Дніпропетровський національний історичний музей

The Tokyo government became one of the first to recognize the independence of Ukraine in 1991. But the history of Ukrainian–Japanese communications has a much older history, reaching its roots back in the nineteenth century.

In 1897, the Russian Empire was visited by the President of the French Republic, Felix Faure. It is unknown whether he visited Ukrainian lands, but he was informed about the rapid development of industry in the Kryvyi Rih-Donetsk region. Therefore, after returning to Paris, when the representatives of the trading world and the industrialists held a banquet for him, Faure, being impressed by what he had heard, said in his speech: “Without any loss of time, start to acquire new markets… hurry to send the barely familiar unexplored areas a private initiative … to promote the emigration of capital. We will not let foreign competitors be ahead of ourselves…”. He was heard. So, if by the calculations of the researchers in the 1870s, only 5 French joint stock companies were opened, in the 1880s – 9, then in the 1890s – 29, out of which 18 – in 1896-1900. This was the most significant period of the French investment in the industry of Ukraine.

The first Belgian enterprises appeared in the territory of Ukraine in the 1880s, and these were horsedrawn trams in Odesa (1880) and Kharkiv (1883). And in total, 7 Belgian companies, which worked in the tramway business, started their activity in the Empire in 1894.

English entrepreneurial capital was the first one judging by the time of activity in Ukraine and was associated with John James Hughes, the founder of the modern regional centre of Ukraine – the city of Donetsk. It was the Hughes’s plant of the Novorussian Society for Coal, Iron and Rail Production, established in London in 1869 that gave the name of a factory village – Yuzivka (“Yuz” is a Ukrainian approximation of Hughes), that later transformed into the city. In 1924, Yuzivka was named Stalino, and in 1961 the city was renamed into Donetsk.