"Thomas Blake Glover was born in Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, in 1838, the fifth son in a busy household. From childhood, he was possessed with a restless energy and a desire to be heard." "His financial ambition, risk-taking personality and a knack for being in the right place at the right time would turn him into Japan's first major industrialist." "Arriving in Nagasaki in 1859, Glover quickly found his feet in the turbulent trading world. He befriended the samurai rebels, sold the Japanese Imperial Navy its first great ships and helped to introduce coal mining, railways, trawl fishing and other modern industries, including Mitsubishi and Kirin beer." "At the Edge of Empire: The Life of Thomas Blake Glover is the first major biography in fifteen years of trader and entrepreneur Thomas Blake Glover. Using material which has only recently come to light in Japan. Michael Gardiner's study offers a controversial and thought-provoking view of Anglo-Japanese relations in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Thomas Blake Glover's legacy.

" "In the popular imagination Thomas Blake Glover has been the model for Pinkerton in Madam Butterfly. Here, Michael Gardiner finally explodes the myth."--BOOK JACKET.