Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/197

be no doubt that in early times the act of offering or receiving tribute did not carry the significance subsequently attached to it by European international jurists. It implied no inferiority on the part of the tribute-bearer, and it established a title to freedom from molestation by the tribute-receiver. Of that there appears to be no question. But it did not set up any practical relation of suzerain and vassal. Indeed, the accounts of Arab travellers in the ninth century show that tribute then partook of a mercantile, not less than of a political character, the tribute-bearer looking to obtain from the tribute-receiver gifts much more valuable than those offered to the latter. The Japanese in their intercourse with China recognised that principle fully. Their missions expected to carry back, and did actually carry back, from the Middle Kingdom goods commanding in Japan a greatly higher price than that of the articles presented to the Chinese court. The tribute sent to Peking during the sway of the Ming dynasty from Ceylon, the Malay States, Sumatra, Malabar, Arabia, Java, Siam, Sulu, the Riukiu (Loochoo) Islands, Borneo, and several other insular kingdoms in the southern seas, may perhaps be regarded as more significant, since many of those countries adopted the custom in deference to exhibitions of force by the eunuch-commanded squadrons. Subsequently, when China saw herself menaced by the competitive aggression of Western nations, she began to