Taking courage from the Dutch

Globalisation is not as new as we sometimes like to think. Within a mere five years of the publication in 1798 of Jenner’s tract about vaccination, Dr Francisco Xavier de Balmis set sail to the Spanish colony of New Spain (Mexico) with a view to introducing vaccination there. Having done so successfully, he sailed on to the Philippines, Macau and Canton with the same aim in view. Vaccination arrived about the same time in Java by way of Mauritius. No modern consumer product has spread more rapidly.

Vaccination, however, was late in reaching Japan. This was not because there was no need for it: on the contrary, it has been estimated that about a fifth of Japanese children died of smallpox before the age of five. The reason for the late arrival of vaccination was the two-and-a-half-century- old isolation of Japan under the rule of the Tokugawa shoguns.

Japan’s only contact with the rest of the world during that time was through the few Dutch merchants who were allowed to reside there and wait for Dutch ships, never very numerous, to arrive, bringing trade goods.