Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/193

IN dividing the story of China's foreign intercourse and foreign trade the principle here adopted is to class as "early" the whole era during which strangers visiting China, whether for purposes of trade or in the cause of religious propagandism, recognised her complete supremacy within her own borders, respected her laws, and conformed with her systems; the era, in short, before Occidental people had begun to make practical display of masterful ways and to adopt a mien of offensive superiority towards Orientals. That era may be said to have ended with the fall of the Yuan dynasty of Mongols (1368). It ended, not because China herself underwent any change, but because European enterprise then ceased to be represented by individual adventurers and began to be conducted by companies or States. So long as foreigners, whether Indians, Arabs, Syrians, Mohammedans, Franks,—as the men of Europe were called,—Jews, Nestorians, or Franciscans, arrived singly or