Japan’s reforms were pursued with such vigor that the Western powers were soon obliged to abandon the model of “extraterritoriality”—their “right” to try their own citizens in Japan by their own, not local, laws—which they had first applied in China. In a landmark trade treaty Britain, the preeminent Western power, committed British subjects in Japan to abide by Japanese jurisdiction. In 1902, the British treaty was transformed into a military alliance, the first formal strategic alignment between an Asian and a Western power.
