The measures Iemitsu enacted were so powerful that it was not until the 1850s that Japanese ports opened to a wider range of trading partners, Westerners were free to settle and travel within Japan, and Japanese were once more free to travel overseas. This period of "maritime restrictions", from the 1630s until the 1850s, is, as described above, very commonly referred to as "sakoku", or as "the Closed Country", but many scholars today argue against the notion that Japan was "closed". They argue that Japan's international relations policies during this period should be understood, rather, as simply being aimed at keeping international interactions under tight control; furthermore, they emphasize that Japan was not alone in seeking to control, and limit, international interactions, and that in fact nearly every major power at the time had policies in place dictating who could trade, at which ports, at which times, and in what manner.