German Experience of Japan's Treaty Port System

German merchants were attracted to the British Empire's spheres of influence in northeast Asia from the 1700s. Their numbers increased when Britain established a network of treaty ports in China from 1842 and in Japan from 1858. A latecomer to empire, Germany, unified only in 1871, extended its imperial influence in China in 1898. This is the story of two German merchants, Carl Nickel and his rela...