Ezra Stiles Quotes
Our trade opens to all the world.
Stiles, Ezra. The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor. Thomas & Samuel Green, 1783, p. 55.
Harris opened up trade with Japan for the United States. The problem at the time had nothing to do with the potential economic effects of trade on domestic industry or balance of payments, but for the Japanese was strictly a cultural problem. They were in great fear of what today some call “cultural imperialism”--the adoption of a foreign culture. The Japanese had been so fearful of cultural influence of foreigners that when some Japanese fishermen’s boat had been sunk and they had been rescued by foreign seamen and returned to Japan, they were executed as they had been “contaminated” and could “contaminate” the rest of the population.
Ezra Stiles was an American academic and educator, Congregationalist minister, theologian and author. He was seventh president of Yale College (1778–1795), and one of the founders of Brown University.