The foreign policy of Japan known as the Tōa shin chitsujo or New Order in East Asia was officially announced by Prince Konoye on November 3, 1938, the birthday of Emperor Meiji. Further statements were issued by Foreign Minister Hachirō Arita to correspondents of foreign newspapers on December 19, 1938 and by the premier to the nation, three days later. When the fall of the Netherlands and France in May and June 1940 pointed to the complete collapse of European colonial empires in Asia and offered opportunity for the expansion of Japanese hegemony, the cabinet of Prince Konoye, on August 1, 1940, issued a restatement of the policy under the name of the New Order in Greater East Asia or Dai Tōa shin chitsuj. The Greater East Asia included not only Japan, Manchukuo and China, but also Indo-China and Thailand or Siam, and possibly the Dutch East Indies and the South Seas.

The colonialism of Richelieu first brought the French to the Indo-Malayan peninsula in the seventeenth century. Ayuthia, which was then the capital of Siam, was the chief entrepôt of the area and as such naturally attracted the French. But their efforts to establish diplomatic and commercial relations were terminated abruptly by two revolutions half a world apart. In Siam the Revolution of 1688 placed an antiforeign king on the throne. In England the Revolution of 1688 established William of Orange, implacable enemy of Louis XIV, as king of England. The former event dislodged the French from the favorable position they had won in Siam. The latter was the signal for the outbreak of general war in Europe, which so engaged French attention that the venture in Siam was forgotten.

One of the basic aims of American foreign policy has been to maintain the right of all countries to trade with China on an equal basis. The first formal declaration of this aim came with the sending of the Open Door notes in September, 1899. The origin of these notes has received much attention from historians in recent years, and certain aspects of their origin, particularly the part played by W. W. Rockhill and the Englishman, Alfred Hippisley, have become very well known. At least one aspect, however, has been entirely overlooked: namely, that special business interests in the United States were concerned over the possible loss of the Chinese market; were eager to have the government take just the sort of action which it did take; and were active in bringing pressure to bear on the government. It is the thesis of this article that they were partly responsible for the sending of the notes and, consequently, for America's Open Door policy.

The decade between 1870 and 1880 was a significant one in the history of the development of modern China. At the beginning of this period the internal disturbances caused by the great T'ai-p'ing rebellion had subsided. Under the stress and strain of the rebellion Tseng Kuo-fan and Li Hung-chang emerged as the two most powerful provincial officials in the Chinese mandarinate. Both men were forward-looking and fully realized that the sheer necessities of national existence required the Chinese to replace their traditional disdain for the “barbarian” West with a desire to seek out and learn the secrets of the strength of the Western nations. Both of these great Chinese officials, however, conceived of this strength in the narrow sense of military and naval prowess. Their primary concern, therefore, was to learn from the West the technical knowledge upon which western military and naval power rested, in order that China might create an army and navy as a protection against the aggressive tendencies of the Occidental nations.