Quote Originally Posted by Vyrerus View Post
When their colony existed it traded in and let scholars from other nations get educations there. It was there that they forged the aethereytes of Eorzea, which they then gave out to other countries.
While the Arkhitekton (aetheryte factory) in the colony made aetherytes, Sharlayan made the ones for the city-states after the calamity, at which point they had been out of the colony for a decade. They didn't give them out either, they sold them for extremely high prices. Other isolationist countries such as the historical United States still sold goods to other countries and allowed them to enroll in their universities.

You can be isolationist without being a hermit/pariah country. That would be isolationism in it's completely purest form, but the usual definition includes pacifism as a part of overall not interfering in the politics of other states by not taking part in wars or even military alliances. I would consider Sharlayan isolationist.