rivers entails. A further striking difference, of incalculable importance in its effect upon national development, is that of religion. Western Asia is in the unyielding and pitiless clutch of Islam, which opposes a Cyclopean wall of resistance to innovation or reform. In Eastern Asia we encounter only the mild faith of the Indian prince, more or less overlaid with superstition and idolatry, or sapped by scepticism and decay; and the strange conglomerate of ethics and demonolatry which stands for religion in China and its once dependent states. Neither of these agencies is overtly hostile to Western influence, though both, when aroused, are capable of putting forth a tacit weight of antagonism that must be felt to be appreciated. Finally, whereas in the Near East population is sparse and inadequate, in the Far East it is crowded upon the soil, cultivating the wellsoaked lands with close diligence or massed behind city-walls in seething aggregations of humanity. These conditions augment the complexity of the problem which their political future involves. India the pivot. Midway between the two flanks of the continent whose rival differences I have sketched lies India, sharing the features, both good and evil, of both. She has wide, waterless, and untilled plains; but she also has throbbing hives of human labour and life. Her surface is marked both by mighty rivers and by Saharas of sand. Among her peoples are Mohammedans of both schools, mixed up with diverse and pagan creeds. Of her races some have always subsisted by the sword alone; to others the ploughshare is the only known implement of iron. She combines the rigours of eternal snow with the luxuriant flame of the tropics. Within her borders may be studied every one of the problems with which the rest of Asia challenges our concern. But her central and commanding position is nowhere better seen than in the political influence which she exercises over the destinies of her neighbours near and far, and the extent to which their fortunes revolve upon an Indian axis. The independence of Afghanistan, the continued national existence of Persia, the maintenance of Turkish rule at Baghdad, are one and all dependent upon Calcutta. Nay, the radiating circle of her influence overlaps the adjoining continents, and affects alike the fate of the Bosphorus and the destinies of Egypt. Nor is the effect less remarkable if examined upon the eastern side, to which in this book I am about to invite attention. It is from jealousy of India and to impair the position which India gives to Great Britain in the Far East that France has again embarked upon an Asiatic career, and is advancing from the south-east with steps that faithfully correspond with those of Russia upon the north-west. The heritage of the Indian Empire has within the last ten years made us the landneighbours of China, and has multiplied threefold the area of our diplomacy at Peking. Even the fortunes of remote Korea are in a manner bound up with the politics of Hindustan, seeing that it is by the same foe that, in the last resort, both are threatened, and that the tactics which aim at the appropriation of the smaller unit have as their ulterior objective the detriment of the greater. Such and so supreme is the position enjoyed in the Asian continent by the Empire of the Kaiser-i-Hind. Towards her, or into her orbit, a centripetal force, which none appears able to resist, draws every wandering star. Just as it may be said that the Eastern Question in Europe turns upon the dismemberment of Turkey, so the Eastern Question in Asia turns upon the continued solidarity of Hindustan. In what relation to that problem stand the countries and peoples of the Far East, what is their present political condition, and in what way they are engaged in constructing the history, or reconstructing the maps of the future, it is my object in these pages to determine. |