In the autumn of 1773, the Panchen Lama of Tashilhunpo, Lobzang Paldan Yeshes, sent a letter to Warren Hastings in Calcutta. He was writing to ask for clemency on behalf of his vassal, the rajah of Bhutan, who had recently been defeated by the East India Company's soldiers in a border war. For some time, the officials of the company had been discussing how they might open relations with Tibet, and to Hastings this seemed the opportunity they had been waiting for.

The meiji period (1868–1912) in Japanese history is known traditionally as an era of bustling reform during which the leaders of the restored imperial government sought to discard a feudal and backward civilization and to replace it with the modernity of the West. No people, however, notwithstanding all their persistence, talents, and hopes can have worked as great a transformation in their national life as has been claimed for the Japanese during this period. There is no doubt that great and far-reaching reforms were inaugurated, but it is especially necessary, in assessing them, to distinguish between the initial plans and hopes of the Japanese, on the one hand, and the actual achievements, on the other. The fundamental institutional changes which were projected required in most instances the passage of at least a generation before a reasonable stage of progress was attained. Failure to bear in mind the gradual nature of these changes has often resulted in the presentation of distorted and anachronistic treatments of modern Japanese history.

If the differences in the milieus which foster distinct philosophies are kept in mind, a comparison of ideas drawn from widely separated eras and environments can be profitable to the student of political thought and institutions. Social and environmental changes, and even technological revolutions, have altered but have not displaced the fundamental and still largely unsolved problems of human adjustment. Many formulas considered as peculiarly modern had their counterpart in antiquity, and concepts regarded as typical of Western culture have frequently been encompassed in the thought of Eastern peoples. A case in point is offered by the utilitarian political creed, which, while most famous and influential in England during the nineteenth century, was partially anticipated in one of the philosophical schools of ancient China. Utilitarianism was understandably a suitable vehicle for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English reformers, but it seems remarkable to find the principle expounded in tradition-bound China of the later Chou dynasty, when, as afterward, appeal to authority and reverence for the past were strongly embedded. Not only was a utilitarian concept vigorously and logically developed by the philosoher Mo Ti (approximately 468-382 B.C.), but his disciples constituted a flourishing school for more than a century after his death and were formidable competitors of the Confucianists. Mencius, the greatest exponent of Confucianism at the opening of the third century B.C., denounced as the two most dangerous heresies the extreme individualism of Yang Chu (fourth-century hedonistic anarchist) and the indiscriminate altruism of Mo Ti, both of which doctrines he regarded as tending to undermine social decorum and a proper respect for authority. The rivalry between Confucianists and the champions of Mo Ti took on the nature of a partisan conflict. On many fundamentals the two schools were not so utterly irreconcilable as the heat of controversy made it appear. Both appealed to the example of ancient sage-kings for justification; both accepted as a political norm a benevolent, paternalistic system with power and initiative descending from above, although Mo's conceptions were more authoritarian and theocratic than those of the Confucians; both regarded politics and ethics as synonymous and believed that the creation of the good society would go hand in hand with the improvement of the individual's moral character. They shared the common ground of a logical, matter-of-fact approach to human problems, in contrast to the mysticism of the Taoists. Nevertheless, the Confucianists campaigned uncompromisingly against their rivals and finally won such a complete victory that Mo Ti's influence was extinguished and his teachings remained almost unknown for some 2,000 years.