Why didn't Asian countries expand and trade with Europe?

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Not one of them have good ship technology to travel to Europe?

At least as far as Japan is concerned, Japan sent 2 delegates.

1 Tenshō delegate

Though, they ( meaning their ships and route are determined by the then Western people ), went to Europe as the first Japanese.

2 Tsunenaga Hasekura and the 1613 project

The shōgun had a new galleon built in Japan to bring Vizcaino back to New Spain, together with a Japanese embassy accompanied by Luis Sotelo. The galleon, named Date Maru by the Japanese and later San Juan Bautista by the Spanish, took 45 days work in building, with the participation of technical experts from the Bakufu (the Minister of the Navy Mukai Shōgen, an acquaintance of William Adams with whom he built several ships, dispatched his Chief Carpenter), 800 shipwrights, 700 smiths, and 3,000 carpenters. The daimyō of Sendai, Date Masamune, was put in charge of the project. He named one of his retainers, Hasekura Tsunenaga (his fief was rated at around 600 koku), to lead the mission:

It may be noteworthy that the lord, Masamune Date, ( who actually commanded the building of this ship ) has a rumor that he had planned a coup to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate with the help of foreign power, especially that of Spanish Armada, whose loss to England was unknown to him.

So technically speaking, Japan sent its own missionary to Europe at least once with its own ship which they built by themselves.

Upvote:8

Trade wasn't done by a person in Vietnam walking to France to sell his goods. A chain of middlemen distributed the items across the "Silk Road". Tradewise, Europe and China knew about each other and didn't need to "discover" each other.

If you are asking why Asia didn't colonize anywhere else like Europe did:

China stopped focusing on sea based imperialism in the 15th century. They still engaged in land based imperialism and held influence in Korea, Malaya, and Indochina. Many Chinese merchants moved to Indochina, Indonesia, and Burma etc.

Japan became isolationist in the 17th century.

As for India, the Mughal empire did have land based imperialism but there aren't any small places they could colonize by sea.

Summary: Around 1700, The largest, most powerful countries focused on no colonialism, land based imperialism, or business influence. The smaller countries were too busy resisting the larger countries. If India wanted to, there was not much nearby to colonize by sea. Even the European powers only had a few forts and had a business relationship with existing powers.

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