What advantages did the Europeans & Americans have over the Japanese that made it easy to force them to trade?

Europeans and Americans enjoyed technological superiority and possessed a modern navy with powerful warships powered by steam engines. If they wished, they could have inflicted great damage on Japanese ports and armies. Due to isolation and limited contacts with the outside world, Japan had lagged behind the West technologically and scientifically by the first half of the 19th century. After the fall of the shogunate, the leaders of the Meiji Era began a modernization process, a relatively quick catch-up with the West.

Explanation:

a historian researching the immigration policies of the early 1900s would expect a source written today,rather than in 1910 to :

( a ) be more interested in objective data and statistics.

c. troops marched forward in close formation against newer, more accurate weapons