The Shogun’s Silver Telescope centers Japan within the British East India Company’s history by picking apart layers of archival obscurity and imperial amnesia. Using unlikely gift objects—a silver telescope and cargoes of paintings presented by the English to bewildered shoguns—Screech weaves a riveting history of art with the methods of transnational history. The book argues that the quest for Japanese silver was highly important to the British East India Company in the era of peaceful Euro-commercial rivalry (4). To secure bullion, the English used art to present themselves as trusted trade partners compared to their European rivals, the Iberians, Jesuits, and Dutch.

Japanese–British relations before the hostilities of World War II is insignificant to histories of international relations and empire. After the shoguns expelled Iberians and Jesuits when they banned foreigners in 1635, they permitted only the Dutch East India Company (the voc) to operate in Nagasaki. The ban...

You do not currently have access to this content.