Asia and Africa at the Treaty Table, 1854 to 1972

The United States signed this with the Tokugawa Shogunate on March 31, 1854, under threat of force. It opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships and effectively ended Japan's 220-year policy of seclusion.

Signed on February 7, 1855, soon after Kanagawa, this was the first treaty between Russia and Japan. It opened Nagasaki, Shimoda and Hakodate to Russian vessels and defined the border between the two empires.

Signed on 2 May 1889 by Menelik II and Count Pietro Antonelli, its Amharic and Italian versions differed on Article 17. Italy read a protectorate over Ethiopia into it. Ethiopia refused that reading, and Italy was defeated at Adwa.

Sultan Abd al-Hafid signed this under duress on 30 March 1912. It set up the French protectorate in Morocco, which lasted until the Franco-Moroccan Joint Declaration of 2 March 1956.

Japan presented these secret demands to the Republic of China on 18 January 1915, during the First World War. The harshest would have given Japan a decisive voice in Chinese finance, policing and government, in effect making China a protectorate.

Signed by 49 nations on September 8, 1951, this peace treaty ended the war and the occupation of Japan. China was not invited because of the dispute over which government represented it, and Korea was left out for a similar reason.

This 1954 agreement between India and China on Tibet set out five principles, including mutual non-aggression and peaceful coexistence. Relations built on it collapsed within a decade, in the Sino-Indian War of 1962.

Signed on 2 July 1972 by Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, it committed India and Pakistan to settle disputes by bilateral talks. It turned the December 1971 ceasefire line in Kashmir into the Line of Control.