Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- The early modern Japanese economy -- The failure of the temp? : reforms and the opening of Yokohama -- The first merchant of Yokohama -- Bakumatsu Japan's trade and Yokohama's place in that trade -- Yokohama and its hinterland -- The producers of...

"In Empire of Commerce, Susan Gaunt Stearns takes readers back to a time when there was nothing inevitable about the United States' untrammeled westward expansion. Her work demonstrates the centrality of trade on and along the Mississippi River to the complex development of the political and...