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Japan: 'Western Traders at Yokohama Transporting Merchandise'. Detail of triptych print by Utagawa Sadahide (1807-1878/1879), 1861. Utagawa Sadahide, also known as Gountei Sadahide, was a Japanese artist best known for his prints in the <i>ukiyo-e</i> style as a member of the Utagawa school. His prints covered a wide variety of genres; amongst his best known are his <i>Yokohama-e</i> pictures of foreigners in Yokohama in the 1860s, a period when he was a best-selling artist. He was a member of the Tokugawa shogunate's delegation to the International Exposition of 1867 in Paris.
Okumura Masanobu (1686 – 13 March 1764) was a Japanese print designer, book publisher, and painter. He also illustrated novelettes and in his early years wrote some fiction.<br/><br/> At first his work adhered to the Torii school, but later drifted beyond that. He is a figure in the formative era of ukiyo-e doing early works on actors and <i>bijin-ga</i> ('pictures of beautiful women').
This illustration by Louis Delaporte is one of dozens he produced during his two-year venture (1866-68) with the Mekong Exploration Commission sponsored by the French Ministry of the Navy, the intention of which was to lay the groundwork for the expansion of French colonies in Indochina. Traveling the Mekong by boat, the small French delegation voyaged from Saigon to Phnom Penh to Luang Prabang, then farther north into the uncharted waters of Upper Laos and China's Yunnan province, before returning to Hanoi in 1868 by foot, accompanied by porters and elephants.
The River Mekong is the world's 12th-longest river. From its Himalayan source on the Tibetan plateau, it flows some 4,350 km (2,703 miles) through China's Yunnan province, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, finally draining in the South China Sea. The recent construction of hydroelectric dams on the river and its tributaries has reduced the water flow dramatically during the dry season in Southeast Asia.
As far back as the 6th century CE, great caravans of camels traveled regularly over the Arab trade routes between India and the Middle East carrying prized Eastern goods, such as drugs, hemp, opium, incense and spices. In the Middle Ages, these goods were transferred on to the Levant and to merchants in Venice for distribution throughout Europe.