Agents of Change in a Changing World: Treaty Port Nagasaki and the Limitations of Local Resilience

Abstract

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the small port city of Nagasaki went from the primary gateway for international trade in Japan to a failed treaty port with dismal economic prospects. This transformation is largely seen as a fall from cultural and economic preeminence that relegated Nagasaki to backwater status. However, during these transitional years, Nagasaki residents demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of a rapidly changing world. This article explores four different examples of local agents who tried to seize the opportunities offered by Nagasaki’s new role in Japan’s dramatic nineteenth century. The successes of these agents demonstrate the ingenuity and diverse mechanisms of adaptation available to Nagasaki residents in the last half of the nineteenth century. Their failures demonstrate the limits of local adaptive capacities in the face of developments in larger regional, national, and international systems.