Note 23 — PART I. JAPAN AND THE PACIFIC.

The whole history of the French in the East is indissolubly bound up with the history of their efforts to destroy our Eastern supremacy. Mauritius was occupied to enable French cruisers to prey on our East Indiamen. Louis XIV. volunteered armed aid to Annam in order to cut off Calcutta from Canton. A French occupation of Tonkin is a serious matter. French cruisers supplied with coal from the mines of Tonkin would lie in the fairway of our China trade, Burmah and Calcutta would be effectually blockaded, and our outlying Oriental possessions grievously threatened (C. B. Norman’s “Tonkin and France in the Far East”).