The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 9888139096, 9789888139095

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The Golden Ghetto The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844

Jacques M. Downs with a new introduction by Frederic D. Grant, Jr.

The Golden Ghetto

Echoes: Classics of Hong Kong Culture and History Series General Editor: Robert Nield The life of Hong Kong and its region has been explored in a vast number of books. They include ground-breaking scholarly studies of great standing, and literary works that shed light on people, places and events. Many of these books, unfortunately, are no longer available to the general reader. The aim of the Echoes series is once more to make available the best of those books that would otherwise be lost. The series will embrace not only history, but also memoirs, fiction, politics, natural history and other fields. The focal point will be Hong Kong, but the series will extend to places that were connected with the city or sharing some of its experiences. In this way we hope to bring a growing number of classic publications to a new and wider readership.

Other titles in the Echoes series: Power and Charity: A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong Elizabeth Sinn A Biographical Sketch-Book of Early Hong Kong G. B. Endacott Chinese Christians: Elites, Middlemen and the Church in Hong Kong Carl T. Smith Edge of Empires: Chinese Elites and British Colonials in Hong Kong John M. Carroll Anglo-China: Chinese People and British Rule in Hong Kong, 1841–1880 Christopher Munn City of Broken Promises Austin Coates Macao and the British, 1637–1842: Prelude to Hong Kong Austin Coates A Macao Narrative Austin Coates The Road Austin Coates The Taking of Hong Kong: Charles and Clara Elliot in China Waters Susanna Hoe and Derek Roebuck Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart Shiona Airlie Via Ports: From Hong Kong to Hong Kong Alexander Grantham The Hong Kong Region 1850–1911: Institutions and Leadership in Town and Countryside James Hayes City at the End of Time: Poems by Leung Ping-kwan Edited and with a new introduction by Esther M. K. Cheung Translated by Gordon T. Osing and Leung Ping-kwan

The Golden Ghetto The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844

Jacques M. Downs

Hong Kong University Press The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong www.hkupress.org © 2014 Andreae Downs, Trustee of the Downs Family Trust First published in 1997 by Associated University Presses, Inc. Hong Kong University Press edition 2014 ISBN 978-988-8139-09-5 (Hardback) All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed and bound by Liang Yu Printing Factory Ltd. in Hong Kong, China

Contents

Introduction to the Republication of The Golden Ghetto Foreword Introduction

1 7 9

Part One: The Golden Ghetto 1. Old Canton and Its Trade 2. American Business under the Old System 3. Opium Transforms the Canton System

19 65 105

Part Two: The Residents and Their Firms 4. The Dominant Firms 5. The Other Houses 6. The China Trader

143 190 222

Part Three: Cushing’s Treaty 7. The Creation of an Official Policy 8. The Mission to China 9. Retrospection

259 287 310

Epilogue: The Legacy of Old Canton List of Abbreviations Appendix 1: Wade-Giles–Pinyin Equivalents Appendix 2: Statistics and the American Trade Appendix 3: A Note on the Silver Trade Appendix 4: Known Partners of American Firms at Canton, 1803–44 Appendix 5: Commercial Family Alliances Appendix 6: Robert Bennet Forbes’s Correspondence with Warren Delano, 1879 Appendix 7: A Note on Sources

321 342 345 348 358 364 367 371 374

vi Notes Bibliography Index Plates follow page 218.

contents 383 459 489

Introduction to the Republication of The Golden Ghetto

Jacques

M. Downs knew more about the history of early American trade with China than anyone in modern times. The republication of The Golden Ghetto celebrates Downs’s life and his probing studies. The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844, published in 1997, represents the first fruits of a lifetime’s original research. This valuable book literally opened up the history of American trade in the days of the Canton system, previously too much the domain of romance and nostalgia. Long anticipated, and warmly greeted upon its publication, The Golden Ghetto is now recognized as the preeminent work on the history of early American trade with China. Jacques Downs achieved his mastery of this history through decades of hard work. No archival source significant to the history of the American China trade escaped his notice, his copious note-taking, and his biographical flair. Downs was familiar with the papers of Edward Carrington, Stephen Girard, Augustine Heard, John Richardson Latimer, Samuel Russell, and members of the Forbes, Perkins, Sturgis and Delano families, to name but a few of so many, and of course with the extraordinary trove of records of Augustine Heard & Co. discovered in a godown at East Point in Hong Kong in the early 1930s, now part of the Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School.1 This archival mass can be thought of collectively as a mountain range, imposing and forbidding to all but the most intrepid explorers.2 Furthermore, every one of these peaks was strictly confidential in its own time, with these records closed and off limits to all but the original 1. As featured in the exhibition, “A Chronicle of the China Trade: The Records of Augustine Heard & Co., 1840–1877,” http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/heard/ (accessed March 30, 2014). 2. See L. H. Butterfield, “Bostonians and Their Neighbors as Pack Rats,” The American Archivist, Vol. 24, no. 2 (April 1961): 141–59.

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writers and those immediately concerned. So it was that Edward Delano, a clerk of Russell & Co., warned his brother, in an 1841 letter written not long after his arrival at Canton, that even things he wrote in family letters must not be shared.3 Downs spent a lifetime exploring this archival mountain range, achieving an unrivaled knowledge of the era. As these business competitors did not share records with each other, it is probable that Downs understood the history of their trade better than all but a few of the best informed early American China traders themselves. Downs began his studies as a Georgetown University graduate student in the late 1950s. In those Cold War years, a modern China trade boom was inconceivable. The People’s Republic of China was then young, ten years under Chinese Communist rule. The United States of America was a capitalist industrial powerhouse, at the peak of its post-World War II strength. Reconstruction of Mainland China proceeded slowly, in part due to policies such as those of the “Great Leap Forward” which lasted through 1961, the year Downs received his doctorate in United States Business History. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Mainland China did not, and would not, exist until January 1, 1979. As Downs states in his Introduction, it was in these difficult years that he became hooked by the actual history of early American trade with China, “falling in love with” it, with this study becoming an “obsession.” His extensive fieldwork went on through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, during which Downs produced articles, lectures, and other scholarly works. All the while, he was a beloved and productive professor at Saint Francis College in Biddeford, Maine, which became the University of New England. By 1985, when the present work existed in an early form, there was again active trade between the United States of America and China. In that year, the United States imported US$3,861.7 million from and exported $3,855.7  million in goods to China. The Chinese economy was growing rapidly, under economic reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping and his

3. Letter from Edward Delano to Franklin Hughes Delano, dated Canton September 24, 1841: “If you think of ‘putting into print’—my remarks &c. upon men and things in general and China in particular, I may be under the disagreeable necessity of discontinuing my remarks relative thereto—for be it known unto you that the Americans who write home and have their letters published—are severely—(I mean their letters) criticized—and the small community of true blooded Yankees resident here, enabling them to discern the author without much difficulty.” Edward Delano Correspondence, Delano Family Papers, Franklin Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York.

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colleagues. By 1990, when this book was in near final draft, the trade was already imbalanced, with the United States importing US$15,237.4 million from as against some $4,806.4 million in goods exported to China. By 1997, when The Golden Ghetto was published in its first edition, the US imports of goods from China had soared to US$62,557.7 million, with exports to China standing at $12,862.2 million. Downs’s monumental study of the business history and diplomacy of the first boom in American trade with China was thus published just as a modern China trade boom was gathering force. As of 2010, the US imports of goods from China had soared to US$364,952.6 million with some $91,911.1 million in goods exported to China.4 The modern trade boom between China and the West remains a powerful force, with no end in sight. It is impossible to accomplish thirty years of archival studies and writing without close support. From 1961 through the first publication of this book in 1997, Jacques Downs had the constant support of his wife Eva Downs and their children, Alexander, Andreae, and Jonathan. This massive project was a constant presence in their family life. Downs’s family believed in him, supported him, and pressed him to continue at difficult moments, all vital support in the production of this important work. Elizabeth W. Downs, his mother, provided many summers of hands-on support typing, proofreading, and offering editorial and content suggestions, completing the family team. The Golden Ghetto stands as a tribute to the strong support of Downs’s entire family, as well as to his own considerable strengths as an explorer and analyst. Jacques M. Downs died on September 14, 2006, in the eightieth year of his productive life. The Golden Ghetto was then completed and in print, but he left a large body of additional material. In particular, Downs’s extraordinary collection of detailed biographies of individuals and accounts of firms involved in the trade survives him, in a close-to-publish condition, as Downs indicates in his Introduction. It is hoped that these and other fruits of Downs’s efforts will be made available to the public, at some convenient time and in some proper form. A prominent feature of Downs’s intellectual life was his generosity. He was a teacher to his core—questioning, challenging, and demanding— but always warm and always willing to help other students of the trade. 4. Source for all trade statistics: US Census Bureau, Foreign Trade Statistics, http://www.census. gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html (accessed March 30, 2014).

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Downs was a gentle man, with an impish wit, and a penetrating interest in the subject matter of the early American trade with Canton. He had firm opinions, as Peter Ward Fay correctly states in his Foreword. In particular, Downs was much less tolerant of Western justifications for opium trading than some. The writer first met Downs in 1975, as a nervous student from a college up the road, coming to seek this already renowned scholar’s guidance through the Canton maze. On that occasion, and with so many other students on so many other occasions, Downs graciously took time and offered useful ideas and source material. These are marks of a great teacher. In this manner, Downs, like John King Fairbank (1907–91), influenced a generation of scholars (at the very least), as evidenced by frequent citations and acknowledgments. Doubtless the efficient production of his own written works suffered for all the time Downs gave to assist the others. The term “golden ghetto,” as applied to the traders who lived in the cramped foreign factories along the Canton waterfront, originated with Downs. It was used by John King Fairbank, who described the foreign factories at Canton as “a sort of ghetto, a golden ghetto because the foreign merchants can make a good deal of money there.”5 Fairbank encouraged and critiqued Downs in his studies. Jacques Downs stands as a prominent member of what might be thought of as the first wave of modern scholars of early American trade with China, encouraged or inspired by Fairbank, such as Wayne Altree, Dilip K. Basu, Peter Ward Fay, Robert Gardella, Jonathan Goldstein, Yen-p’ing Hao, and Kwang-Ching Liu. The Golden Ghetto sold out soon after publication, and not long thereafter it became a rare book. At this writing, only a few copies can be found for sale online, priced at US$1,758 and up. While this can be read as some measure of praise, rarity is the very last thing Jacques Downs wanted to come of his scholarship. He wanted his book to be read, to be used, and to be improved upon. We stand at a moment in history when The Golden Ghetto should be more generally available, read and used. With Downs’s skilled analysis of the experiences of the first boom in American trade with China, perhaps the challenges of the present boom in China’s international trade may be better understood and addressed.

5. John King Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions: A Historical Summary (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 14.

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The republication of The Golden Ghetto in the Echoes series of Hong Kong University Press is thus an occasion for celebration. This Echoes edition is a faithful reproduction of the original book, with this new Introduction, certain revised image captions, and some new citations added to the end of the Bibliography being the only changes that have been made. Frederic D. Grant, Jr. Milton, Massachusetts, USA March 30, 2014

Foreword

This is a remarkable book. It is not a lifetime’s work, for Jacques Downs is still alive and well and will be heard from again. But it most certainly represents an immense, prolonged, never-flagging labor of love—of love and interest—of love and interest directed at the American community in China from its first appearance in the 1780s to the moment just after the Opium War of 1840–42 when it became possible for Americans, like all foreigners, to move from Macao and Canton out to other places on the coast and in the interior. Downs has studied this community as no one else ever has. Because no one has done the equivalent for the slightly larger British community, because other foreigners can be numbered almost on the fingers of one hand, and because Dermigny’s three volumes, though wider in scope, stop at 1833, this book is not only remarkable but is also, in a sense, unique. Downs attends to everything. When he tells us that he has written, in the course of his work, two hundred short biographies of American traders who spent some time at Canton prior to 1844, he means what he says. Walk into his and his wife Evi’s handsome old Kennebunkport house (she calls it the Inn on South Street—for it does more than shelter them, it welcomes guests in small numbers and with exquisite taste). Notice, as you pass through the lower rooms, the superb pieces of Chinese export ware hanging upon the walls. Climb the two floors to Jacques’s study and pull out one of the enormous drawers that contain his accumulated notes. It will dawn on you that the two hundred short biographies are far from the whole of it, that Downs has met, as it were, practically every American who ever stepped ashore on the Praya Grande—that his files, like the house, are steeped in the time and the place. To consider only one class of sources: there cannot be a major collection of merchant papers from Brunswick to Savannah, and few that are minor, that he has not thoroughly explored and quite possibly cataloged. But Downs is more than an antiquarian, and this book is much more than a chronicle backed by a warehouse. It is a story full of information (much winnowed, as he ruefully tells us), and at the same time it is an essay on the relations between two peoples—the Americans and the Chinese. Those relations began in the period 1784 to 1844; they were profoundly influenced by the peculiar nature of that beginning. “It has long been clear,” Downs tells us, “that America did not cut her China policy out of whole cloth, but

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received it pretty nearly complete from her nationals resident in Canton.” How those nationals thought, how they behaved, what brought them to the China coast and with what habits of mind they returned home—these questions do not simply occupy Downs, they bother him. They disturb him. They will bother and disturb his readers. Which is to say that the book has a decided moral dimension to it. It is more than interesting reading, it is at moments quite distinctly uncomfortable reading. I do not say that I enjoy this aspect of it. Must I be unsettled by the history I read? While Downs’s approach undoubtedly arms and amplifies the book’s cumulative effect, my own preference is for less judgmental fare. Why cannot the opium traffic, for example, be handled with that simple and uncritical enthusiasm we naturally devote to strange practices in distant lands, like Africans hunting heads or Eskimos slaughtering seals? Downs will not have it that way. The title alone makes it clear that there will be a message, and the tone of that message is somber. Peter Ward Fay California Institute of Technology

Introduction To enter upon so substantial a study of so relatively obscure a subject is not something one does soberly, deliberately, or sensibly. One drifts into it, falling in love with the subject and continually discovering new material until one is hopelessly entangled. Once engulfed by the present subject, I saw very clearly that there was much modern readers could not possibly understand without considerable guidance. This clarification, I console myself, is the chief merit of this work. The present study, begun as a term paper, became a dissertation topic, evolved into several articles, and ultimately, perhaps, into an obsession. For over a decade, sympathetic friends have urged me to publish the work and in short order. Unfortunately a professor in a small institution can rarely find stretches of uninterrupted time to pursue such a huge project. Hence the delay. Not very recently one critic scolded me for being overly ambitious. With some exasperation he asked: “Can anyone write a meaningful, scholarly book on everything-you-wanted-to-know about the American Canton community?” Well, obviously I think so. He suggested breaking the work into several publications—one on life in the Canton community, a business history of firms at Canton, a third on the lifestyles of American residents and their later lives, a fourth on the opium trade, and another on the Cushing (Wanghia or Wanghsia, now Wangxia) Treaty of 1844. Undoubtedly such an approach would have been easier, and promotion committees prefer several publications to a single, rather ponderous volume. I have made a minor concession to this criticism by dividing the volume into three parts. I do not think my critic will approve. Yet I think much would have been lost had I published several volumes separately. I do not believe, for example, that it is possible to understand the American merchants’ thinking without knowing the circumstances of their lives in China. The structure of Canton firms, their modus operandi, and their commerce, especially in opium, would be quite mysterious without a rather detailed knowledge of the Canton community and the traders’ backgrounds. And how to explain the merchants’ later actions—particularly their lobbying Washington or their actions in the developing American economy and society—without some knowledge of their Canton conditioning? Finally how can one explain the nature and content of the Cushing Treaty without more than a nodding acquaintance with

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the merchants, their community at Canton, and their trade? After all the treaty, like American foreign policy generally in that era, was first and foremost commercial. The sources for this undertaking are voluminous, scattered, and sometimes difficult to use. Fortunately the papers of many American residents have been preserved by New Englanders and Philadelphians—people who never discard anything, be it documents, clothes, broken furniture, or outworn institutions. Over a period longer than I care to admit, I have combed through countless manuscripts in many different American libraries, museums, local and state historical societies, and the attics and cellars of private persons and antique dealers. The bibliographical essay at the end of this volume surveys the vastness and complexity of the source material. In the sometimes exciting but often tedious work of historical gold mining (and the labor is frequently as dirty as the metaphor suggests), I have collected far more material than any responsible publisher would tolerate. The present 487 pages of text have survived surgery of heroic proportions. It seems miraculous, for example, that Chapter 1 on life at the factories, its problems, and personalities is now a mere 46 pages. The old Canton business system, the American trade, and the manner of regulation is the subject matter of the second chapter and is far shorter than the fat draft read in the early 1960s by Professor James B. Hedges who characterized it as the “most interesting and extraordinary” business system he had encountered. The development of the American opium trade, the largest and perhaps the most controversial part of the book, is a mere shadow of the corpulent original. Much of the story of the opium trade appeared in an article in the winter 1968 issue of Business Historical Review, and I am grateful to that journal’s editors for permission to use it. Part II recounts the histories of the various American firms at Canton. In the process of trying to understand mercantile letters and diaries, I found it necessary to reconstruct these histories. This was a formidable task, given the lack of appreciation of the value of business records. Mutilation has been nearly as common as destruction though not much more merciful. For example, frugal New England families sometimes gave old ledgers to children to use for scrapbooks and flower presses, a practice that makes reading such books especially challenging. In another incident Charles Copeland, sometime curator of Salem’s Peabody Museum, told me of a man who brought in a letter signed by Joseph Barrell to ask if it was worth anything. He had found it in a trash bin and noticed the 1790 date. When Copeland became excited and reached for his hat, the man laughed, “Oh, that was last week. The rest has all been burned.” The Wetmore Papers were rescued as they were awaiting the same fate after a Newport auction. The many obscure references in the correspondence made it necessary to organize my data on individual merchants into biographies. In the course of this work, I have written approximately two hundred short sketches of

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the lives of American traders who spent some time at Canton prior to 1844. These biographies have been the raw material for the figures and generalizations that appear in Parts I and II and in the appendix. If the shift of focus from the community to the firms and traders and thence to the Cushing mission has resulted in too startling a change in style, I apologize, but I take some comfort in the aphorism attributed to the late Louis Sullivan: “Form follows function.” The first Sino-American treaty presented another kind of problem. Both in style and concern, a diplomatic history is a very different sort of work from the socioeconomic study of the first two parts. Yet the Cushing Treaty focused the various influences examined there. Caleb Cushing’s pioneering Treaty of Wanghia (or Wanghsia), negotiated by one of the most skilled diplomatists in early America, became a model of early American pacts with the non-Western world. The strongest influences proved to be the merchants and missionaries who visited or traded with the area. Most of the country was simply unconcerned or unaware of the problems involved. The final treaty was, in most particulars, an official version of the older informal policy of private American citizens. The result of such casual policy making was to skew relations in the future. I suspect that the same dynamic functioned elsewhere, especially in the non-Western world. In any case, an examination of this precedent-setting treaty seems well worth the effort. The concluding chapters deal with the effects of this community on China, America, and the relations between these two very different lands. I have eliminated or summarized two chapters on the missionaries. Other scholars have pretty well preempted the subject. Certain conventions in spelling and terminology require a note. I employ the old Wade-Giles system of romanizing Chinese, although I recognize that the pinyin system has become standard. I do so because Wade-Giles is almost universal in the sources I have used; however, I provide a glossary for transliteration between the two systems, largely the work of Robert Gardella of the US Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, New York, and Frederic D. Grant, Jr., of Boston. I have spelled Howqua’s name with a “w” because that orthography is now common, but I do so reluctantly since he signed his letters “Houqua,” and most of the American traders at the time also favored that spelling. Canton refers to the city, although Kwangtung is the term used for the province. I use two terms for the chief provincial official: “governor general” is more common today, but contemporaries almost always used “viceroy.” Similarly, though the word “mandarin” is rarely found in modern works (except perhaps in their titles), it was in general use in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and I favor it. Its exotic sound makes clear that officials in Ch’ing China were very different from bureaucrats in the West. A final word of preparation for the reader: this book is neither a continuous, narrative history nor a fully sustained community study. It consists

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of several separate but interdependent sections, each of which develops a different aspect of the American settlement at Canton before the Opium War. Perhaps the work falls between two (or more) stools, but no other approach seemed to provide as satisfactory a vehicle to convey the data adequately. The genealogical narratives and the company charts in the appendix will help the reader keep his/her bearings. Some repetition has been unavoidable. These aids may be unnecessary for specialists, but they should help readers who are less acquainted with the subject. This book would have been impossible without the unselfish assistance of many people—far too many, alas, than I can remember, let alone thank. Among these good Samaritans are the late Professor and Mrs. J. Carroll Fulkerson, who first introduced me to the (then untouched) Carrington Papers; Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Monahon, who were of great help in finding other Rhode Island material; Professor Jonathan Goldstein of West Georgia College, who helped me with early Philadelphia material, with more recent developments in the field of Chinese history, and with the bibliography. Mr. and Mrs. Alan Reid and Margaret Pamplin were very kind in showing me through the vast Jardine Matheson Archive at Cambridge. H. A. Crosby Forbes’s lifelong commitment to the old China trade has helped me in any number of ways, and his extraordinary devotion to the subject has resulted in the building of the loveliest museum and one of the finest archives I know—the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Other friends-in-time-of-need have been Wayne Altree, who undoubtedly knows the Heard Papers better than any other person alive, and Mrs. Sylvia Bennett who—at last report—was sedulously piecing together the Olyphant family history. Other very active private scholars have been more useful than they may realize. Carl Crossman, whose untiring work in unearthing the story of Canton artists, finding portraits, and publishing beautiful books on the arts exported from old Canton is an inspiration. Frederic D. Grant, Jr., has been very helpful in calling my attention to a number of obscure articles and most especially to his own innovative work on lawsuits by hong merchants attempting to recover property from their delinquent American debtors. Robert Lovett and Eleanor C. Bishop were unfailingly patient and helpful in guiding me through the labyrinth of Baker Library’s splendid collection of manuscripts. N. David Scotti, a private scholar with wide-ranging interests and a far better nose for documents than most credentialed historians, was of invaluable assistance in locating material in Rhode Island and in using his encyclopaedic memory to relate otherwise disparate data. Other helpful souls were Frank Carpenter, Suzanne Barnett, Randle Edwards, and most especially, Peter W. Fay, who managed to slog through the elephantine first draft and gently suggest some of the major deletions. John King Fairbank encouraged my work among unexamined commercial archives and provided a sharp critique on the Cushing negotiations. Fritz Redlich,

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whose advice I always found very valuable, was a major influence in my work. In fact, at his rather exasperated suggestion, I cut several chapters and heavily revised others. I console myself at this loss with the hope that, in  the fullness of time, those lost chapters may yet become part of other publications. In the meantime, however, I am convinced that Professor Fay’s and Dr. Redlich’s knives have rendered the present work more accessible. Professor Arthur M. Johnson, the late Ralph Hidy, and James Hedges also aided considerably more than they may have realized. Several corporate helpers should also be mentioned. The American Philosophical Society provided two summer grants to arrange the Carrington Papers. The Eleutherian Mills Historical Library awarded me a fellowship that enabled me to explore both its own holdings and the treasures of the Philadelphia-Wilmington area. The National Endowment for the Humanities gave me a summer stipend in 1978 to use the Jardine Matheson Archive at Cambridge, and the Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation funded an extended visit to Hyde Park to work in the Delano Papers. In addition Matheson’s of London; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem; the Rhode Island Historical Society; the Robert Bennet Forbes House Museum; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities; the National Portrait Gallery; the Library of Congress; the Historical Society of Old Newport; the Yale Center for British Art; Wesleyan University; the Russell Library of Middletown, Connecticut; the Preservation Society of Newport County; the Old Dartmouth Historical Society; Martyn Gregory of London; the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation; and a number of private persons have permitted me to use and even print copies of pictures, maps, and other documents in their possession. Finally, my mother, Elizabeth W. Downs, was of enormous and continuing assistance in research and in editing. Her help in detecting logical, orthographic, and typographic slips and in deflating overblown prose and smoothing bumpy passages greatly improved the end product. I hasten to add, however, that any remaining errors or omissions are mine alone.

The Golden Ghetto

Part One The Golden Ghetto

1 Old Canton and Its Trade Arrival and Departure

Approaching Macao from the sea, one is struck first by the town’s extraordinary beauty. Built on the end of a peninsula that juts out into the South China Sea, Macao, in the late eighteenth century, was a lovely, orderly contrast to the life that seamen had endured on the long voyage from the Atlantic or the Northwest Coast of America. For well over two centuries, the tiny Portuguese colony had given a Mediterranean, even Moorish, aspect to the maritime gate to China. This remnant of a once-great and still impressive empire remained the only European jurisdiction permitted within the Celestial Empire. To weary sailors the lush green vegetation, the Praya Grande arching eastward toward the bay, and the swarm of small boats racing to be first at shipside must have promised welcome relief from the months of seascape and the drab, daily routine of sailing. Immediately after dropping anchor in the Roads and arranging for supplies with one of the numerous compradors or Chinese ship-stewards who clamored for the vessel’s business, a ship’s officers would take a boat to Macao. There they greeted old friends, reported their arrival at the chophouse1 (customhouse), and obtained a pilot to guide them up the estuary to the Boca Tigris (literally “tiger’s mouth”) or “Bogue,” the entrance to the Pearl River. American opinion on these outside pilots was uniform—they were useless,2 and during the War of 1812, the Chinese government tacitly recognized the soundness of this judgment when it allowed American vessels to bypass Macao and proceed directly to the protection of the forts at the Boca Tigris.3 Upon reaching the Bogue, the captain either took a boat to one of the Chinese forts or hauled down his sails and awaited the visit of the local mandarin and his suite. This second contact with Chinese officialdom was rather a surprise to the earliest Americans in the area as most were not informed enough to know that at the Boca Tigris they entered a separate administrative district and fell under the jurisdiction of another set of mandarins. Following the introduction came the inevitable tea and sweetmeats or liquor, after which the ship proceeded upriver with a river pilot in charge 19

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View of the Praya Grande, Macao. Oil by unidentified Chinese artist, M9751.1. Compare with Lamqua’s painting of the view from Kinsman’s veranda of 1845 facing page 218. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

and two revenue officers aboard. The river pilots were a breed apart from the superfluous “outside pilots.” Theirs was a skilled and licensed profession, and they took charge of the ship as soon as they stepped aboard.4 The trip upriver was undoubtedly the loveliest part of the voyage, and many a calloused captain or canny supercargo was moved to extend the remarks in his log to include something like poetry about the bright green rice paddies, the majestic pagodas, and the distant mountains that loomed out of the blue haze. I have the last six & thirty hours been passing in view of scenery which in the estimate of the late Lord Napier, “are worth a voyage from England to see.” On either bank are extensive paddy fields clothed in richest verdure, with here & there a village with its arbor of bamboos. Numerous forts of granite. Beyond the paddy fields the hills & mountains rise in pleasing variety & upon the plains & loftiest eminences the towering pagoda stands—the monument of the ingenuity & enterprise of generations forgotten.5

Once a ship came to rest in Whampoa Reach,6 the supercargo’s job began and the captain’s ended. Every ship that came to China had to be secured by a hong merchant,7 one of a guild of Chinese foreign traders holding an exclusive franchise from the Imperial Government and known collectively

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Boca Tigris, the Mouth of the Pearl River. Oil by unidentified Chinese artist, M17299. Notice the Chinese forts on either side of the “Bogue.” Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

as the Cohong (kung hong or kung hang—officially authorized merchant guild). In return for certain preferential rights in doing the ship’s business,8 the hong or security merchant assumed responsibility to the Chinese government for the customs and for the orderly behavior of the entire ship’s company. He paid the port fees, generally bought much of the cargo, and provided many of the goods carried on the return voyage. Moreover the hong merchant was a source of invaluable advice on many matters such as the hiring of a house comprador, the state of the market, and the niceties of Chinese regulations. The hong merchant might also advise the supercargo on engaging a linguist (t’ung shih or “lingo” in pidgin, the only “foreign” language spoken by most of them). Linguists were licensed by the government to serve as go-betweens to transact the foreigner’s business with the customhouse; each one had a sizeable staff of servants to assist him in his many activities.9 Because linguists performed a number of dubious services for their clients, including lying, keeping commercial secrets, and bribing customs officials, they were not often looked upon as reliable sources of information.10 Nevertheless it

Seven-story pagoda at Canton, photograph. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Whampoa Anchorage in the 1840s. Oil by Youqua, M4478. Note the headstones on the island in the foreground. Youqua must have painted it in the mid- to late 1840s; notice also the sidewheeler in the background. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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was the annual linguists’ reports upon which most commercial statistics were based before the Opium War brought professional consular reporting to Canton in the 1840s.11 Among the most immediate functions of a newly engaged security merchant was that of notifying the authorities of the ship’s arrival, for port charges were levied at an elaborate ritual of reception by the Hoppo or customs commissioner (Y’üeh-hai-kuan chien-tu). The Hoppo was an important official. Under the authority of the governor, like other provincial commissioners, the Hoppo was appointed by the emperor himself. The post was created in 1685, and until 1725 the tenure of office had been one year. After that time it was three years, apparently a period just long enough for a powerful but impecunious Manchu to mend a broken fortune. Long before the first Americans arrived, Hoppos were known for their venality. The derivation of the pidgin name, Hoppo, is unknown. It has been suggested that it is a rendering of Hu-pu, the Board of Revenue, but the Hoppo was not answerable to this body, so the question remains moot. In any case the Hoppo was responsible both for oversight of the imperial customs and of other officials’ control of the foreigners at Canton. When it suited his pleasure, the Hoppo would pay a formal visit to the ship for “cumsha and measurement.”12 His gorgeously painted craft, flying quantities of silken pennants and surmounted by the great dragon flag, would draw alongside, and the Hoppo and his entourage would come aboard. In  preparation for the occasion the decks had been scrubbed, the fittings polished, and the crew members dressed in their best clothes, which had been in the depths of sea chests for months. With a silken ribbon the Hoppo’s attendants measured the ship’s length and breadth; these two figures multiplied together and divided by ten provided the basis for the assessment. Several other items were then added to this sum to make the final port charge.13 Of course a ship also had to pay a series of other exactions, such as that for pilotage in and out, the linguist’s fee, and innumerable cumshas to various functionaries from the Hoppo himself to the humblest tidewaiter. The total cost of entering and leaving the port of Canton came to something between three to seven thousand dollars per ship—probably the highest port charges in the world at that time. After weathering the storms of several oceans and the intricacies of Celestial red tape, the ship’s businessmen were understandably eager to visit the “provincial city.” Therefore, as soon as possible after arriving at Whampoa, the supercargo and/or the captain took a boat to Canton, twelve miles further upriver, leaving the crew to paint, caulk, and mend sails. Both Chinese regulations and the convenience of the shipowner kept the men out of Canton except for infrequent and sometimes trouble-producing liberties. Gangs of coolies lightened the task of handling the cargo, and virtually every other nonnautical chore was performed by the Whampoa comprador. Other services, along with absolutely any commodity, could be

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provided by the river people, whose myriad boats clustered around the shipping, selling everything from food and drink to laundry service and haircuts. At first the sailors were greatly pleased with their unaccustomed leisure, but they soon discovered something worse than work. Probably their deadliest enemy at Whampoa was boredom, which sometimes led to mutiny. Conditions in the forecastle were never really pleasant, but Whampoa was especially dreary for the average sailor. Moreover the Chinese boat-people peddled a corrosive variety of liquor that caused many disturbances on board, ashore, and internally. The record is full of reports of brawls and even rebellions. Possibly a gauge of the frequency of such disorders is to be found in the fact that Commodore Lawrence Kearny was called upon to put down several mutinies during the USS Constellation’s two-month stay at Whampoa in 1843.14 In addition, prior to 1830 no regular religious services were provided for the sailors, and only after 1836 were any permanent, continuing medical facilities available unless the ship carried a surgeon. Few ships escaped casualties from dysentery, malaria, and other virulent tropical maladies for which Canton was notorious. Therefore the men probably welcomed the labor of departure as much as they had hailed the idleness of their “lay days” at Whampoa. The process of clearing port was only slightly less complicated than that of arrival. When the chow chow chop, the last boatload of miscellaneous cargo, had left Canton for Whampoa, the captain and the supercargo would pay a farewell visit to their hong merchant. Tea would be served, cumshas exchanged,15 and the captain would receive the Grand Chop, a permit to clear port. This was a large document printed in two colors, embellished with dragons, and stamped with the chop (seal) of the Hoppo.16 As they left the hong merchant’s factory, often a very elegant and beautifully furbished establishment,17 the captain and supercargo could see freshly laundered canvas mailbags being stowed in the boat waiting for them at Jackass Point, where a horde of urchins clamored for a parting cumsha.18 The last ceremony before the ship nosed into the stream from Whampoa would be the final visit of the ship’s comprador, who left his cumsha aboard with his farewell. As the vessel weighed anchor, the Chinese would set off ropes of firecrackers “to awaken the gods to the ship’s departure and give her good wind and good water.”19

The Factories On their way upriver to Canton, the ship’s businessmen probably gave little thought to the trials of the crew or to the complications of departure. The attention of all but the most experienced China hands must have been

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captured by the strange and colorful scenes about them.20 As they neared the city, a low, rumbling sound commenced and soon increased to a loud-heavy, humming noise, which never here ceases, during day and night. This buzzing sort of serenade is caused by the beating of gongs, firecrackers, etc., etc., mostly among the river craft constantly on the move up and down river.21

Weaving its way through the numberless Chinese river vessels, the ship’s boat approached Jackass Point, the usual place of debarkation at Canton, and the traveler caught his first glimpse of the foreign factories. The word factory was an importation from India, where it meant the residence or office of a factor; the pidgin word hong applied to any place of business, but the two words were generally used interchangeably at Canton. The factories were banks of long, narrow structures located about three hundred feet back from the north bank of the river in one of the western suburbs of Canton, just outside the city wall. The whole area covered about twelve acres. Each factory consisted of several buildings two to three stories high, connected with the other factories by arcades or arched passageways. The front building faced the river across a large, partly paved area called the Square. While he was in Canton, a foreigner’s factory was his home, place of business, recreation, storage, and even church. The lower floor of a factory contained the kitchen, the treasury, the servants’ quarters, and the godowns, which were large, airy warehouses in which goods stood on low platforms a foot or so off the floor. The supports for these platforms were often made of camphor wood and surrounded by tar, rice chaff, or quicklime to ward off the universally destructive white ants.22 In the upper stories were the counting-rooms (offices), parlors, a large dining room, and individual bedrooms. Across the face of a hong’s upper stories often stretched a veranda, sometimes paved with marble and usually enclosed with Venetian blinds, a  very effective sunshade in the blistering heat of a South China summer. By the time of the Opium War, the first hong in the American factory sported a blue nankeen awning over its veranda. The roof frequently contained a terrace, a comfortable addition in sticky evenings early in the tea season.23 All rooms were spacious, airy, and immaculate; cleaning was thorough and frequent. During the confinement of the foreign community in the spring of 1839, one foreigner complained that his hong had not been washed for ten days!24 In sum, judging from contemporary descriptions rather than from the complaints of young men, the factories must have been very comfortable.25 Hosea Ballou Morse, pioneering historian of old Canton and a man rarely given to exaggeration, called the factories “palatial.”26 The buildings were well constructed of granite or bricks that varied in color from lead-blue to red, depending on the length of time they had been in the kiln. The structures probably deserved a better location. Each was

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constructed on piles. The land they occupied had been reclaimed from the river, and the tide flowed into the sewers, which ran the length of each factory. The exterior walls were sometimes plastered, and the unterraced part of the roofs was of red tile. As a group the foreign hongs presented a very neat and attractive picture, which has often been painted. Samuel Shaw, the first American trader at Canton, described the appearance of the factories as “elegant,” a term of high praise in the eighteenth century.27 From tall poles in front of several of the factories floated flags denoting which nation was represented there by a consul. In 1784 Shaw found Denmark, Austria (the Holy Roman Empire), Sweden, Britain, and Holland had “regular establishments” there, but by the time of the Opium War, there were seldom more than four flags flying, that is, the American, British, Dutch, and French, and only the first two nations were substantially represented in the community. At various times the English and the American hongs fronted on private gardens, and potted trees and flowers stood before many of the others. Until the great fire that destroyed the factories in 1822,28 the Square was enclosed by walls which led to the water from the hongs at either end. Thereafter, no barrier kept out peddlers, beggars, fortune-tellers, and curious sightseers who came to catch a glimpse of the foreign devils. Intruders appeared in the Square as early as 1800. Sullivan Dorr, an early American resident, describes sword-swallowers, human pincushions, tumblers, bird trainers, and a remarkable act in which the performer allowed an adder to bite his tongue. He immediately went into alarming convulsions, which were relieved only when he “applied a composition to his tongue,” a substance that he apparently was selling.29 Now and then, when the press of undesirables became unendurable, the exasperated foreigners would complain to the Cohong and whip-wielding police would quickly clear the area, leaving behind bits of broken china, articles of clothing, and whatever else the retreating crowd had been unlucky enough to drop during the scramble. The solid front presented by the factories was pierced by two streets and an alley, each lined with Chinese shops. The foreign residents called these thoroughfares Old China Street, New China Street, and Hog Lane. They ran from the Square to Thirteen Factories Street into which the back doors of the rear hongs opened. Like other streets in the area, all were heavily traveled and extremely narrow. One of the first American missionaries, David Abeel, states, “The width of the street varies from about fifteen to three feet, measuring from house to house; and the medium proportion of the city would probably not exceed eight feet. In passing through even the business districts, I have frequently extended my arms and reached the opposite houses.” He also notes the existence of wickets at all street corners to prevent the escape of thieves or the collection of a mob. These wickets were closed and guarded at night.30 The streets were paved with granite slabs, cut with a rough surface to prevent slipping in wet weather, although

Canton street in the 1860s, photograph. Notice the stone paving and the many advertising placards. This is an old glass plate time transfer. What appears to be fog is traces of the traffic. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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they wore smooth with time. During the daytime the streets were thronged with people—from dawn to dark the disorder was enormous. Cantonese police never thought of directing traffic because there were no wheeled vehicles and rarely any horses in the area. The congestion (and the filth) was entirely human. Scavengers are constantly employed in removing the dirt, which collects in great quantities, but in spite of their labours, the streets are frequently disgustingly filthy, and abound in the most abominable smells imaginable, especially in the rear of the factories, and near the Butchers’, and the poulterers’ shops.31

The tone of repugnance in this account is especially interesting because later observers, with far more experience, declared that Canton was the “wealthiest, best built, and cleanest of all the cities of China” and noted that anyone who had seen Amoy, Shanghai, and other cities first would be struck by the “comparative cleanliness,” “the substantial nature of the buildings, and the absence of overpoweringly disgusting sights and smells” in Canton.32 On either side of every street in the neighborhood was a multitude of small shops, crowded one against another, offering every variety of merchandise: silks, jades, porcelains, lacquered ware, edibles of all kinds, and many more dubious articles. Americans often commented in their letters about the exotic groceries in the Chinese markets, especially the kittens, puppies, skinned rats, and the vast numbers of fruits and vegetables to which they were unaccustomed. From the balcony of the American hong, Edmund Roberts reported watching the bargaining at a cat-and-dog butcher’s, one of the many shops on Old China Street that ran along the south side of the factory.33 These businesses were mostly small, and they were a shopper’s delight. Fletcher Webster, son of the “immortal Daniel” and secretary of the first American mission to China, wrote in 1844, “Canton is certainly a study. [T]he shops [sic] are almost irresistible.”34 Besides the stationary vendors, a host of itinerant peddlers crammed every byway—umbrella menders, barbers, quack doctors, soothsayers—and the noisiest and most loathsome beggars were everywhere, crying, beating gongs, and otherwise contributing to the din. With all of this foreign variety an American sailor on liberty did not want for bizarre ways of spending his money. True to type, however, ordinary seamen on their infrequent visits to Canton usually were to be found in one of the infamous establishments on Hog Lane. Here they were sold questionable beverages bearing names like “Mandarin gin,” “samshu,” and what was (probably falsely) advertised as “first chop rum.” The lane is said to have received its name from a natural and descriptive corruption of its original name, viz., Hong Lane. It was barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. On one side of the lane was the British East India Company’s factory and on the other, Fungtai Hong, also known as the Chow Chow (miscellaneous

Street Barber. Pen and ink by George West (Cushing Mission, 1844). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Fruit Seller. Pen and ink by George West (Cushing Mission, 1844). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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Mobile Street Restaurant. Pen and ink by George West (Cushing Mission, 1844). The boxes are charcoal stoves; water carrier is in the background. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

or mixed) Hong, indicating that it was generally occupied by Parsees, Armenians, Arabs, Jews, etc.35 The small operators had a very bad name among the Americans. It was said of them that, “the petty dealers are not to be believed for an instant, or credited a shilling, as they are devoid of honourable principle in money matters,”36 and “the small dealers almost universally are rogues, and require to be narrowly watched.”37 William C. Hunter, one of the more literary of the Canton residents, called them “the greatest ruffians that can be imagined.”38 By these judgments the firm names of the shops were often most unsuitable. Among the titles exhibited before the stores near the foreign hongs, Hunter lists “Peace and Quiet,” “Collective Justice,” “Perfect Concord,” and more mysteriously, “The Three Unities.’’ He also mentions some really splendid advertisements: “You read on each of a pile of water tubs, ‘the bucket of superlative peace,’ on chests ‘the box of great tranquility.’”39 Outdoor advertising seems to have been as common then as now: Oblong signs painted of a gay colour generally vermillion with gold characters line both sides of the street so that the walls of the houses cannot be seen, every house being a shop—& fitted with all sorts of merchandize.40

Bird Seller. Gouache by Puqua, E83895.96. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Mark Sexton.

Shop Selling Small European Articles. Watercolor by unidentified Chinese artist, E80607.10. The shelves contain watches, yarn, knives, scissors, bottles, buttons, cloth, and a brace of pistols. The broom peddler appears to be blind. Notice also the wall placards. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Shop in China Street. Watercolor by unidentified Chinese artist, E80607.23. Notice the Near Eastern customer, the feather-duster peddler, and the unusual glimpse of the shop’s back room. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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Every blank wall and boarding is covered with advertising placards.  .  .  .  More shameless advertisements than any to be seen on a European wall abound . . . at Canton, although prohibited from time to time by the Government.41

If the smaller shopkeepers and peddlers were distrusted by the Americans, the generality of Chinese usually were accounted as knaves: “Haughty, insolent, fraudulent, and inhospitable,”42 “the greatest villains in the universe,”43 and “vindictive, lascivious, and roguish”44 were common American characterizations of the sons of Han.

Life at the Factories For the resident merchant, life at Canton was most comfortable. He probably enjoyed more luxuries here than he had encountered anywhere else in his travels. Each factory was abundantly staffed with servants of every description. Besides the cooks, watchman, livestock-tenders, and ordinary coolies, each foreigner had a personal orderly who woke him in the morning, drew his bath, laid out his linen, served only him at the table, and followed him everywhere, attending to his master’s slightest whim. Each house employed a comprador, a major-domo who managed all but the personal servants, saw to the supplying and upkeep of the factory, and took a cut of every sum that changed hands. The comprador’s honesty was generally unquestioned; he kept a set of keys to every lock in the hong, including the treasury. Purchases of all kinds were handled through the medium of chits, which were redeemed either by the comprador or by the personal servants. Foreigners rarely handled money themselves. Understandably this practice led to a very un-Yankeelike extravagance.45 Probably the high standard of living was first set by the various national East India companies—fat old monopolies to whom the factory’s operating cost was a minor consideration. “John Company,” the British East India Company, was certainly the most lavish in China. In 1830 a parliamentary investigating committee found that the Company’s factory expenses were about £90,000 a year (ca. $450,000)!46 Bryant P. Tilden, a highly intelligent Salem supercargo who made seven voyages to Canton between 1815 and 1837, was particularly impressed with the magnificence of the Dutch factory at Macao. He mentions seeing paintings by Dutch and Flemish “masters,” costly Chinese porcelains, considerable statuary, cages of monkeys and birds from many lands east of the Cape, a number of musical instruments (including a self-playing piano), and a beautifully tended garden whose walks were paved with Dutch tile.47 Even making allowances for his youthful exaggeration, it is clear that the Dutch agents at Macao lived grandly. Although private American merchants could hardly expect to keep up with such sybaritic Joneses, their hongs did not lack creature comforts. The diet was little

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short of sumptuous, and the quantities of beer, wine, and liquor consumed were always a source of complaint to a firm’s more frugal partners. Young John Heard, writing to his envious younger brother “Gus” (Augustine) in 1844, noted, “Wine is always on our table, of several different kinds—and one is constantly challenged” to drink.48 Even the most parsimonious Yankee soon became accustomed to luxury, so much so that they demanded it after their return to America. The conservative John Latimer blamed the freespending habits of China nabobs on “the management of large funds belonging to others [which circumstance] has the effect to destroy our proper ideas of the value of money.”49 All food, drink, furnishings, and other consumer goods had to be purchased either from the house comprador, who exacted his fee, or from the ships at Whampoa, which meant paying transportation costs from Manila, Bombay, or even more distant ports. A comprador’s job was a most desirable one. John Heard cites the example of Augustine Heard & Company’s comprador who came to us without a cent in 1840. He died in 1846 leaving $70,000! And yet it was all done so delicately that I do not think anyone in the house was conscious of losing a cent. I very much doubt whether we did lose anything. The payments all came from the Chinese, except for our food, and the percentage was so small that it would have been hard to spread it over our business.50

So useful were the compradors and so profitable was their business that recently they have had a very bad name among patriotic Chinese, particularly the communists, who regard the comprador as a mere lackey of imperialism. Another source of influence in the lifestyle of the foreign merchants at Canton was the standard of living of the Chinese merchants with whom they dealt. Although the hong merchants were sometimes very rich, traders occupied a relatively low position in Confucian society. Some were arrivistes, and, like the new rich in Western culture, they tended to spend money lavishly and conspicuously, but even those who were degree-holding members of the gentry lived well. Their villas, libraries, gardens, aviaries, menageries, and other extravagances were exuberantly described by many Americans. Puankhequa’s51 garden, with its aviary, dwarf trees, artificial streams, grottoes, waterfalls, and fountains, was particularly impressive.52 Foreign friends brought Puankhequa seeds, birds, and animals from all over the world for his country seat. Tilden gave him a dozen speckled turtles, which were apparently an oddity in Canton.53 Despite the luxury of his life, a Canton resident was no indolent voluptuary. He worked long and continuously—twelve to fifteen hours a day was usual during busy periods. Most of this time was spent in the countinghouse, and travelers often remarked on the pallor common to all residents. But at least one young man was delighted, on his arrival, to discover

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Puntinqua’s (Puankhequa family) Country Villa. Watercolor by George West (Cushing Mission, 1844). Rich hong merchants typically had lavish country estates to which foreign merchants were occasionally invited. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 1st [sic] the systematic manner in which business is carried on, the gentlemanly manner in which Clerks are treated, the fine style in which they live in the eating way—and another grand recommendation which applies very well to a chap like myself—viz.—there being no occasion of spending money—in the small way.54

Residents rose early in the morning during tea season; they got up later only in the spring and summer months when business was slack. The hot, moist climate made for sticky mornings, a discomfort that was particularly hard on Yankees, accustomed to sub-Arctic New England. They soon got into the habit of demanding that their boys prepare a bath for them at least once and often two or three times a day. This luxury required filling a large earthenware tub, encrusted with dragons, fu-dogs, or other fanciful decorations, with fresh water that had to be carried some distance. The dampness of the area also made for clouds of mosquitoes in the summer. Of necessity the beds were canopied and hung with netting. Like the tubs and the other furniture of the hong, these beds were often heavily carved, highly polished, and sometimes inlaid in their symbolic elegance of the high living to which young American merchants at Canton quickly became accustomed. Such amenities brought more than a degree of comfort into the life of even the most ascetically inclined missionary. For all his dedication and willingness to endure hardship, there was no way for him to live in China except as other Westerners lived, and that meant very well indeed.

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After the morning bath and perhaps a stroll, a merchant had breakfast— generally a simple meal consisting of rice, tea, rice cakes, toast and curry, eggs or fish.55 Thereafter the first real break in office routine came at noon, when a light lunch was served in the dining room. The great social occasion of the day was dinner, served either in midafternoon or about 6:30. At this time the whole complement of the factory dined together with various guests, boarders, and captains who were staying at the factory. Generally the meal was a long, leisurely affair, with many courses, including several kinds of wine, beer, and India ale, and concluded with brandy and long, black Manila cheroots. However, during the busiest part of the year, dinner could be hurried and even gloomy. In the late afternoon or early evening, when business permitted, the younger members of the community would race rowboats on the river, play leapfrog or hopscotch, pitch quoits, or march vigorously about the Square. Less energetic traders would take naps, go for short strolls56 or joke with the boat-girls at Jackass Point. In the early 1840s, Augustine Heard reportedly kept a small pony at the factory, and his daily rides around the Square greatly amused Chinese spectators.57 After dark, when work was comparatively slow, the traders would visit back and forth among the various hongs where groups would gather to drink, sing, or talk of business, pleasure, or home. Especially in the early part of the tea season, however, residents were frequently kept in the countinghouse until far into the night. On a hot summer night in 1833, William Henry Low wrote his senior partner in America: “Have you forgotten the pleasure there is in writing letters at night by a large Lamp in the month of July with soft pens and spongy paper? I am now in the full enjoyment of that pleasure, with my clothing well saturated with perspiration, wishing for a letter of the pure air of Middletown.”58

Personalities During the busiest periods, transients greatly outnumbered the residents. Before about 1820 the imbalance must have been especially marked, because the number of American residents rarely exceeded a dozen. Thereafter, however, the community grew with the trade, and like other communities, it developed its own odd and colorful characters. Very early there was the stately Revolutionary War hero, Major Samuel Shaw, first American supercargo and first consul, whose eighteenth-century sense of personal and national honor make him seem rather stiff to a modern reader of his journal and letters.59 Samuel Snow, another Revolutionary officer, second consul, and builder of the American factory, was evidently a warmer personality, but his luck deserted him early in the new century, and he went bankrupt, never to

Samuel Snow, 1795. Oil, unidentified Chinese artist. Snow was the American consul and built the first American factory in China. Private collection.

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recoup his formerly sizeable fortune.60 His son, Peter Wanton Snow, was also plagued with ill fortune. He wandered in and out of Canton all his life, never quite making enough money to avoid the pity of other merchants. He became consul in 1835, and, though he was in China during a time when many became rich very quickly, he was ailing, prematurely old, and seems only to have lost money. He died a pauper in 1843.61 Shrewd, tightfisted Edward Carrington was notorious for sharp dealing. He charged Peter W. Snow, briefly his own partner and the son of his benefactor, Samuel Snow, 18 percent interest, a very high rate at that time. He ultimately turned his eight years in Canton into a fortune apparently by watching his chances until he cornered the market in sealskins. He then returned home to become one of America’s leading China merchants and to develop an agonizing stomach ulcer.62 Occasionally a naturalized American appeared in Canton. Andreas Everardus van Braam-Houckgeest accumulated two fortunes at Canton in the eighteenth century—both times with the Dutch East India Company. Following his return home after his first tour in Canton, Van Braam moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he became a most unsuccessful rice planter and lost both his fortune and his family. He then reappeared in Canton as resident director of the Dutch company, evidently having renewed his Dutch citizenship. In 1794 and 1795 he accompanied the famous Titsing (also known as Titzing) embassy to Peking. In the latter year he retired once more, this time to Philadelphia, where he lived in magnificent style for about three years before returning to Europe.63 Another American citizen by adoption was “Colonel” Peter Dobell, who was born in County Cork but raised in Philadelphia. Dobell was another Revolutionary War veteran. After several years at Canton, during which time he narrowly missed being arrested for smuggling ginseng, he graduated to opium. Just before the War of 1812, he purchased a ship and sailed for the Northwest Coast of America hoping to reap a fortune in furs. Within a year or so he had opened a shop in Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, presumably to sell his cargo. Thereafter, Dobell journeyed across the length of Siberia to St. Petersburg, only to reappear, at the beginning of 1819, with a wife and daughter, as Russian consul at Manila. During his absence at Canton the following year, the Spanish authorities permitted a wholesale massacre of foreigners, a disaster in which Dobell lost heavily.64 Benjamin Chew Wilcocks, pioneer in the opium trade, came from a very distinguished Philadelphia family and looked the part. Because he was very tall, the Chinese nicknamed him “the high devil.” In his high, tight coat collar and white cravat in the heat of a Canton summer, he must have been an impressive sight during his decade as US consul. A gourmet, a connoisseur of the arts (and also apparently of women), a raconteur, and dinnertable wit, Wilcocks befriended the well-known artist, George Chinnery, whose tastes were similar.65 The two men became fast friends soon after

Benjamin Chew Wilcocks. Wilcocks was a pioneer in both the Turkish and Indian opium trades. He was a long-time resident of Canton, a bon vivant, and good friend of George Chinnery, who painted this sometime in the 1820s. © Copyright The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited (HSBC Asia Pacific Archives) 2010. All Rights Reserved.

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Chinnery arrived at Macao, having fled from India, or so he said, to avoid his wife (although avoiding his debts seems at least as important a motive). Wilcocks appears to have become rather irresponsible toward the end of his stay in China, when the great hong merchant, Howqua, in an act of astonishing generosity, released him from an enormous debt.66 His unsteady behavior thereafter lends considerable weight to the charges of John R. Latimer that, at least temporarily, Wilcocks went insane. Latimer should have known, but he was in an awkward position to make such accusations, because Wilcocks had left him all his business and now was charging him with malfeasance. An additional factor in Wilcocks’s irritation may well have been Latimer’s righteous action in sending Fanny Henry, Wilcocks’s bastard daughter by a Macao woman, to Philadelphia to see her loving father. Her arrival must have been something of an embarrassment, because the aging Wilcocks was, at that very time, on the marriage market in his native city.67 Finally there was in Canton a small band of intense, dedicated missionaries who began arriving in 1830 to convert China—a monumentally misconceived enterprise. Well-meaning, generally intelligent, and rather Calvinist in theology, these pioneer apostles were neither black-suited pessimists nor saints. Practical, hard-working, and determined evangelists, the missionaries were by no means all of the same character. One writer notes, [David] Abeel was a mystic,68 [Issachar] Roberts evidently something of a dreamer,69 but [S. Wells] Williams, a man of scientific training, [Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute] had learned practical printing while [William] Dean seems to have had a good deal of common sense. [Elijah C.] Bridgman was a real personage, one who would have been an outstanding member of any group.70

Peter Parker, a sober, deeply pious man, was nevertheless a shrewd and capable administrator. Before embarking for China, he prepared himself by reading, by visiting and interviewing people who could inform him of what to expect, and by training both for the ministry and for the practice of medicine. He ran his Canton hospital efficiently,71 even introducing a system of bamboo slips to keep order and to prevent people from missing their turns. He recorded the names of all patients, ailments, and treatment. Later he represented the United States in China in several capacities. He was very conscious of the value of publicity, was probably the China Mission’s best fund-raiser, and certainly was its most effective lobbyist.72 William Pohlman, a minister of the Reformed Church, was noted for his perseverance.73 Elihu Doty, Pohlman’s fellow sectarian, was, on the other hand, characterized by such phrases as ‘‘massive solidity of character,” “earnest and decided piety,” and “a laborious man.” He was not “brilliant or profound,” but his “accuracy, candor, judgment and freedom from prejudice” fitted him well for “literary work.”74 Samuel Robbins Brown [a teacher] . . . showed evidences of [being] a self-made man. He was cool in temperament, versatile in the adaption of means to ends,

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gentlemanly and agreeable, and somewhat optimistic. He found no difficulty in endearing himself to his pupils. . . . He had an innate faculty of making things clear to the pupils . . . with great directness and facility.75

Brown was also no mean musician and could play the piano, organ, and violin. He sang well and “composed not a little.” “Genial and warmhearted,” he “had a genius for friendship” and was “always fond of fun and jokes. From childhood to old age, mirth lightened much toil.”76 Dean describes Edwin Stevens as of “grave countenance” and an “austere and unsocial” appearance to strangers, though he denies that this was his true character, which he says was “ever kind and courteous.”77 Similarly the reserved S. Wells Williams suffered from “an unfortunate shyness” that gave him a certain “stiffness of manner,”78 if we can believe his son and his biographer. On the other hand, his friend Rev. Henry Blodget said in his eulogy that Williams was “full of good cheer and kindliness, quickwitted . . . eminently social in feeling and habits.”79 Noah Porter went still further and praised his “buoyant temper which made sunlight for others whenever he was present.” Obviously it is often very difficult to judge a man’s character from a fragmentary record at a distance of one hundred fifty years. Different witnesses give different appraisals. We can be reasonably sure, however, that the missionaries, like the merchants, were people of rather different personal characteristics.

Other Foreigners at Canton When the first Americans arrived in Canton, they found a very cosmopolitan community dominated by the British East India Company. At various times in the early years, there were Swedes, Danes, Austrians, Prussians, Spaniards, Portuguese, French, and various kinds of Italians doing business in China. Some were represented by consuls.80 With the beginning of the Wars of the French Revolution, most of these Europeans disappeared from Canton, and the neutral Americans gradually took over the carrying trade to the Continent. Numbers of non-European foreigners also flocked to Canton. Arabs, Indians, Armenians, and Near-Eastern Jews traded and lent color to the kaleidoscopic scene at the Oriental metropolis. Their costumes were often striking. The Moormen (Arabs) were clad in silk and cotton fabrics of red, white and blue colors, with large white muslin turbans festooned with red silk, and gold and silver cord. They are close shaven, all but their bushy, grizzly, and black beards, and wear loose trousers, tied below the knee and secured at the waist with strings and sashes. Their legs below the knees are bare, all wearing morocco slippers usually embroidered with gold thread.81

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Lascars (Indian sailors) dressed still differently: Most of them wind a dirty cotton scarf round their heads and shoulders, and with bowl shaped fancy skull caps, thin banyans, or muslin shirts, short cotton drawers—and a cotton sash.82

A Bombay Muslim is described glowingly: His limbs unfettered by his robes, gave full play to his majestic stature, and his costume of spotless white was relieved by a cashmere shawl wound and worn around his waist. Another of smaller size was wreathed into his turban . . . [he had an] immense snowy beard, that had grown  .  .  .  almost to his cummer band. [sic]83

And of the Parsees, the same source notes: Their dress is peculiar, in summer a white robe fitting closely to the back and arms, with wide pantaloons of the same, or of red or blue. In the cold season they have dark colored coats cut in the same fashion, and edged with red cord. Their hair is shaved in part, leaving it growing at the temples, and all wear the most enormous moustaches, which may often be seen as one walks behind them.84

And: Chinese, of course, in great numbers, tilted upon high cork-soled shoes, with wide pantaloons very full above the knees but tied close below, and a large blue nankeen frock, very short, and the hair on the back of the head so long as to reach nearly to the ground, whilst the forepart is shaved as smooth as the face. Most of them have no cap on, the place of one being supplied by a small fan.85

The British and Americans, almost uniformly, dressed in white especially during the hot seasons. Featherweight linen suits were common and some dandies of clerks even wore silk pajamas.86 White canvas shoes, very light cork hats covered with white cotton, and perhaps a tie completed the costume. Dress tended to be rather informal at Canton and quite correct at Macao, probably “on account of the presence of ladies.”87 By far the largest group of foreigners at Canton was the British. In the early years of the trade the Hon. Company’s Select Committee of supercargoes (resident at Canton) was almost alone in representing that nation in China, but, increasingly English, and more importantly Scottish, private merchants came to reside there. On the whole the Select Committee was able to exercise a respectable amount of control over this group through the licensing system it operated under its charter, a system that was the more necessary because of the lack of any legal sanctions. The two monopolies—the British East India Company and the Cohong—together managed the innumerable problems that arose in the course of China’s foreign trade. However, in the late 1820s and early 1830s, when the Hon. Company’s franchise came under strong attack in Parliament from these private traders

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in alliance with the new Midlands industrial interests, the Select Committee was less and less able to control the more restive British private merchants. The Company was scandalized by a dramatic demonstration of its loss of power during its last year. James Innes, a particularly irascible Scot who had been frustrated in his attempt to obtain justice either through the Select Committee or directly from the Cohong, set fire to the Customs House in the Square. This measure, incidentally, brought prompt redress from Howqua, the senior hong merchant, who was always terrified by violence.88 Whether under the rule of the Company or under the largely nominal control of the chief superintendent, who succeeded the Select Committee, the British always represented the most formidable group of foreigners with whom the Americans had to deal. Having similar cultural backgrounds and sharing the same tongue, religion, and common law, the English and Americans had little difficulty finding grounds on which to agree or to fight. Whenever there was a difference of opinion, as there often was prior to 1815 and during the Opium War, it was never a misunderstanding chargeable to the shadowy nuances of a half-comprehended foreign language. Each side knew precisely where the other stood; they simply disagreed.89 On the other hand the camaraderie of the factories and the ease of communication with the British made for a number of international friendships. Shaw was probably friendliest with the French at Canton, and other merchants were closely attached to the Dutch or Macao Portuguese, but most American traders, and later the missionaries, knew the British best. The foreign community that developed such a highly individual character after the War of 1812 was, for the most part, an English-speaking community composed largely of Britons and Americans. Members of other nationalities participated in the rich social life of Canton and Macao, but it was the British and Americans who dominated because they predominated. As time went on the Americans drew still closer to the British. There were a number of intermarriages, and, even when interests differed, it was easy for Americans to make excuses for their British friends. Charles King, partner in Olyphant & Co., regretted that British creditors had pressed their claims against Hingtai (also known as Hengtai, Hingtae, etc.—Yen Ch’ich’ang), a hong merchant, who went bankrupt in 1836. Some of the Hongs are determined not to pay. But Cap. Elliott says, that tho’ the British have borne insult, they will not submit to have the pocket touched. So the Hongs must tax us all, or the Admiral will come. It seems hard that Am[erica]n merchants and tea drinkers should pay B[ritish] claims—But we are all in the same boat, and must, I suppose, not complain.90

Thus, although Americans often argued with British policy, they swallowed their differences in contests with the Chinese.

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Recreation and Social Life Off-duty activity became more varied as the community developed. Traders complained of boredom but the complaint probably reveals more about the complainer than about the opportunities for diversion in this corner of the Celestial Empire. There were raffles, dinner parties, and band and chamber concerts.91 Shaw mentions the concerts very early: “At the English factory, there is, every Sunday evening a concert of instrumental music, by gentlemen of the several nations, which every body who pleases may attend.” By 1816 the Hon. Company’s band was giving concerts on Thursday evenings on the veranda of the Company’s hong. Tilden, who played the clarinet, was asked to join. Reading was probably the most important single recreational activity. The community had at least two “public” libraries. The largest and best known was the British East India Company’s library, formed in 1806. By 1832, when its catalog was published, this collection contained about sixteen hundred titles. With the loss of the Company’s charter, the library was dispersed,92 but the Morrison Educational Society, a missionary group, set up a public library soon after with some of the books that had formerly belonged to the Hon. Company. Canton merchants were remarkably bookish in comparison with their late nineteenth-century counterparts, and there were a number of sizeable private libraries at the factories and Macao. The missionaries always brought a number of books with them. As early as 1830, Rev. Bridgman reported having 201 books, 30 to 40 of which had been given to him by Dr. Morrison, who had a respectable collection himself.93 Besides the libraries there were book and reading societies. The Latimer Collection at the Library of Congress contains a number of receipts from the “Canton Reading and Billiard Association.” Young John Forbes was also a member of this group, though, perhaps significantly, his letters speak mostly of the billiards and card games played there.94 Books, newspapers, magazines, and even letters from home were passed from hand to hand, and there were at least two organized societies that auctioned their books after the members had finished reading them. Thus the subscribers built up libraries and perhaps did more reading than they otherwise might have done.95 Fondness for competitive games of all kinds was a marked characteristic of the community. As early as the War of 1812, Major Megee’s inn was as renowned for its whist games as for its cook. Backgammon and checkers (draughts) were other parlor games commonly played. By 1841 Russell & Co. had built a bowling alley in its hong at Canton. There were even some team sports. Sometimes the British persuaded the Americans to play cricket but only rarely. Americans always preferred something they referred to as “ball” which, from the description, bears a very strong resemblance to baseball though this was a generation before Abner Doubleday.96

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The most popular, elaborate, and expensive of the competitive activities was boat racing. Apparently beginning among the idle sailors at Whampoa and sponsored at first by the East India Company,97 the sport spread to the residents at Canton sometime after the War of 1812. Its popularity increased during the 1820s, and in 1831 Tilden remarked on the growing interest in the sport, describing the excitement generated among Chinese and foreigners alike by the rowing contests. He also commented smugly that these races were generally won by Yankee whaleboats.98 In 1834 the Union Club, a boat-racing organization, was established, complete with officers, rules, penalties for violations, weekly dinner meetings, prizes, and uniformed teams.99 It is not clear when sailboat races began, but they had been popular for years before the Canton Regatta Club was organized in 1837.100 Indeed foreign sailboat traffic had become so heavy by 1825 that the governor general issued one of his more ineffectual edicts against it.101 A ship carpenter, who had established himself at Macao by 1831, was building “Baltimore modeled” schooners for use in the river,102 and the merchants, always speed-oriented but increasingly so as the opium trade developed, showed a growing interest in boat design. The foreign community’s addiction to yachting developed and increased as time went on. It stopped abruptly with the opium crisis in the spring of 1839, but the Regatta Club was reborn in December 1844. Although the fee was $5 a head, nearly every resident subscribed. A meeting was held, officers were elected, and rules were adopted.103 The custom spread to Hong Kong soon after the British acquired the island. The Hong Kong Yacht Club, whose members made up the bulk of the foreign community, seems to have been the old Canton Regatta Club in a new location. Yacht races at Hong Kong became major social occasions and were soon imitated at the newer treaty ports. A few forms of recreation carried the approval of the Chinese government. On certain days of the month, foreigners were allowed to visit the flower gardens at Fa Ti, about two miles upriver from the factories. Delightful picnic parties are occasionally got up by the residents, who, leaving Canton in large boats with every convenience for a party, find the summer houses at Fa-Tee admirably calculated for a rural fete.104

At other times, the “barbarians from afar” were permitted to cross the river to Honam Island to visit the Joss House (Buddhist temple), which is described in a number of letters, diaries, and publications.105 A paradoxical formality pervaded the foreign community despite the good fellowship and physical contact resulting from various forms of recreation. Tilden believed that the absence of women made for the stiff manners that he rather deplored:

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We are such a mixture of gentlemen, sailors, and all of us necessarily bachelors, while at Canton, certain etiquet [sic] is quite necessary to keep us from becoming as the Chinese say many of us are—“half wild mans.”106

John Latimer noted that it was customary for merchants and clerks to address each other as “Mister” or by their last names alone. He also remarked with considerable satisfaction, We have civilized many cubs of supercargoes—in two months—and taught them more manners, than they had learned all their lives at home. [T]he reason is obvious, the old fashioned manners have been preserved in Canton, & on arrival here, most men are admitted to better society than they have been accustomed to at home.

And perhaps more importantly, “the extreme forms of politeness among the Chinese keeps our own alive.”107 Thirteen years later the social rigidity noted by earlier reporters apparently had increased, and in Wetmore & Co., for example, it was customary to dress for dinner,108 a practice that had certainly not been common among Americans as late as the early 1830s. This strange ceremoniousness alternated with a playfulness that was anything but formal. At a dinner given for William Jardine, senior partner of the largest firm in Canton, the estimable Dr. Jardine was reliably reported to have attempted a waltz with William S. Wetmore to the tune of a Negro folk melody.109 Another British doctor had the nasty habit of punching his acquaintances below the ribs “to see if our liver was sound.” And it surely must have been difficult to maintain one’s reserve while vaulting over another’s back during a game of leapfrog.110 In the years before the treaties, Anglo-American social life in China attained its fullest development at Macao, where traders of both nationalities periodically retired. The genteel, decaying Portuguese colony became the Ascot, the Monte Carlo, the Riviera, and even the home of tired traders after a busy tea season at the factories. At Macao dwelt the wives and families, as did the mistresses and the occasional ladies who brightened the hours of relaxation between strenuous sessions at Canton. Despite the unanimous protestations of virtue on the part of American traders, celibacy was by no means universal. A few personal letters, particularly by young bloods at Macao, show how varied were the opportunities for violating the seventh commandment. The number of illegitimate children was, in itself, proof of the weakness of mercantile flesh.111 At Macao, of course, the ban on women did not apply, and many traders kept mistresses. Wilcocks’s mistress has already been mentioned, and William C. Hunter kept a Tanka girl with whom he apparently maintained a very long and responsible relationship. John Heard wrote his confidant “Charley” Brown in 1844, a time when Heard was having a difficult time preserving his own virtue:

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The likeness of the Macao girl I sent you is a veritable portrait of one who is kept by an English gentleman there. She has a sister, also kept, who is nearly as good looking. And there is a little girl named “ayow” now about 15 years old who lives in a boat near our house, who is prettier than either of them. She is still virtuous & has refused an offer of $500, but I suspect will relent before long. These things are only looked upon here as amiable weaknesses, and there are a lot of bastard children kicking about Macao.112

Besides the eternal billiards, cards, social tiffins, and dinners, Macao offered a variety of virile recreations that were unavailable at Canton, such as swimming, horseback riding, and bird shooting. During the life of the Hon. Company, its elegant Macao hong, which was fully occupied for nearly half the year, was the center of British activity. Amateur plays,113 formal dinners, and balls were not infrequently held at its commodious Macao factory. There later appears to have been a more professional Macao theater; which boasted subscribers, a managing committee, and enough properties to make disposal of them a problem after the landlord announced that he intended to build on the ground the theater occupied.114 A Portuguese amateur opera company, the “Philharmonic Society,” was in existence in 1841, and occasionally traveling professional groups or individual performers would visit Macao.115 On one memorable occasion an Italian opera company gave a series of performances which greatly excited the foreign community.116 Players and musicians were always welcomed, but the community was really more interested in horse racing. An open area near the barrier, which marked the far end of the colony, was used for the purpose. To the scandal of the more proper American ladies, some of the English clergy, and even some wives of East India Company servants, appeared and placed bets on their favorites.117 As the community developed traders began to import blooded animals as racing became more serious.118 In November 1830 William H. Low, a new partner in Russell & Co., arrived at Macao with his wife and twenty-two-year-old niece, Harriet. For the next three years Harriet, an attractive, high-spirited Salem girl, kept a diary for the edification of her sister in America. This labor of love and exuberance survives as one of the choicest sources of the social history of the place and period.119 As each of the small volumes of the diary was completed, it was mailed home; thus the work has the quality of an intermittent letter. It is gossipy, chatty, and girlish, as one would expect in letters between two sisters close to the same age. Because Harriet Low was attractive, single, and American, she was in great demand with lonely Canton traders, many of whom she describes in frank and delightful detail. With equal gusto she tells of social events—balls, plays, the opera, a museum, picnics, sermons, the sinful horse races, and her endless, innocent flirtations. Later other American women, wives and daughters of traders and captains, made temporary homes at Macao. The Opium War brought still

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more and even further enriched the settlement with numbers of missionary wives and female volunteers. The social life of the community grew accordingly. Foreigners at Macao lived in even grander style than at Canton. Their houses were large, with spacious walled gardens and often a section of beach if they were near the Praya Grande. Some of these homes became rather celebrated. The home of the Englishman, Thomas Beale, was particularly noted for its garden and aviary,120 which rivaled Camoen’s cave121 as Macao’s principal tourist attraction. Rebecca Kinsman, wife of Captain Nathaniel Kinsman, wrote of her house: It is situated on the “Praya Grande,” with a pretty garden in front, a yard at the sides and in the rear, with fine trees, and the whole surrounded by a high wall—over which creep in many places luxuriant vines. To give you some idea of its size, the house is 120 feet front, with a veranda 18 feet wide, supported by massive columns, running the whole length— it extends back 70 feet, exclusive of the veranda. The parlour is 36 feet wide and high.122

A little over a year later, Mrs. Kinsman commented on the still grander villa of a Russell & Co. partner: Yesterday, Ecca passed the day at Mrs. [Warren] Delano’s. I went with her in the [sedan] chair, and made a pleasant call, walked around the grounds, which are very extensive, saw the geese (noble creatures as to size from the North), turkeys, pheasants, calves & a beautiful spotted deer, which with several horses and a fine god, completes their domestic establishment. I had forgotten a monkey in addition, with which Ecca was very pleased.123

The lifestyle, the excellent service, and mild climate kept some Americans at Macao long after they had planned to return home. William Hunter, who had said his goodbyes and set sail for America in early 1843, returned a few months later with some fine Arabian horses purchased at Aden. He remained another year before finally leaving China.124 James P. Sturgis, who arrived in 1809, retired to Macao after about a quarter of a century in Canton. Sturgis continued to live at his Penha Hill bungalow (a very humble pidgin name for a large and charming dwelling) until shortly before his death in 1851.

Feasts, Holidays, and General Indulgence These amenities were available only at Macao; Canton residents enjoyed the simpler joys of eating, drinking, and singing. In the early days especially, the customary way of celebrating anything in the all-male community at Canton was to hold an elaborate dinner party. The great profusion and variety of food and drink and the lack of any imperial prohibition against it

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made this kind of entertainment very common. A good cook was highly prized. Hotelkeeper Megee’s chef was renowned and, when Megee died in 1820, Benjamin Wilcocks hired him immediately. Upon Wilcocks’s departure in 1827, Russell & Co. engaged the famous cook.125 There were several competing sets of national traditions, and the community was, of necessity, selective in its observations of holidays. Unfortunately for American customs, the tea season made business very busy at Thanksgiving time, and in July much of the population moved to Macao to avoid the heat.126 Also the British probably did not greatly appreciate the opportunity to celebrate the Glorious Fourth. Thus the most typically American holidays were slighted. Some rituals were international. On Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, the British East India Company would generally put on a lavish banquet. American merchants held their share of such affairs, but their treasuries were not ample enough to stand as considerable an expense as the Hon. Company’s parties. These dinners, like most such events, lasted interminably with toast following toast—to the king, the prosperity of the United States, the ladies, etc. Each toast was answered by an acknowledgment and each acknowledgment by another toast until the small hours of the morning. Frequently members of the community would entertain with whatever amateur talents they possessed: We have been celebrating Christmas lately with a large dinner at 7 & kept up the delusion of enjoyment until 2 A.M.—a German played beautifully on a French horn. A Mr. Green of Boston, Capts. Waterman and Benjamin sang some good songs, and one Captain got regularly Drunk on punch at 1 and as it only [made] him more good natured, and very silly we had an hour’s good sport out of him.127

Chinese New Year was a considerably more interesting holiday. It lasted for several days, during which time all trade ceased, gifts and visits were exchanged, and all forms of noisemaking and revelry took place. Travelers frequently recorded the festivities with gusto: Tables are set in the streets, covered with all sorts of knick-knacks, and the goods in the shops are carried near to the doors, and displayed in tempting splendor. Long rolls of silk that, like dreamers, have been wrapt up in themselves for months, suddenly unroll, and dazzle beholders with their richness. Costume shops bring forth all their finest dresses, glittering with shining embroidery as if there were no poor people in the world, and all were mandarins. The porcelain stores are crammed with brittle magnificence, the largest vases are polished with silk handkerchiefs, and the painting on them seems to be newly varnished. The beggars leave off banging their gongs, for they get plenty of money without the nuisance. . . .  All the houses, streets, public places, and boats are thoroughly cleaned, even the people are scrubbed beyond the extent of the twelve months preceding in honor of the first day in the year. Up to the last hour of the last day of the old

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year, persons are seen hurrying to and fro, making purchases, and buying long scrolls of scarlet paper covered with sentences in honor of the season. These they paste upon their doors, or hang up in their houses, and this duty being accomplished give themselves up to feasting, bang[ing] the poor gongs unmercifully and firing of firecrackers. The festivities of New Year last three days128—with deafening hubbub, and the world in China then sinks quietly down to its old way of doing things, and business is resumed for another twelvemonth.129

Americans enjoyed Chinese New Year’s for a number of reasons: the different ages, conditions, and interests of various traders led them to appreciate different aspects of the festivals. Nathaniel Kinsman, of Wetmore & Co., was particularly impressed with the handsome gifts of choice teas he received from rich Chinese merchants.130 Paul S. Forbes’s journal discusses his trip from hong to hong, through huge crowds, visiting friends.131 John Heard III found and embellished some remarkable customs with which to regale a confidant at home: On the seventh day after their New Year, all China has a hankering after forbidden fruit, and one universal Copulation goes on through the Celestial Empire. A Chinese who has not indulged himself in carnal Connection on the day in question, which appears sacred to the worship of Venus, would consider his time misspent, and his energies unprofitably wasted.132

More often American merchants were interested in the happy Chinese custom of paying all debts before the festivities began. As a result of this practice, prices fell and specie rose steeply just before the holidays, and for years silver was the staple of the American import trade. It was a wise and lucky merchant whose business permitted him to hold off purchasing until this season. The other Chinese festivals were at least as colorful as New Year’s, but they affected Americans considerably less, probably because they did not halt business. A number of letters and diaries describe the Dragon Boat Festival which was celebrated largely on the water, but no foreigners took part.133 The Festival of Lanterns was neither understood nor honored by the foreign devils; Americans merely noticed lanterns of every color and shape going up all over the city and remarked about the gala atmosphere. They also wrote about the newly constructed bamboo playhouses on the street, but the festival did not touch their trade, and the amusements were too alien for their tastes and education, so it received comparatively scant attention.134

Lack of Harmony within the Community Although it was small, tightly knit, and strengthened by the golden thread of commerce, the social fabric of the Canton community was anything but

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seamless. Numbers of disputes, some lasting for years, disturbed the calm prosperity of the foreign colony. Living at such close quarters, men became intensely aware not only of each other’s talents but also of their shortcomings and disagreeable personal habits. The tensions generated by such contact were relieved somewhat by diversions, vacations, and the custom of various companies to spell both partners and apprentices at Canton. Members of a firm took turns sojourning at Macao and in America. When the business of the firm or the unavailability of transportation placed more than one partner in a hong for an extended period, personal relations were often strained. The best-run companies adopted very clear lines of subordination and division of labor, but, despite all these devices for avoiding conflict, nerves frequently were filed raw. Between firms, moreover, there were very few methods for avoiding bad relations, and even missionaries sometimes developed an uncharacteristic irritability. The presence of women may have helped make Macao the active rumor market that it was, but gossip was at least equally relished in the purely male atmosphere of Canton. Commercial rivalries, private animosities, and the lack of other topics of conversation led to a brisk traffic in juicy morsels of personal scandal. Nathaniel Kinsman, John Murray Forbes, John Heard III, Joseph Coolidge, William H. Low, and both Warren and Edward Delano wrote gossipy, very readable letters. The businesslike John C. Green, on the other hand, chastely avoided all personal remarks and occasionally even took others to task for their lack of the same restraint. Green’s own correspondence is invariably short, to the point, and suffocatingly dull. Competing merchants told stories about one another, and their correspondence is full of references to the underhanded dealings, sexual adventures, and generally depraved nature of their competitors. Remarks were especially corrosive about former partners or business associates who had broken off their earlier connections. Russell & Co. twice expelled members of the concern whom the other principals felt to be undesirable. In 1831 Philip Ammidon and in 1839 Joseph Coolidge were forced out of the house by the other partners. In  neither case were the erstwhile partners reticent about passing on every item of information unfavorable to each other.135 Almost as painful was Benjamin Wilcocks’s rupture with John Latimer. Wilcocks had left his China business to Latimer but gave him few instructions. He was particularly annoyed with Latimer’s failure to turn over a large part of the profits from the new business Latimer developed after Wilcocks had left China. At this historical distance it is not clear why Latimer should have granted Wilcocks an interest in what appears to have been his private business, but most of the evidence comes through Latimer. Certain persons were notably querulous. John C. Green, Joseph Coolidge, and William H. Low, all sometime partners of Russell & Co., seemed to attract the enmity of a number of their colleagues. Low’s correspondence

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with Samuel Russell is a mine of information, precisely because he has so many personal remarks to offer about other merchants. Although apparently a good businessman, he was nervous, touchy, and bearish. He held grudges, saw subversion of the concern’s interests (with some justification, it must be admitted) in every negative comment made by tired fellow merchants, and he sent Russell reams of worried letters after the latter’s departure in 1831. He frequently refers with evident envy to Russell’s placid temperament. Feelings between the Low family and James P. Sturgis became so heated that Sturgis did not deny authorship of a scurrilous song referring to Mrs. Low’s family.136 The anonymous verse was found pasted to the door of the East India Company’s factory at Macao, and a quantity of printed copies subsequently was left on the veranda of the same building.137 John Green was as abrasive a man as ever headed a major house at Canton. Even his partners admitted that Green was “obstinate and ill tempered,” but no one questioned his mercantile ability. By the end of his first year with the firm, Green had begun a quarrel with Augustine Heard which continued for years and eventually led to the formation of a rival company. Joseph Coolidge was an even more controversial figure. Virtually all of his associates testified to his conversational brilliance, his urbanity, and his “unsteadiness.”138 Ousted by his partners from Russell & Co., Coolidge used Heard’s name to form the new concern of Augustine Heard & Co. Within a few years, however, the partners of the new house had arrived at the same judgment of Coolidge as had the Russell & Co. principals. Acrid as they were, none of the enmities among the Americans quite reached the bitterness of those which divided the British community at Canton. The prolonged feud between the two largest British companies, Jardine, Matheson & Co. and Dent & Co., was so venomous and all-pervading that the other firms—British, Parsee, and American—were often forced to choose sides. What apparently had begun as a personal or commercial rivalry gradually developed political ramifications. The majority of the British private merchants sided with William Jardine, who favored a “forward policy” toward China. Some authors maintain that Jardine was the eminence grise behind Lord Napier, the first chief superintendent, whose blundering policy miscarried and proved fatal to Napier himself. The same writers also believe Jardine was the moving force in the final decision of the British government to send a military expedition to China after the opium crisis of 1839.139 On rare occasions a dispute even led to violence or the Code of Honor. One of the more spectacular disagreements was a personal dispute between William Wood of Philadelphia, editor of the short-lived Chinese Courier, and a hot-tempered Irishman named Arthur Saunders Keating,140 who edited the Canton Register for several years. These two young men were on the point

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of fighting a duel when the good sense of Wood’s second, Augustine Heard, the legendary Ipswich merchant-mariner, averted a tragedy. Keating named as his second the only man at Canton with a worse reputation for mayhem than himself—James Innes,141 the Scot, whom the community had more or less respectfully dubbed “the Laird.” Innes tactlessly demanded a complete apology, through Heard, whom Wood had wisely selected as his representative. Mr. Heard, in his quiet way, avoiding all discussion, simply said, “W is the challenged party and I have come to arrange a meeting with pistols tomorrow morning at five, at a convenient place on the bank of the Macao passage” [within rowing distance of the factories].

Heard was an old China hand and knew very well that homicide on Chinese territory was the one crime for which the Imperial Government set aside its prophylactic policy toward foreigners. It would be sure to intervene, find the accused guilty, and administer capital punishment. “But my dear sir,” said the stately Laird, “how can you and I answer to our God for risking the lives of these young men and breaking the Chinese laws against homicide?” “Oh,” said Mr. Heard, ‘‘that is your affair in demanding such an apology; life is not a very important matter, and my friend is quite ready to run his risk if you insist upon it, and as for the Chinese laws, you and I are breaking them every day. [Both were opium traders.] We have no other answer to make, but shall expect you at five A.M.”142

Several hours of tense waiting crept by while Innes and Keating thought over the implications of their actions. Then came a highfalutin letter from the Laird [that] announced that he could not risk breaking the Chinese laws, and that he and his friend should embark in a sailboat . . . and await their opponents at Lintin Island, some sixty miles distant. . . . Mr. Heard replied that they might go to Manila . . . if they chose, but that he could not leave his business to follow them, and there the matter ended.143

To be considered more at length in a later chapter is one of the most interesting and significant animosities that developed in old Canton—that between Olyphant & Co. and the other commercial houses, particularly Russell & Co. Both their well-known piety and their very vocal opposition to the opium traffic made the members of Olyphant’s firm prime targets for their competition. Their slightest peccadillo was seized upon by the drug traders and retailed with undisguised glee.

Faith and Charity Despite the understandable dissonance between opium merchants and those who denounced the commerce as immoral, a working community existed

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in old Canton. Under most circumstances the foreigners, and even more especially the Americans, regarded themselves as a unit. The most obvious line of division—that between merchant and missionary—was almost as much a source of unity as of discord. All American merchants, except for four or five Jews and a handful of Roman Catholics, regarded themselves as Protestant Christians, and they supported the China Mission handsomely. Business always came first with the traders. The missionaries universally complained about the common violation of the Sabbath. Whenever the demands of business conflicted with those of religion, the men of the cloth found their suspicions confirmed.144 As early as 1820 Robert Bennet Forbes lamented that he had to work on Christmas Day, although his objection seems to have been not so much on religious as on less elevated ground.145 In 1837 the fact that one of the companies at Canton had relieved its clerks from work on Sunday was so remarkable as to prompt Peter Parker to write home in triumph.146 John Murray Forbes’s attitude was more typical. In a letter to Samuel Russell dated 16 November 1834, he commented sarcastically: We have given up that profane practice of working on Sundays (except where there is Something urgent) and instead thereof Green goes to church & I have established a Billiard Club from which I anticipate much amusement and profit to my health—I always thought that a pious partner was very necessary here— and did intend to have taken that department myself—but G. has it so I don’t like to interfere.147

Prior to 1830 when the first American missionaries arrived, the British East India Company provided the only regular Protestant religious services. The chaplain preached in the Company’s chapel every Sunday while the staff was in Canton, and Dr. Morrison gave two services, one in the American factory for foreigners and another (in Chinese) at home.148 With the advent of the American missionaries, religious activity quickened perceptibly. Indeed Americans soon dominated the field. They gave weekly services at the American factory (Olyphant’s hong) and preached to the sailors at Whampoa aboard ship. By 1837 Peter Parker could boast that there were now “about 80 people in the congregation” and that the missionaries held religious meetings every Friday evening, two weekly prayer meetings, a “monthly concert,” and a Bible study group at Macao.149 This was great progress. Only four years earlier, S. Wells Williams had complained, The congregations on the Sabbath are small indeed. One or two weeks ago when Gutzlaff150 preached, we had forty-three, the largest number since I have been here. The service is held in the same room that we eat in every day; we rearrange some chairs and put a desk on the table—that is all. Would you not say that it is a day of small things?151

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But it was not primarily to save souls in the nominally Christian Canton trading community that the missionaries had come to China. Although they labored long with their countrymen, their apostolate was to the heathen. In  this task the role of the commercial colony was critical. The principals of Olyphant & Co. financed virtually the entire mission during the difficult early years. Missionaries traveled free in Olyphant’s vessels, their living costs in Canton were covered by the firm, and their housing consisted of hong No. 2 in Olyphant’s factory. In addition, Olyphant underwrote the cost of their journal, The Chinese Repository, obtained and transported its press, and lent his ships for missionary voyages along the northern coast of China to Japan and to the East Indies. Olyphant & Co. performed these and any number of other services to the missionaries completely free of charge. The partners of Olyphant & Co. were the most regularly generous of the merchants, but other traders also gave liberally of time and money for the foundation and upkeep of hospitals, schools, and other charitable and religious institutions organized by the Mission. The most famous Canton missionary organization was Peter Parker’s Ophthalmic Hospital, which opened its doors early in November 1835. This institution was the most effective device employed by these early apostles for reaching the Chinese populace. The hospital was soon crowded with patients and Parker began to call for help. The community loyally supported him, providing administrative, financial, and even medical support, and, by the end of the period, both money and new doctors were coming from America and England in substantially increased quantity. In fact whatever the missionaries undertook, the resident merchants supported generously. Even opium traders, whose commerce the missionaries always deplored, attended religious services, took seats on the boards of missionary bodies, gave money and materials, and otherwise helped the tiny band of religious pioneers. William Jardine, the leading drug merchant in Canton and a physician by training, regularly worked in Parker’s hospital, while John C. Green, the head of Russell & Co., foremost American dealer in the narcotic, rarely missed a service, was a rigid sabbatarian, and served the Mission in several administrative capacities. Although their purposes differed from those of their mercantile associates, the missionaries had become an integral part of the Canton community in the decade before the coming of the war, and the merchants regularly supported their endeavors. Nor did all charitable activities originate among the missionaries. Bankrupt hong merchants, linguists afoul of the law, and widows and orphans of their less fortunate fellows also became objects for subscriptions among the traders at Canton.152 Frequently after some natural catastrophe such as a drought, a fire, or a flood, the Canton newspapers would carry editorials and letters calling on the foreign community for funds to relieve the afflicted.153 The princely philanthropy of a number of hong merchants is legendary, and the wealthier Parsees were also inclined toward expensive

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generosity. Jeejeebhoy (Heerjeebhoy?) Rustomjee, an important Parsee opium merchant, gave twelve thousand dollars in 1841 for the establishment of a hospital for seamen in the Canton area.154 After the destruction of nearly half of the hongs in 1842 and 1843, funds collected from the foreigners, particularly the Americans, financed the rebuilding of the Square and the construction of walls at either end to prevent the collection of rabble. Nathaniel Kinsman was quite clear about the predominant American role in this enterprise: The [newly relandscaped] square or park—is a great improvement, and great credit is due to those who designed the place and to Mr. [Isaac M.] Bull [of Providence, nephew of Edward Carrington] who devoted his time to oversee and complete the work of laying out the ground, ornamenting, &c. It is literally Yankee Square, for I believe the English who did very little towards it, seldom avail of the place to promenade.155

Finally there were several Chinese charities that the merchants could not avoid. The Chinese Repository states that at least three official institutions were supported by a tax on the trade levied by the local government. Every foreign ship paid about nine hundred dollars for the maintenance of homes for the aged, the “friendless poor,” and orphans.156 Under the Ch’ing dynasty, district capitals like Canton maintained both poorhouses and foundling homes. The financial burden of these charities fell on the gentry and the district magistrate. Thus there was considerable local support for these imposts.157

The Dark Side One would like to know more about these benevolent institutions, for certainly the lives of the Chinese poor could not have been much affected by them. Insulated as they were from Chinese society, foreigners generally were able to ignore the desperate conditions under which many of the lowest class lived. But occasionally weather, or the proximity of some of the city’s most miserable slums, forced the residents to confront uglier sights than they had ever encountered before. Intermittently the residents were threatened by natural disaster. Floods were frequent during the rainy months. As the factory area was almost at sea level, the Square sometimes lay under several feet of water. At such times cobras from the hinterland occasionally were washed up at the entrances to the hongs.158 Droughts, sometimes appearing in the same year as a flood, now and then drove thousands of starving peasants into the city, and several hundred might enter the Square or even penetrate the factories themselves until they were driven off by the police. Fire was the most dreaded peril. The bamboo-and-matting houses of the

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neighborhood poor were constantly catching fire, and the blaze would spread to the more substantial dwellings. Cantonese fire-fighting methods were sometimes rather primitive. Sullivan Dorr describes a fire in 1800 in the extinguishing of which the Chinese spent considerable energy transporting a heavy idol to the scene.159 The worst accidental fire on record occurred on 1 November 1822. Late in the evening a fire broke out about a mile and a half north of the factories. Twenty-four hours later all of the foreign hongs had been destroyed.160 Periodically thereafter fire threatened the factories and Canton periodicals began to agitate for fire insurance.161 By the spring of 1835, coolies using imported equipment had been trained in Western methods of fire-fighting, and the hazard was therefore greatly reduced. But, despite everything, fire was more of a danger at the end of the sixty-year period than it had been at the beginning. After the Opium War had embittered relations with the Cantonese and weakened Manchu authority, instances of arson were not uncommon. In December 1844 Nathaniel Kinsman of Wetmore & Co. warned his wife to remain at Macao because “we have an alarm of fire almost every night.”162 The deadliest threat to life at Canton was disease. Illness was so prevalent that the state of a writer’s health was considerably more important a topic in commercial letters than it is today—even in personal communications. On the other hand some sickness was simply expected as a man’s customary lot in Canton, and a new man’s indispositions were viewed as burdens to be borne until he became “seasoned.” The frequency of stomach disorders, liver ailments, dysentery, and similar maladies suggests that standards of cleanliness in the factory kitchens and the water supply were less than adequate.163 Warren Delano of Russell & Co., for example, had recurrent bouts with hepatitis (“jaundice”), dysentery, cramps, and various other abdominal complaints that point in this direction. Yet his firm had one of the more celebrated tables in Canton. Other diseases, notably cholera, tuberculosis, and smallpox,164 accounted for numbers of deaths, thereby helping to populate the various foreign cemeteries. There were at least four of these cemeteries: two on islands in the river near Whampoa (French and Danes Islands) and two at Macao, one Catholic and one Protestant. Certainly the most depressing phenomenon met by Americans in China was poverty. When his ship first entered the river, the traveler was greeted by a host of beggar boats whose occupants cried for “lice.”165 From that time until he left China, distributing his last string of cash to the half-naked children demanding cumsha at Jackass Point, a foreigner was never far from scenes of appalling deprivation.166 In the neighborhood of the factories was a square in which beggars were allowed to sleep at night; each morning the police came to gather up the dead. The observant chaplain of Commodore Read’s squadron, which arrived in April 1839, painted the dreariest picture of this horrid place:

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Never before have I witnessed such a scene as here was presented to my view. I do not wish to see another like it. . . . [I]n different parts of this small area of some two hundred feet square, were prostrated different objects of commiseration, lank, lean, haggard . . . [one] was stretched on the hard stone, with his head pressing on his emaciated hand. He could not speak; but at our approach, as if by instinct, he seized on his basket and extended it with his skeleton arm for cash. We passed another. He was dying, as he lay with his head against the sidewall, down which was led a gutter as if in his last extremity he had rolled his head there, to catch it might be, a drop of water, which none gave him. . . . There was a collection of putrid water here, in which his head had partly fallen. A ragged mat concealed his face, and before the night-watch was over, he would be a corpse, with no one to catch his last word.  .  .  .  We passed on to another, whose face was uncovered. His eye was turned upon us, but his articulation was gone,—his cheek fallen—his mouth partially opened,—his body naked,—beside him lay his empty basin, and no one was near him. Good God! I  thought, can man be brought to this,—houseless, pennyless, naked, breadless, dying, with hundreds of the populace, well clad and smiling, passing him, and abundance filling the neighboring streets, and no eye of pity or hand of charity be found to alleviate such distress, and pity such wretchedness! I could not sleep that night.167

Americans were still more alarmed by their experience with what they regarded as official brutality. Whether or not Wellington Koo is correct in his assertion that there was little justification for the imposition of extraterritoriality by the Western powers,168 it is undeniable that Americans in China thought Chinese justice was barbaric. The public exhibition of the heads of decapitated criminals “in various stages of decay”169 and the common sight of prisoners wearing the cangue170 were unlikely to inspire confidence in Chinese jurisprudence. The cangue was a broad wooden collar that locked around the neck, preventing the hands from reaching any part of the head. The prisoner was guarded during the time of his sentence, which was sometimes for a period of several days, and this could mean death by starvation or thirst. Because the execution ground was less than a mile from the factories, all foreigners were exposed to the ugliest aspects of official Chinese retribution. Of course its closeness made it an attraction to visiting Americans, and travelers frequently described the more grisly methods of despatching criminals, such as decapitation, cutting into pieces, and strangulation.171 Severe as it seemed, imperial punishment for crimes was not always as certain as that to which most Westerners were accustomed. For example, a vessel in Chinese waters was rarely safe until she dropped anchor at Whampoa. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, pirates in the Canton estuary numbered an estimated seventy thousand men and commanded somewhere between six hundred and eight hundred vessels.172 Indeed, once the pirates had organized themselves into fleets, they proved so strong that they were able to defeat the Imperial Navy. The Chinese government eventually solved the problem by rewarding one of the most powerful buccaneers with a pardon, a naval commission, and a salary of 18,000 taels a year. This

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chieftain, after the fashion of Henry Morgan, turned against his kind and temporarily pacified the area,173 but piracy remained a problem to the end of the pretreaty period. Afterward, as the weakness of the Imperial Government became more obvious, the problem became much worse.

River Life China dazzled the American traders. The same Yankees who often despised the natives, at least those of the lower classes, were fascinated by the richness and the incredible, alien diversity that China showed them both in the one small suburb to which they were confined and on the waters of the Pearl River. Among the strangest, most outlandish sights that greeted Americans at Canton was the activity on the water. The port swarmed with people and craft of every description. From the great, awkward salt junks that docked on Honam Island (a distance downstream from the factories) to the tiny sampans of the barbers, fruit peddlers, fortune-tellers, and corn-removers,174 the river shipping presented as unusual a picture as had confronted American eyes anywhere in the world. Junks from Amoy with emerald-green bows (the bows of Canton craft were always red); barges from the interior bearing wood, bamboo, tea, and rice; brightly painted revenue cruisers flying triangular white flags splashed with vermillion characters and carrying cannon tied around the muzzle with a crimson sash; innumerable small ferries; large, gorgeously embellished seagoing junks painted with dragons, a huge eye on either side of the bow—all contributed to the vast drama of Canton harbor life. Thousands of small craft, upon which a large part of the population made its home, were moored in rows by the shore, forming liquid streets and floating suburbs.175 The most exciting of the river vessels were the flower boats—large houseboats, highly ornamented, their upper sections often entirely of carved openwork, sometimes gilded or brightly painted. They flew silken streamers and sported other very showy decorations. These craft were designed for pleasure and had excellent kitchens, a staff of musicians, and facilities for gambling. Yet they particularly catered to the less sophisticated vices—they were the places of business of thousands of women of the town, painted ladies with fingernails six inches long, who readily returned the foreigners’ greetings. Alas such amiable diversions were prohibited to all aliens by Chinese regulation.176 Throughout the day Canton was possibly the busiest place the American trader had seen in all his travels. Toward evening, as the signs of the day’s business began to disappear, they were replaced by a new set of sights, sounds, and smells as the end-of-the-day chin chin (devotions) began. Twilight was a crashing of a thousand gongs, innumerable spurts of flame from

Sampan and Man-of-War Junk. Pen and ink by George West (Cushing Mission, 1844). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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Flower Boat (detail). Oil by unidentified Chinese painter. The women on the flower boat seem to be welcoming or bidding goodbye to one of their number. The bustling activity in the background is perhaps even more interesting. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Mark Sexton.

paper burned ritually and cast into the water, and the sweet smell of incense. Lanterns were then hung out and supper began. Vestigial day-noises, the cries of the boatmen, barking dogs, atonal music from the flower boats, and the usual river sounds continued far into the night. “It is a long time after arriving in China that a foreign eye learns to observe uninterested the gay and active scene perpetually passing on the river,” wrote a nostalgic merchant in 1830.177

2 American Business under the Old System Tea and Silk

Until relatively recently the Orient has always represented riches, exoticism, and luxury to the West. Medieval contacts with East Asia were occasional and fleeting, a circumstance that added to the legend. Such trade as existed was a trade in rare products like spices, porcelain, and silks. Marco  Polo, the Portuguese explorers, and Dutch merchants of the early modern period further reinforced the myth both in their tales and in the commerce they pursued. The maritime trade that grew up with China was a commerce in wonderful things like lacquers, jades, bronzes, carvings, fans, incense, porcelain, and any number of other strange products. Although all of these chow-chow (miscellaneous) items gave the trade an undeniably attractive cachet, the fact is that they never amounted to much economically. It was the consumption of tea in the West that brought Westerners to China and, in a sense, created East-West relations. The commerce dwarfed all other trade from East Asia for nearly two hundred years, beginning in the late seventeenth century, when the tea drinking fad hit Europe. From a few chests taken as gifts, the trade grew to over 31,000,000  lbs. in 1783, when the first American attempted the long voyage as an experiment. Major Samuel Shaw, formerly of the Continental army, became supercargo of the converted privateer, Empress of China, Captain John Green, in 1783 and sailed from New York for a combination of merchants led by Robert Morris, a financier of the Revolution. The ship arrived home the following year, making a modest profit from the voyage. Thereafter a few ships went out every year, and the commerce grew slowly, but not spectacularly, until Napoleon’s military adventures gave American traders the opportunity to engross the carrying trade between Europe and the rest of the world. “The expansion of the United States is the measure of the contraction of Europe—England excepted,” says the standard work on the subject.1 The British navy protected the enterprising Americans against competition, and British courts recognized the legality of neutral trade long enough to give the new nation nearly two decades of unprecedented commercial prosperity. When French armies overran Western Europe, the American tea trade

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Tea chests. The “PCBS” on the lower chest stands for Perkins & Co. Bryant & Sturgis. Alert, Houqua, and Dorothea are ship names. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum (crate from Alert, E75253.AB, crate from Dorothea, E75254.AB, crate from Houqua, E75256)

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quickly outdistanced all but the British, because no other neutral with the necessary seafaring and merchandising skills was safely out of the war zone. By the late 1790s American vessels sailing from Canton were taking away from 3 to 5 million pounds yearly. There was a brief lull after the Peace of Amiens, but with the return of war, the trade was brisker than ever. It reached a high of almost 12 million pounds in 1805–06 but dropped off to about 1 million during Jefferson’s embargo. A large proportion of this tea was reexported, and in 1803, more tea left American shores than was consumed. The commercial interruptions of the years immediately preceding the War of 1812 again cut the American tea trade, and hostilities ended it altogether, except for a small quantity that went by privateer. Continuing demand brought a quick revival in the period between the Treaty of Ghent and the Panic of 1819. The depression that followed slowed the commerce until the later 1820s, but not before 1833 did the trade again attain the heights of 1805. Thereafter it remained at 14 to nearly 17 million pounds until the opium crisis of 1839. The year 1840 was a banner year. Americans landed nearly 20 million pounds of tea in the United States, but the beginning of the Opium War and the overloaded American market cut the trade back to a modest 11 million pounds the following season. Throughout most of the sixty-year period of this study, China ranked third among the countries from which America received imports, following only Britain (including British possessions) and Cuba; tea nearly always made up the largest and most valuable component in the trade.2 Americans drank a lot of tea. The domestic market expanded as the population more than doubled, and even our immigrants were tea drinkers. They reputedly took appreciably lower qualities than the English and Europeans. An American merchant noted in a letter to his uncle in 1837, Don’t in the anxiety for English business overlook the American. We should cling closely to the latter. They will take anything but what is deadly poisonous. It is the least trouble, sells fast and turns to the best account. Not so with the English—to secure fine teas we are obliged to court,  .  .  .  overadvance, setting aside the anxiety, labor & disappointment & loss frequently of the teas. In fact it throws us completely in the power of Chinamen.3

Because Americans traded all over the world, they bought all kinds of tea at Canton, and the different varieties were so numerous as to bewilder the uninitiated. For our purposes Chinese teas were divided broadly into two general groups:4 the blacks—pouchong, pekoe, souchong, congo (congou) and bohea—and the greens, which included the various hysons (hyson, young hyson, hyson skin, and gunpowder), singlo, imperial, and twankay. Americans usually drank green teas, especially hysons, although beginning in the 1820s the smoky-flavored souchong became popular, especially in Boston, where a number of important China merchants lived. These

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businessmen operated at an increasing competitive disadvantage with New York traders. The latter’s incomparable location was greatly improved by the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825 and by the introduction of the auction system for disposing of imports quickly. Thereafter merchants in other cities had to maintain New York offices or be satisfied with small sales on the local market. The teas that Americans and others took away from Canton came principally from Fukien Province and neighboring districts in the adjacent provinces of Chekiang, Kiangsi, Kiangsu, and Anhwei, though some came from as far away as Hunan, Hupei, and even Szechuan. Canton was by no means the most convenient port at which to trade. A contemporary writer remarked that had the government allowed foreigners to use the closest port to the tea districts, teas would have had to travel a mere 65 to 375 miles. Moreover, none would have had to go by land. But the requirements of the Imperial Government left the tea dealers no choice. The word tea is an etymological study. When it was first introduced into Europe, the herb was called cha, but in England it was called tay or tee, probably from the Dutch thee. The latter very likely came from the Malay te or teh. The ancient Chinese was probably kia. The Mandarin is ch’a, and the Russians (who got their tea via camel caravan from North China) called it chai.5 The plant is a shrub that belongs to the camellia family (the botanical name is Camellia sinensis), and both the shiny leaves and fragrant white flowers resemble those of the larger, showier plant. A great part of the black teas came from the Wu-i (Bohea) hills area of northern Fukien; the greens were produced principally in the vicinity of the Sing-lo hills in Anhwei bordering on Chekiang and Kiangsi provinces. The distinctions made by tea connoisseurs resemble those made among wines in the West. Because some localities produced higher grade tea than others, tea buyers wanted to know the precise origin of each chop (batch). The time of picking was also important to the quality of the product. The “first spring” picking was the smallest and the best. It generally occurred in the first two weeks of April, although in warm years pickers would begin late in March. There were always two and sometimes three other pickings annually. The “second spring” harvest occurred from the end of April to about June 1 and produced the largest quantity of tea. The misnamed “third spring” picking began about the first of July and resulted in the counterpart of vin ordinaire. The fourth, ‘‘autumn dew,” produced leathery leaves, very strongly flavored, and for that reason this picking was often omitted entirely. Precise timing was particularly vital for the “first spring” picking. If the leaves were picked too early, they would wilt too fast, and the crop would be very small; if picked too late, the leaves would be too tough and hard to roll. The taste would also be harsher. Therefore on exactly the right day, the workers would begin to move along the rows of shrubs, rapidly plucking

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The China Tea Trade, ca. 1800, M25794. Oil on canvas. The unidentified Chinese artist has attempted to depict the entire tea production process, from the growing of the plant to the despatching of the lighter to the foreign ships, which can be seen in the distance. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

the small leaves and buds and dropping them into shallow trays. Afterward the tea was winnowed and transferred to curing houses, where a different set of workmen took over. At this point black teas would be distributed evenly over the bottoms of bamboo trays, which were then set on frames, where air could circulate until the leaves wilted slightly. Then they were very carefully rolled or rubbed by hand and fired. Firing consisted of casting a small portion of tea into a red-hot pan, where the expanding water in each leaf made it burst with a small pop. The tea was then put into drying baskets and placed over low charcoal fires. Periodically workmen would stir each basket to permit even drying. When the leaves were completely dry, they went into chests and were stored until ready to ship. Before their long journey to Canton, the teas were packed into lead-lined chests, which were then papered over and stamped with identifying marks. Really fine teas, pekoes and powchong, were fired a pinch at a time, dried more carefully, and wrapped in small paper packages bearing both the name of the plantation and the day they were cured. These packages then went into lead canisters. Fine teas brought a much higher price and were sold in small lots. The handling of green tea was somewhat different. The tea merchant bought the leaves as they were picked and then did his own curing. After sifting the tea went to a fanning mill, where chaff, sticks, and old leaves

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were removed before firing. The amount of green tea fired at one time was substantially larger than with blacks, and the heat of the fire was adjusted to the age of the leaves. The tea stayed over the fire for about a half hour (the Chinese measured the time by burning two sticks of incense). When dry, the tea was treated much in the same fashion as black tea. Although the tea-producing districts were four to seven hundred miles from Canton, the tea had to travel much further, for the most part following water routes. Because it was important to keep the tea dry, before it began its trip, each chest was wrapped in matting. The tea moved down the small rivers that drain westward into Poyang Lake, where the first duties were collected. There were about seven customs stations along the route; at each one a tariff was charged, adding substantially to the Canton cost. Green teas had to come still further. From the Sing-lo hills the teas moved northeast to Soochow, thence to Hangchow, and upriver to “Changshan Hien.” At that point the teas had to be carried across the mountains into Kiangsi Province and down the river on boats to Poyang Lake. There the two branches of the tea trade converged, moved up the Kan River in flatboats, and were dragged through the shallow water to the foot of the Meiling Pass. Coolies then hoisted the chests onto their backs and carried them over the pass and down the other side of the mountains to the Pei (North) River. Once more the teas were loaded on boats carrying five to eight hundred chests each and floated downstream to Canton. At the packhouses dampened chests were opened, and the tea was dried in special furnaces before it was repacked. It was at this point that adulteration sometimes occurred, a process locally called “manufacturing” teas.6 Several kinds of fraud sometimes occurred. Willow leaves, rice chaff, once-steeped leaves, stones, and other rubbish were used to replace good tea. Whenever such deceptions were uncovered, the hong merchant who had sold the tea paid damages, which usually amounted to twice the sales price. Such crude artifices, however, were rarely practiced by Cohong members. These were the devices of lesser men. When a hong merchant tricked a customer, something that happened occasionally, the stratagem was invariably more sophisticated. Both hong merchants and American traders were known to mix grades of tea (something still practiced today and defended in the advertising), to substitute inferior grades for those of higher quality, to switch labels on tea chests, or to alter the price of teas bartered for goods. One finds references to all sorts of such swindles scattered through the correspondence.7 The Chinese tea merchants, who often arrived well before their teas, would begin to negotiate for their sale early in the fall, often with dismal stories about the smallness of the crop, bandits, floods, droughts, rebellions in the country, and other misfortunes that seemed likely to cut the size (and raise the price) of the crop. Sometimes they even tried to combine to raise the price of their product artificially.8 They would remain at Canton until

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they had sold their teas, collected their debts, and purchased a quantity of foreign goods for resale in their home provinces. The first of the crop began arriving at Canton in October, and it continued throughout the rest of the year. For the Westerner the tea season opened when a hong merchant’s servant came to the factory to announce that the first musters (samples) were ready for his inspection, and it lasted until the monsoon changed toward the end of the winter. The autumn months were especially busy, and the reach at Whampoa often held scores of vessels. Nervous captains and supercargoes, eager to be off, would try to push their business along, for it was a great advantage to be the first ship of the season to arrive at market. The resident American Canton merchants deplored this practice, because it forced up the prices of China goods and depressed those of imports. Shrewd merchants asked their constituents for discretion to purchase later in the season, when they could take advantage of the Chinese merchants’ growing concern over their unsold stock. Probably the best time to buy was just before Chinese New Year when Chinese merchants eager to pay all outstanding debts forced up the price of money, making the market particularly tight. At this time all goods could be had for relatively low prices, especially when the buyers paid cash. The other principal export product was fabrics. Silk, like tea, took a practiced judgment to buy, pack, ship, and sell. Another similarity to tea was silk’s fragility. Both moisture and other goods, such as sugar, spices, and various chemicals, sometimes damaged the colors of silk just as they flavored teas. Silk was also a very valuable cargo. For these reasons some merchants avoided silk altogether, even though it was somewhat easier to buy, because its price fluctuated less than that of teas. A firm with a large silk business was Nathan Dunn & Co.9 This concern developed a very simple method for avoiding high ad valorem duties in America and the difficulties involved in the double conversion of goods into silver and silver into silks at Canton. An envious competitor complained in 1832, [Y]ou often remind me of the low cost of goods shipped by others, without reflecting on the advantages they possess—in Archer’s business [Joseph Archer was resident partner in Dunn & Co.], where there is a barter system—goods are given for others at valuation . . . by so doing, silks are invoiced below cash prices and your heavy duties . . . thus greatly reduced.10

“Trucking,” as barter was called, could be dangerous, but it proved an alternative to the complicated silver and bill trade for some.11 Others strenuously avoided it, or at least they condemned the system in their letters. The first of the new silk crop began to arrive in Canton about May, but silk goods were produced and exported the year round. A great proportion of the silks taken by Americans was manufactured in the Canton area, where the industry was developed to a remarkable degree. Large workhouses employing great numbers of wage-earning employees existed nearby. The workers

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may even have been class conscious, for it was not unheard of for the silk workers to go out on strike, paralyzing the trade.12 Another large textile export, especially early and during the Napoleonic Wars, was Chinese cotton goods—the famous “nankeens” or Nanking cotton cloth. After the Treaty of Vienna, however, silks became much more important. In the first season for which there are records after the war, 1816–17, the value of silk piece goods exported on American ships overtook that of nankeens by nearly a quarter of a million dollars,13 and three years later the distance between the two had increased to almost $1.7 million.14 In the seasons 1822–23 and 1830–31, American silk exports displaced even tea in value, but they fell off again in the late 1830s. Nankeens never really recovered, for now they were competing with cheap machine-made fabrics from the West, as the Industrial Revolution shifted relative economic advantages. China, long an exporter of cottons, had enjoyed a temporary extension of her Western markets because of the European wars, which had excluded the British from the Continent. Thereafter even sparsely populated America could undersell Chinese producers in Canton itself. Here was the basis of the great commerce in coarse cottons that developed later in the century. The Chinese government’s limitation of silk exports created another source of income for enterprising merchants. No more than eighty piculs of silk were allowed on any vessel leaving China. As some ships took no silks, their masters were permitted to transfer their silk privilege to those wishing a greater quantity, and a lively traffic in silk privileges developed. A minor difficulty lay in the extra duty charged by the Chinese for every picul taken on another ship’s privilege, but for a ship taking freight, a silk privilege was just another salable item. Although cottons and silks were the most important, other export industries also existed at or near pretreaty Canton. American merchants regularly ordered chinaware, furniture, and any number of chow-chow items from the “outside merchants” who specialized in them.15

The Old Canton System Over the years the seaborne barbarians had been coming to China, Ch’ing officials had worked out an imaginative, if very traditional, system for handling the trade. At the same time, they “developed . . . policies . . . to cope with the unique threat to stability and harmony created by the presence of Europeans living and trading at Canton and Macao.”16 Although commonly regarded as the most convenient port in the world for providing facilities for trade,17 Canton was notorious for the restrictions under which Westerners labored while visiting there. Many factors operated to impose special conditions on the foreign community at Canton. The nature of the exports, the

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history and peculiar outlook of the Chinese, the distance between Canton and the West, and the weather and the state of the arts all combined to circumscribe residents’ freedom. At no time during the years of the old China trade did the Chinese government seek direct contact with Americans or any other foreigners. Even the lowest members of the bureaucracy avoided face-to-face contacts except in very serious situations. Prophylaxis was the central purpose of official Chinese policy. The Chinese government entertained a low opinion both of foreigners and of merchants generally, a view rooted in the Confucian Weltanschauung and reinforced by the experience of Chinese history. To some degree it was a self-realizing assessment of Westerners, because by both isolating and cosseting the aliens, the authorities created a prosperous ghetto. A ghetto psychology developed among the foreign residents, and vicious myths gradually became part of the common foreign perspective on China. It was immediately clear to foreigners arriving at Canton that the Chinese authorities wanted as little to do with Westerners as possible. The manner of existence, the facilities for doing business and for gratifying a restricted number of tastes, the regulations under which aliens lived, and the whole smoothly running commercial system gave evidence of this attitude. The very location of Canton served the purposes of imperial policy. Canton was the most distant from Peking of the major Chinese ports. It was not in a tea-producing area nor was administration easy at a distance of over one thousand miles as the crow files, but for the purpose of keeping the foreigner and his trade away from the capital, Canton was ideally situated. For many years prior to that day in 1784 when the Empress of China first dropped anchor off Macao, all foreign-carried overseas trade had been confined to Canton. Alien merchants were obliged to live in a single, tiny suburb of less than twelve acres. There the foreign devils did their business, ate, slept, and got what recreation they could. As long as they were in China, they were subject to a number of galling restrictions, which still further stressed the government’s policy of distrust. The famous “Eight Regulations” for the control of foreigners, periodically reissued by the government, remained in effect until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Despite the frequent Chinese statements to the contrary, these regulations seem to have been neither immutable nor limited in number. The following commandments appeared in a copy of “the original eight regulations to guard against foreigners” prepared for the Emperor’s approval in 1831: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Year-round residence was prohibited. Chinese merchants were forbidden to borrow money from foreigners. Foreigners were barred from employing Chinese servants. While in China, foreigners were to be under the control of a hong merchant.

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the golden ghetto 5. Foreigners were not to ride in sedan chairs or bring females to the factories. 6. No firearms were allowed. 7. Foreign boat traffic between Macao and Whampoa and between Whampoa and Macao was strictly regulated. 8. All communications between the foreigners and the government must pass through the hands of the hong merchants.18

Other prohibitions generally in force were: 9. Foreign warships were forbidden to enter the inner waters of the Pearl River. 10. Pilots and compradors of foreign ships had to be licensed. 11. Foreigners were not to go boating on the river for recreation. 12. Foreign ships were forbidden to “loiter about” outside the river, but should report their presence and proceed upriver to Whampoa immediately.19 Any number of more specific rules elaborated or modified each of these regulations. In addition there were restrictions on Chinese subjects that limited the freedom of foreigners still further. One of the more remarkable of these injunctions was that which prevented the Chinese either from learning foreign languages or from aiding foreigners to learn the Celestial tongue. In later years, S. Wells Williams, one of the earliest American missionaries in China, recalled, I secured a teacher of considerable literary attainments, and he took special precaution, lest he should be informed against by someone, of always bringing with him and laying on the table a foreign lady’s shoe, so that if any one he was afraid of or did not know came in, he would pretend that he was a Chinese manufacturer of foreign shoes.

Teaching Chinese to a foreigner “was then regarded as one of the most offensive and dangerous [charges] that could be brought against a native.”20 Yet few, if any, educated Chinese spoke any Western language. These difficulties in communication had led, over the centuries of East-West trade, to the development of pidgin English, a lingua franca for business purposes. The word pidgin represents a Chinese attempt to render the English word business. Later, with local variations, the patois spread over much of the Pacific Basin and even to South Asia and Africa. Regardless of the convenience of this remarkable medium, the problems it raised are immediately apparent. Because it was no one’s mother tongue, it did not introduce a foreigner to any culture; it simply limited communication to business. It is hardly surprising that the Chinese and the Westerners regarded each other as “inscrutable.”

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Some of the regulations were very strictly enforced, such as those against women, firearms, and warships, all of which were perhaps rightly regarded as dangerous. The rule was tested from time to time, but it was generally observed. The British would occasionally take an armed vessel upriver during wartime, but the Chinese would cut off trade, and the British then had no choice but to remove the offending ship. William Hickey, a late eighteenth-century visitor, mentions a very early attempt (1789) to smuggle a girl into the British East India Company’s hong. The venture proved unsuccessful and cost the culprit $500.21 The wife and family of the chief of the Hon. Company’s Select Committee at Canton, as well as a number of other ladies, including two Americans, Mrs. William H. Low and her niece, Harriet, actually stayed at the factories for some time in 1830, apparently as the result of a misunderstanding.22 In each case the offenders were removed and someone was punished. Other regulations, like the rule against accepting foreign credit, were unenforceable. The prohibition against Chinese servants was never applied to domestics, although during crises they were sometimes withdrawn. At such times the foreigners found themselves nearly helpless, so dependent had they become on the ministrations of their house servants. By the late 1820s the growing number of foreigners at Canton had made several of the regulations virtually inoperative. The prohibition against boating on the river was largely ignored, and the rule against year-round residence had become an antique joke. Indeed some merchants seem to have become recluses in their factories. It was said that Henry Wright, a member of Jardine, Matheson & Co., did not leave his Canton factory for seven years.23 Other such figures were Nathan Dunn and John P. Cushing, both of whom headed American firms. As peculiar as the “Eight Regulations” appeared to Americans new to the Canton system, other elements must have seemed still odder. Enforcement of these regulations was not the job of the Imperial Government, and, although the latter was rigidly hierarchical and highly centralized, the true executive was at the bottom of the Chinese bureaucracy. The highest provincial officials were the governor of Kwangtung Province and the governor-general (tsung-tu) of the two provinces of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. The Ch’ing dynasty invariably mixed Chinese and Manchu officials at the provincial level, presumably the better to control them. Thus, if the governor-general was a Manchu, the governor would be Chinese. Not only did these important officials tend to be of different ethnic origin, but their duties overlapped, making either for close cooperation or administrative nightmares. Each governor in the empire supervised three regular commissioners (financial, judicial, and educational) and several special commissioners, one of whom at Canton was the Hoppo. This office was always held by a Manchu, and he was appointed directly by the imperial household for a nonrenewable, three-year term. His duties were limited to the collection of the revenue.

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This position was, thus, very lucrative; Hoppos always left Canton as very rich men. Below the commissioners were two more levels of geographical administrators,24 and at the bottom of the hierarchy were the magistrates (chih) of districts (hsien) or departments (chou). These latter officials handled most of the administrative work of the government, for the duties of everyone superior to them were largely supervisory. Separation of powers was unknown, and an official was responsible for literally everything that occurred within his jurisdiction. It was with the hong merchants that foreigners had the greatest contact and the greatest rapport.25 Despite the honorific “qua” (or kuan—“official”) affixed to their commercial names, hong merchants were distinctly subordinate to all imperial officials, even the district magistrates. Their chief source of influence was their wealth, the gentle background of some of their number, and their circumstances. Peking was far away, they knew the foreigners best, and higher officials had as little to do with the foreigners as possible. Although they were few in number (there were supposed to be thirteen, but the number was always substantially smaller), they were responsible for the conduct and supervision of the entire foreign trade of China, the enforcement of the regulations on foreign behavior, and the collection of the customs. Both private merchants and licensed semiofficials, the hong merchants were constantly confronted by what a later generation would call conflict of interest. They were driven by the familiar motives and ambitions of businessmen everywhere, but they also held to the Confucian value system that derogated trade.26 Moreover they were very vulnerable, because wealth and expertise in China afforded very little personal power or financial safety. Only academic degrees and/or political office could give one substantial influence or security.27 Consequently hong merchants did whatever they could to elevate their families into the scholar-gentry class, which enjoyed the highest status in traditional China. The Cohong was also responsible to the Hoppo, the governor of Canton, and to the governor-general of Kwangtung and Kwangsi (the “two Kwangs”). For the most part, mandarin and hong merchant worked in alliance, because the old Canton system worked to the benefit of both groups. Clearly, however, there were some important differences of interest. Directly behind the American Factory across Thirteen Factory Street stood a very grand building of stone and polished teak with several interior courtyards filled with flower gardens. This was the Consoo House,28 official center of the hong merchants’ operations. There the Consoo Fund was maintained. Because the hong merchants were liable as a group for the failure of any one of their members and for extraordinary levies, they insured themselves against disaster by keeping the fund. The Consoo Fund (kan-su or kung-so—variously translated “public office” or “guild hall”—meaning the Cohong) was supported by duties on foreign trade.29 American merchants

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sometimes resented these impositions because of the corruption in the system and because the Chinese, necessarily, could not be specific as to the purpose of the fund. Actually it was a source of great stability, because it insured foreigners against bad debts, and it was ultimately backed by the government.30 It also provided the Cohong with a means of meeting unexpected exactions of the government. Many of these demands were for the kind of expenses that every government incurs and for which it levies taxes—the repair of the Yellow River dikes, the suppression of rebellions, and the support of the court. On the other hand, the government, and sometimes individual officers, made requisitions on the fund that are not easy to defend. It was this kind of exaction that led some Americans to complain that the fund’s existence was an invitation to extortion. The Cohong was a very productive source of revenue. Knowing this fact, the mandarinate occasionally subjected the hong merchants to unmerciful “squeezing.” The squeeze brought about by the “ransom” of Canton in 1842 cost Howqua $1 million in silver. His great wealth and exceptional liquidity enabled Howqua to stand such a drain, but it must have been hard on lesser men. Some studies have tended to discredit the view, firmly held by American merchants at the time, that the high rate of failure among hong merchants was attributable to these extraordinary capital levies.31 Certainly several factors were involved, but it is difficult to understand how unanticipated demands for large amounts of cash could have been anything but a source of instability. Although the origins of the Cohong are misty, the first Hoppo was appointed in 1645, and the merchants’ organization appears to date back into late Ming times. Certainly it had been in existence throughout the eighteenth century. During this period hong merchants had made at least two efforts to establish a tighter monopoly over foreign trade, but for various reasons these attempts failed. By the time the Americans arrived, a leaky system existed under which the weaker hongs, for a fee, permitted “outside merchants” to trade under their licenses (chops). The “outside merchants,” also called “shopmen,” were traders who dealt extensively in foreign commerce but who did not belong to the Cohong. Their existence depended upon the inability of the hong merchants to supply the foreign trade adequately. Because legally they might operate only under the chop of a hong merchant, the Cohong exercised a modicum of control over them, but this power was never really very effective. The several attempts of the Cohong to increase its freedom of action met the united opposition of the Americans, most English free traders, and the “outside men” themselves.32 Most of the hong merchants were not wealthy enough to resist the combined pressure of the “outside merchants” and foreigners. The hong merchants’ poverty was a continuing problem. Over the long run only Puankhequa and Howqua were able to avoid the twin traps of capital shortage and risky business that brought down so many of their fellows.

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Among its other official duties, the Cohong policed the factory area, stood answerable for the integrity of the linguists, supervised the functioning of the system, and generally acted as a buffer between Chinese officialdom and Western merchants. The authorities addressed their edicts to the hong merchants, who, in turn, were expected to make the foreigners behave. Except under extraordinary circumstances, when for one reason or another the mandarinate became more directly involved in barbarian affairs, the hong merchants ran the business of the port. Official aloofness gave them considerable latitude to develop something like foreign policy. In their duties they were aided by a number of other semiofficials licensed to perform specific tasks for the foreigners and for the government. The comprador was a contractor who managed and guaranteed the native staff, purchased food and other necessaries, kept the treasury, paid all bills, informed his foreign employers about the state of the market, and, in general, helped in the business and the running of the factory.33 Despite their title the linguists were not persons with a knowledge of a foreign language. Although employed by foreign merchants, they were the officials who kept the customs records, saw to the hiring of chop boats (lighters), and informed the mandarinate of the cargoes and sums involved. There were usually about a half dozen head linguists, each of whom retained a staff of record keepers, clerks, runners, and other minor employees, both to keep the merchandise moving and to keep track of it.34 The linguists guaranteed the compradors and were, in turn, secured by the hong merchants. Thus from the lowliest coolie on up, the system was one of guaranteed, hierarchical responsibility in which the integrity of each person was secured by someone on the next level up. At the top of this local, semiofficial bureaucracy, was the Cohong. This structure was designed to guarantee not only honesty and financial responsibility but also to provide a secondary system of intelligence. At each step the licensee was obliged to report to his immediate supervisor. Thus the comprador collected information from his coolies, cooks, guards, and the shroff and reported to the linguist, who, in his turn, informed the mandarinate. In this way local officials had a reporting service that delivered data independently of the Cohong. After 1792 all three chief officials—the governor-general, the governor, and the Hoppo—filed regular reports on the trade with Peking. Presumably such a system of cross-checks, combined with the strict personal accountability requirement, should have assured honesty, solvency, and smooth functioning. However the matter was complicated by the institution of customary fees (lou-kuei). Salaries paid to Chinese bureaucrats were never intended to be sufficient to reward service. A system of charges, paid on just about every possible occasion, made up the difference. These exactions were the more necessary because Ch’ing practice required contributions from officeholders at every step of the official ladder. These fees were regulated by little except local custom and the magistrates’ judgments. Most traditional societies depend

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much more heavily upon custom than does the modern world, and China’s Confucian heritage made her even more reliant on such informal usage than perhaps any other highly civilized society.35 The result of such reliance is not necessarily bribery and extortion, “however, in some cases there was no sharp dividing line between the collection of a customary fee and corruption.”36 In any case Americans, to whom unrecorded gratuities paid to officials were always identified with corruption, can hardly be blamed for thinking the Chinese system iniquitous. In practice the system probably worked tolerably well from the Chinese standpoint, yet each functionary all the way up to the governor-general derived a major part of his income from a source other than the government that gave him his authority. This built-in conflict of interest led to a certain creakiness and malfunction in the Canton system, which appears to have been ineradicable; the development of the opium trade made it fatal. Nevertheless the Cohong, with its Consoo Fund, probably provided as efficient and productive a customs system as could have been expected from Chinese experience and Manchu despotism. It supplied the regulation, the insulation, and the money that the Imperial Government required. From a foreigner’s perspective, the Consoo Fund created all sorts of opportunities for shrewd foreigners to exploit the poorer members of the Cohong. Charles W. King reported on one method: A bold American merchant, for instance, ventures, notwithstanding the imperial warnings, to lend money to a poor hong at 12 or 15 per cent., and after five or six years, has a claim for double the sum or if it stands over twice that period, as is said to be the case with some accounts now open, for four times the amount loaned. The hong cannot bear up forever under such interests; it is broken, and the claim is made payable in nine instalments [sic] or about four and half years. A tax on the general trade pays the amount and the capitalist finds his original loan, in this worst case doubled twice in fifteen or sixteen years. The same result happens, if goods sold be substituted for money loaned. The bold seller gets the higher price, charges interest, and takes the cohong guaranty as a better bargain than the lesser profits of a prudent sale.37

A less complex motive is mentioned by Greenberg. He notes that an insolvent merchant was the more anxious for business, because “he wishes to continue or his insolvency will become apparent.”38 Because bankruptcy was treated as a crime by the Chinese government, the American trader could drive a far better bargain with him. Most American owners instructed their agents to secure their ships with the most reputable members of the Cohong, for obvious reasons, but John Latimer argued that this policy was not always wise. The Consoo Fund insured at least the principal in any transaction a foreigner might make. Therefore, he pointed out: [O]ften there is great advantage in securing with the poorest merchant. You are then free from conditions and can deal with whom you please, the rich merchant

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always imposes conditions which are often to the injury in the sales of the outward cargo.39

Certainly the system, when left to itself, ran very smoothly, and some hong merchants grew enormously rich, despite the demands on them. Howqua was easily one of the wealthiest men of his time. In 1834 he estimated his fortune at $26 million.40 Considering that it was forced to act as a buffer between unsympathetic and often avaricious officials and a self-seeking foreign community, which was yearly growing stronger and more assertive, the Cohong showed amazing vigor. It survived a number of clashes between the authorities and foreigners as well as the wars of the French Revolution and several economic depressions. Business was transacted more conveniently than perhaps at any other port on the globe. Musters (samples) of available goods were displayed at the hong merchant’s warehouse or in the shops of “outside merchants” in the vicinity of the factories. Buyers merely ordered by quantity and chop or producer’s mark. The Chinese merchants then delivered the goods at shipside, where stowage, a highly developed science, was the business of the captain. Sometimes the cabin, the already crowded forecastle, and even the bilge were used as additional cargo space.41 One of the most obvious factors contributing to the extraordinary placidity of the Canton system’s operation was the friendship and trust among merchants of different nationalities. American traders often had great respect, sympathy, and even affection for the hong merchants with whom they dealt. In 1784 Samuel Shaw wrote: The merchants of the cohoang [sic] are as respectable a set of men as are commonly found in other parts of the world. . . . They are intelligent, exact accountants, punctual to their engagements, and, though not the worse for being well looked after, value themselves much upon maintaining a fair character. The concurrent testimony of all Europeans justifies this remark.42

Half a century later, Robert Bennet Forbes echoed these words, appending the further comment, “We would add that in our experience we have never had the good fortune to deal with men to whom the above character more appropriately belongs.”43 Years after the demise of the old system, William C. Hunter, a long-time resident of Canton, wrote nostalgically that the hong merchants were “honorable and reliable in all their dealings, faithful to their contracts, and large minded.”44 Until the mid-1820s, American traders and their security merchants were often on very close terms. Americans attended lavish dinner parties and sing-songs, stage entertainments, at the homes or factories of Chinese merchants. Chinese food, amusements, the plural wives, the decor of Chinese houses, and the beauties of the gardens became the subjects of many fascinating letters and diaries of American China traders.45

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Similarly hong merchants occasionally attended parties given at the foreign factories. Some parties were impromptu. Being fond of music, Captain William F. Megee, proprietor of Canton’s only boardinghouse (“hotel”), frequently organized instrumental concerts. On 1 December 1818 Tilden reported one such affair was in progress on Megee’s veranda, when a servant arrived with a message from Puankhequa, a friend of Megee’s since 1788. Puankhequa had the adjoining hong and, having overheard the music, was requesting that he and several Chinese friends might come over to listen. Upon receiving Captain Megee’s invitation, the Chinese gentlemen came in with a train of cooley lantern bearers, without which respectable chinese never [sic] appear in the streets after dark. We sent for Mr. ammidon [sic] & a few more friends to come and help out our party, and our noble Captain ordered an elegant supper in the large eating hall. Our instrumental music consisted of a bass viol, flute, violin and my clarinet.

The performance grew less restrained when the Chinese asked to see some dances. The Americans managed a cotillion, and Captain Megee danced the hornpipe to Tilden’s clarinet. Much to the amusement of the guests—servants, cooks, and house coolies, who had mustered upstairs to see the sport, which they enjoyed as we do, when indians [sic] entertain us with a war dance, on visiting our cities. Indeed, our gentlemen not having lady partners, danced very much like savages.46

Merchants of both nations exchanged portraits painted by Chinese artists or by George Chinnery.47 There is some evidence that these amiable social relations between American residents and hong merchants were among the casualties of the opium trade and the increasing incidence of conflict between the British and the Chinese.48 In any case in the 1830s there seems to have been less such camaraderie, but in the 1840s Americans again were favored with invitations to hong merchants’ homes. When Warren Delano left for a visit home after ten years in Canton, Howqua gave him a Chinese dinner, which Delano’s brother reported with awe as about 15 courses—bird’s nest soup—sharkfins—pigeons eggs—quail &c—sturgeon’s lip, etc. We were 13 hours getting thro’ with it. It is many years since Houqua has given a Chinese dinner at his own house and perhaps never before did he give to a friend the like of this.49

To some degree this intimacy was unavoidable because the hong merchants were dependent on the foreigners in their dealings.50 Howqua’s partiality toward Americans was partly “an equipoise to the somewhat overbearing and pugnacious English East India Company,” according to Bennet Forbes, but this partial explanation would not have served after 1834.51 Howqua and other merchants commonly employed Americans to

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write their foreign letters52 and transact their overseas business. For some forty years various members of the Perkins-Sturgis-Forbes alliance worked in his hong on a regular basis. His friendship never flagged. At the time of Howqua’s death in 1843, Paul S. Forbes noted that the old hong merchant’s “unbounded Confidence in Americans has never been equalled—entrusting to those with whom he had no ties of country, language, or Religion between 2 and 3 millions of Dollars at one time.”53 Howqua’s great success was at least due in part to his friendship with the Boston clan as will be seen presently, but the Bostonians owed Howqua at least as much. Not only did he aid every family representative who came to China, he continued to favor some long after they returned home. John Murray Forbes was very handsomely rewarded. He became Howqua’s consignee in America immediately upon his return to Boston in 1837, and the shipments were immense, viz.: 1837 1838 1839 1840 1841 1842

$175,070 392,260 303,114 213,260 (to 4 May only) 931,150 285,24054

In 1843 John Murray Forbes suggested to Howqua that he come to the United States or the Caribbean to avoid both the uncertainties of SinoBritish relations and the unceasing exactions of the Imperial Government.55 When old Howqua died later that same year, he reportedly left much of his estate in trust with Russell & Co. for the benefit of his descendants. In fact he had been investing in America through members of the Boston families for many years.56 Beginning in 1828 the year Cushing retired, until 1881, Russell &  Co. paid the Howqua family thirty thousand dollars a year and from 1881 to 1890, the year the firm failed, forty-five thousand dollars, according to one source.57 If accurate, this sixty-two-year record is a remarkable testimony to the strength of at least one of these early international friendships. However this dependence on foreigners is inadequate to explain a number of very generous actions by hong merchants. Howqua is known to have destroyed a note of ex-Consul Benjamin C. Wilcocks for about one hundred thousand dollars and to have assisted several other embarrassed Americans to leave China with fortunes.58 Although many of the American traders welcomed the demise of the Cohong in 1842, at least as many hoped for the continuance in business of the former hong merchants. The Chinese traders were their friends, and, more importantly, they were responsible businessmen who could be trusted to operate ethically and to pay their bills. With the passing of the old system a number of new practices became necessary. With no responsible Cohong to guarantee payment of debts, tight contracts and unlovely Western methods

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of debt collection became more common. In later years, traders often longed for the comfortable certainties of the old Canton system.59 Lest one become too sentimental about these connections, he should not forget the essentially adversarial nature of all exchange unless prices are fixed.60 Despite the great cordiality that existed at Canton, hong merchants and foreigners were still rivals, and as in every such situation, they used a variety of tools to bring each other to terms. Carrington noted a rather mild one in his instructions to his agent, young Samuel Russell, who was about to embark for China: If you load one half [of the ship] on our account, you may agree & almost compel the Hong Merchant, with whom you secure, to ship one half on his account, & pay us a pretty handsome freight, & besides get some allowance of commissions to yourself, for taking care of his business.61

Chinese merchants repaid in similar coin when they could. Because there was no legal requirement for the foreign trader to deal with the merchant who secured his vessel, such a commitment was frequently included in the original agreement. A member of the Hon. Company’s Select Committee commented that the Cohong as a group declined being surety for the American ships unless the agents of those ships agreed to trade with them [exclusively]. I conceive that afforded the Hong merchants an opportunity of imposing an indirect tax upon the American ships.62

Sometimes Americans would even use blackmail. Sullivan Dorr wrote his father concerning one hong merchant, I have a good clew on him, he connived at the smuggling of about 30 catty [of ginseng] . . . , and was it known to the head Hoppo it would cost him his chop, and a few threats will bring him to terms perhaps.63

Possibly the best explanation of the smoothness of commercial relations at Canton lies in the remarkably high profits the trade could produce. Morse states: The best commentary on the condition of affairs is found in the personal relations existing between those friendly rivals the Chinese and foreign merchants. They both had a reputation for commercial honour and integrity such as has not been surpassed in any part of the world or at any time in its history; trading operations were entirely on parole, with never a written contract; and there was much help and sympathy from one to the other. Yet all this ease in their mutual relations was paid for by the foreign trade. That the system allowed the foreigner not only to make a living, but to accumulate a modest fortune  .  .  .  says much for the . . . fact that there must have been a wide margin of profit.64

The Empress of China brought her owners only a little under fourteen thousand dollars or 25 percent on prime cost, but later vessels sometimes netted

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really princely profits. The John Jay, on a fourteen-month voyage in 1800– 01, produced a net profit of $104,863.70, or more than 200 percent return for the Browns of Providence.65 During the War of 1812, Stephen Girard apparently found it worthwhile to ransom one of his China vessels, the Montesquieu, from the British naval forces off Philadelphia for $93,000. One source states “notwithstanding the price of the ransom, [the vessel] is supposed, by the advance of the value of the freight, to have added a half a million of dollars to his fortune.”66 “We have come to a very profitable market,” Tilden observed in 1816: Our Ship [the Canton, Capt. Isaac Hinckley] and whole cargo are reported in the newspapers as being worth one million and a half of dollars. The duties accruing to Government we know will amount to nearly or more than six hundred thousand dollars—all of which is about true.67

These are not isolated cases. For the judicious and the lucky, profits were high and continuing, especially in the first decade of the century. Richard Milne, who shipped on freight from Philadelphia to China in the years 1800–11, testified that his annual profit was from 15 to 20 percent.68 Huge returns were unusual, but many fortunes were made in the China trade. If a man was young, healthy, and had good connections but little money, he was probably well advised to go to Canton rather than attempt to remain at home and compete with established merchants with greater resources. Once in Canton traders tended to make money fast and retire early, if they succeeded at all, and a goodly proportion of those who survived the pestilential Canton atmosphere did handsomely. At least fifty-seven of those on whom data is available clearly took a “competency” away from Canton before 1844, and in view of the difficulty of finding information on a man’s wealth, this number probably far understates the case. After the War of 1812, it seems to have become easier for a young man with some family connections to acquire a fortune at Canton. If he was so fortunate as to gain admittance to one of the established concerns, particularly Russell & Co., Wetmore & Co., or their predecessor firms, he could almost count on returning home after several years with enough to make him independent for life.69 Even more obviously was this true with those who happened to be in China during times of exceptional opportunity like the opium crisis of 1839–40, when Americans were barely able to handle all the business that the English and Chinese pressed on them. Independent merchants also frequently did well, either by making a killing on a single voyage, speculating successfully several times, cornering the market for some commodity, or simply by working assiduously, employing connections at home and in Canton. In China there were a number of ways to get rich. Some Americans amassed fortunes in less than five years (the average for Russell & Co. partners was 4.94 years). A minimum of thirtyfive others took between five and twelve years to acquire enough to go

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home, and the known remaining wealthy retirees stayed longer before obtaining what they felt was enough. The average time was between seven and twelve years, and the merchant was generally in his mid-thirties upon retirement.70 Several factors bias the figures: some men remained in China after retirement; others, like John P. Cushing, stayed on many years and took home really impressive fortunes. Moreover the total residence includes time spent as apprentices or employees for some men, but for others, it covers only years as partners or agents. Particularly speedy were those who had the background or connections to secure such a position upon or before arrival. Although some were content with less and others insisted on more, the sum commonly mentioned in the correspondence as a goal was a lac or one hundred thousand dollars, a very sizeable amount for that period. A number exceeded that figure, and a few returned to Canton to acquire a second fortune.71 As crude as these figures necessarily are, the results are striking. To obtain a capital of one hundred thousand dollars in less than a decade was doing rather well, especially in the capital-shy United States of the early nineteenth century. A fortune of that size meant financial independence and even social leadership. As late as 1846, the possession of one hundred thousand dollars entitled one to be listed in the numerous “Calendars of Fashion and Gentility,”72 which began to appear in the mid-1830s in all East Coast cities and continued for many years. A partnership in one of the major resident firms at Canton was, thus, a passport to fortune, success, and status in America for the last quarter century of the old China trade. “Fashion and gentility” apparently followed fortune even more quickly than in the more notorious latter decades of the century.73 Probably the largest fortune accumulated at Canton was that of John Cushing, who returned home in 1831 with over seven hundred thousand dollars. But Cushing was a titan. His cousin, John Murray Forbes, ill and eager to return to his bride of over two years (he had left home within a month of his marriage), wrote: “I think I can land a lack [sic] in America & millions would not tempt me to stay.”74 His brother, Robert Bennet Forbes, had been satisfied with less than half that amount. In order to acquire that much, he had served only eighteen months as captain of the opium storeship, Lintin, in 1830–32.75 When Abbott Abiel Low departed for home in 1840, he reportedly left with about one hundred fifty thousand dollars.76 Nathan Dunn, who had stayed longer, also took home a larger fortune. His friend Latimer estimated Dunn’s assets at two hundred thousand dollars.77 Samuel Wetmore, of Dunn’s successor firm, Wetmore & Co., sailed at the end of 1842, “supposed to be worth some hundred or more thousand dollars,”78 and Charles Blight arrived home in Philadelphia in 1828 with around a quarter of a million.79 Paul S. Forbes estimated Hunter’s fortune at two hundred thousand dollars in 1843 and Edward Delano agreed.80 J. J. Dixwell

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stated the following year, “I do not know the exact amount of Mr. [Augustine] Heard’s property, but it cannot be less than $200,000—and Mr. [George B.] Dixwell’s is fully $60,000.”81

Subsidiary Business As profitable as the trade sometimes was, it was seasonal and could be risky. Versatile Yankees, with time on their hands and eager to turn a dollar, developed a number of subsidiary enterprises at Canton. The lines dividing one type of business from another were very faint at this period, so it is not surprising to find merchants engaged in several other occupations, particularly in remote Canton.82 Indeed especially for smaller merchants, some form of diversification was almost unavoidable. Western-type banks were nonexistent, and Chinese banking, though it was developing elsewhere,83 does not appear to have taken root at Canton in pretreaty days. Because silver frequently was in short supply, credit of some kind was absolutely necessary. Any sizeable silver drain could disrupt business. A large capital levy by the government could and did affect the price of tea. When the $6 million “ransom” of Canton was extorted by Captain Elliot in 1841, it upset the trade severely. Merchants had to accept “chopped” dollars (coins repeatedly debased and shroffed according to weight) or even barter to do business at all. Periodically an enterprising but unrealistic merchant would suggest creating a bank or the extension of services from banks in India or Manila, but these proposals always foundered on the lack of understanding (and thus acceptance) by the Chinese. Any new medium of exchange, for example, would have required the acceptance by up-country traders as well as the economically more enlightened residents of the Canton area. It would have been difficult enough to educate Cantonese shopkeepers, let alone Fukien and Anhwei tea merchants. Hence Canton was condemned to a primitive (if sometimes ingenious) credit and monetary system which intensified every strain on the economy. Under the circumstances it is remarkable that the old Canton system worked so well. One of the reasons it functioned at all was the inventive ways merchants found to obtain illegal credit. One of the simplest forms of credit was the giving of “advances.” When a Chinese merchant or a commission house filled a ship for a trader with inadequate resources, a memorandum of the debt was often notarized by the consul. Generally these agreements were for twelve months to two years, at no interest, with the usual rate paid thereafter. On the other hand sometimes an American had surplus funds at Canton. Rather than let his funds lie idle, such a man often approached a hong merchant or a resident firm. The market could always absorb cash, and the interest rate was probably the highest in the world. Loans to shakier hong merchants were made at

Chopped dollar, E82306, photograph. “Chopped” dollars were Spanish (here Ferdinand VII) dollars used in the China trade. The small marks or “chops” hammered into the silver are shroff marks (the “chops” of the assayers who had to attest to the purity of the metal). There are at least thirty-three chops on the head side and at least twenty-two on the tails, testifying to the coin’s extensive circulation in China. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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usurious rates. As late as 1839 the legal limit was 30 percent per year,84 but Hunter mentions seeing a note of a distressed hong merchant for sixty thousand dollars at 5 percent per month.85 Generally, however, hong merchants paid from 1 to 11⁄2 percent per month.86 Naturally such lofty rates drew funds from the United States, and American firms at Canton found themselves in the business of accepting deposits and lending money. Sometimes moneylending was preferable to any form of trade. Thomas H. Perkins noted in a letter to his Canton firm in 1807, There are two ways of employing our ships and our capital, which we think will prove more productive than the best shipments in the least times: 1st. Trade for tin and sandalwood, to the Islands [of the Pacific] and back [to Canton], as long as Vessels and Crews will hold together,—2nd. placing money at interest wh[ich] we are told by Mr. Cushing is daily p’d at the rate of 18 pr. ct. per annum.87

Prior to the War of 1812, the most lucrative market for funds seems to have been the hong merchants themselves. As the opium trade developed in the 1820s, advances on shipments of the drug became more profitable and more popular. Advances could be made either in India to shippers as an inducement to consign to the lender, or in China after the receipt of the drug, as a way of enabling small Indian consigners to survive the sometimes lengthy period it took to sell off an opium shipment. By the 1830s the larger opium merchants provided a safe and lucrative investment for spare funds. Jardine’s (a common abbreviation for the great British opium firm, Jardine Matheson) paid 9 percent in 1836, and if this was substantially less than could be realized from a loan to a hong merchant, it was also much more secure and could be withdrawn, in specie, at much shorter notice. Long before that date the larger American commission houses had adopted the policy of making advances on the outbound cargoes of vessels consigned to them as well. They also sold and endorsed bills, accepted letters of credit, arranged for respondentia loans,88 sometimes guaranteed payment of debts, and performed other financial services. By the 1820s, when the foreign settlement had developed into a fairly well integrated community, international credit transactions appeared which cross the usual lines of classification. A British opium trader searching for a means of remitting funds home, for example, might lend money to a Philadelphian short of cash to complete his ship’s lading. With the cargo as security for the loan, the contract might be a straightforward respondentia agreement, but repayment took place in Philadelphia. Of course from America the money had to be forwarded to London somehow, perhaps in the form of Southern cotton. In this manner the British merchant in Canton would avoid the risk and expense of shipping specie and earn a sizeable interest on his cash. Before 1833 he could not ship China goods from Canton because of the East India Company’s monopoly of the trade. After that time he ran the risk of glutting the British market. By taking the sure profit of

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the loan, guaranteed by the American cargo, he avoided the problem. During the difficulties of 1839 and throughout the Opium War, this device again seems to have served as a substitute for bills on London for a number of Americans. Jardine Matheson loaned money on respondentia to several American firms with whom it had rarely had such dealings before.89 Resident merchants at Canton also made a good business of selling insurance on shipping. B. C. Wilcocks stated that he had made twenty-five hundred dollars a year from that source for the last ten to twelve years that he was in China.90 Often an American trader would be named as the Canton agent of an Indian insurance company, and at least one concern was organized among the merchants in Canton themselves.91 In the early days premiums on insurance from such firms seem to have been rather high, because Canton houses frequently wrote home for insurance, even on cargoes belonging to hong merchants.92 Sometimes a fast ship would arrive home before the letter requesting insurance on her. In such a case the entire cost of insurance could be saved. Even the cheapest American marine insurance on China voyages in those days was incredibly steep. In 1787 the Salem bark Light Horse (Elias Hasket Derby) was insured for the Canton trip at 15 percent,93 after Derby’s New York correspondents informed him that this was the lowest premium at which insurance could be effected.94 Moreover a shipper could not always be sure that a claim would be paid. W. H. Low disgustedly wrote Samuel Russell in 1831, asking for the establishment of an “insurance officer” (presumably an agent of an American firm in Canton) because, “we are paying lots of premiums to a parcel of Offices that are in fact good for nothing.  .  .  .  We had the other day to go & get insurance at M[agniac] & Co. [the ancestor of Jardine, Matheson & Co.] and make them guarantee the payment in event of loss.”95 Notwithstanding this complaint, by the 1830s premiums at Canton do not seem to have been excessive. John R. Latimer, who represented several Indian insurance firms, charged 2 to 21⁄2 percent on voyages to American ports.96 By 1840 insurance bought in America on a China voyage cost 1 to 11⁄2 percent for a direct voyage.97 One way of making or losing great sums of money was speculation in commodities on the Canton market. This practice was particularly common during the early years, when wars, embargoes, and other political disturbances periodically cut off the supply of the innumerable exotic articles in which Americans traded. This sort of dealing is most difficult to trace, but some evidence is available. It appears that Edward Carrington, the great Providence merchant and sometime US consul at Canton, made a large part of his fortune in this manner. It is possible that he cornered the Canton market in seal furs toward the end of his stay in China. He instructed his chief American agents to buy up all the sealskins they could lay their hands on and ship them to him. He also kept very close track of the various sealing voyages in the Pacific and Antarctic Oceans. A tantalizing notation

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appearing in his ledger for 1810 reads simply, “By Seal skins . . . $40,411.51” and refers only to the debt entry balancing the books. All we really know about this transaction is that Carrington made over forty thousand dollars in sealskins sold to the hong merchant Nuequa, who was well known as a speculator in furs.98 Besides marine insurance, speculation, and the various forms of banking, there were a number of other secondary businesses with which Yankee traders supplemented their income. Earliest of these was probably Canton real estate. It was illegal for foreigners to own land in the Celestial Empire, so such early residents as Sullivan Dorr and Samuel Snow avoided the prohibition by paying ground rent to a Chinese merchant and building their own hongs on the land thus acquired.99 These structures were then rented to their countrymen at exorbitant prices. Dorr states that the rents on a factory he built cleared his investment by the second year, at which time he could sell the building for more than its original cost.100 In 1806 Edward  Carrington built a factory for two other Providence merchants, Samuel Snow and William F. Megee, at a cost of $1,505. The same year the income generated by the complex of six factories owned by the two merchants was $9,950.101 Later American residents, notably James P. Sturgis102 and Benjamin C. Wilcocks,103 became still more deeply involved in real estate, owning a number of factories each. Because the cost of renting a factory was so high, traders often shared accommodations,104 a practice that led to the establishment of a hotel or tavern by Captain William F. Megee, who at one time had been a very prosperous China merchant. Megee settled in Canton before the War of 1812, having left a wife, in-laws, and accumulated debts in Providence. By 1816 he was doing well as Canton’s only innkeeper.105 In his journal for that year, Benjamin P. Tilden commented on Megee’s .  .  .  racing clipper boats—rowed by six Malaya men whom he constantly keeps on pay exclusively for his own boat service [and despite the prohibition against it] . . . the old gentleman has a profitable business—among the english country captains, who with their officers mostly all board at his factory while at Canton.106

By the late 1820s other hotels had opened, and the factory-owners’ lucrative monopoly was broken. Landlords were no longer able to charge astronomical rents, and factories became a relatively low-return investment, though they still paid well enough. After the great fire of 1822, which destroyed the factories, Samuel Russell wrote that he was preparing to build a new factory costing four thousand dollars, from which investment he expected to earn 12 percent a year. He commented that in the past three years he had been in Canton, he had paid for the factory he had been renting.107 Some commission houses provided room and board for the officers of ships as an inducement to consign to the firm, but as Russell & Co. discovered in the mid-1830s,

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transients could be so numerous and troublesome that they became a nuisance and even a liability. The versatile Captain Megee operated as a building contractor as well as a tavern keeper. Morse notes that the Honorable Company’s compradors all quit one year because “the construction of the new factory was not placed under their supervision, but had been entrusted to an American contractor, Mr. Megee.”108 Several Americans combined hotel keeping with other businesses, especially after the War of 1812 when the number of foreigners at Canton increased spectacularly. One trade commonly followed was selling ship’s stores. Several early visitors had called attention to the need for a Western ship chandler at Canton. Captains were forced to rely on the other foreign vessels at Whampoa for lumber, spars, varnish, sail, and other supplies needed to repair and refit their ships. Among the resident Americans who carried on a substantial business with other foreigners were Timothy G. Pitman and William French, who founded the firm of Pitman & French about 1820.109 This many-sided concern apparently did whatever business seemed to promise a profit.110 The company apparently was in the inn business only a very short time, however, and later hotel keepers at Canton and Macao all seem to have been English.111 Both Englishmen and Americans continued to sell stores and provisions to ships in port, and by the 1840s every issue of both Canton English newspapers carried several advertisements for different ship chandlers and storekeepers. Shipbuilding was another business that Americans sometimes entered while they were in China. Certainly shipwrights were much in demand. As early as 1791 Amasa Delano was hired by the Danish East India Company to refit a typhoon-damaged vessel.112 Forty years later Tilden reported that a “yankee ship carpenter” [sic] had set up shop at Macao and was building handsome “Baltimore-rigged” boats for use in the river.113 This was probably the “Louis Hamilton and fam[ily]” listed in the Chinese Repository’s census in January 1837.114 Probably the most renowned and most poorly paid of these local businesses were the various printing establishments at Canton and Macao. The first foreign press arrived in 1814. It was the property of the British East India Company and is best known for printing Robert Morrison’s pioneering Dictionary of the Chinese Language.115 Most of the early presses were commercial, doing job printing for the resident companies, broadsides, auction handbills, price currents, calendars, and similar work.116 The most crying commercial demand at Canton was for a regularly published price current, and indeed this was the first item to be offered by commercial presses in many ports around the world. Compiling lists of prices and other market information was a tedious, time-consuming, yet absolutely necessary task of merchants everywhere in that era. Such a publication greatly facilitated and regularized the process of keeping one’s constituents

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informed. Price currents were ultimately printed in quarto with plenty of blank space so that a trader might write a letter on the same sheet of paper. Much of the later correspondence is found on the back pages of these publications. Although this practice causes problems for curators filing such documents today, it was a great convenience for nineteenth-century businessmen. Earliest of the local English newspapers was the Canton Register, founded in November 1827 by the English private merchant, Alexander Matheson, who was with Magniac & Co. at the time. This was two years after the press arrived from England.117 For two or three months, a young American journalist, William W. Wood, was editor and compositor. After John Slade, who was notoriously anti-American, became editor at the beginning of 1834, Americans had little to do with this paper’s editorial policy.118 In September 1835 a more friendly English journal, the Canton Press, began publication and soon clashed with the Register over the question of British policy.119 Other periodicals began publication from time to time but failed after a few issues or, at best, after a very few years. In fact no journal was able to survive without outside help. Notable among the failures was Wood’s openly free-trade Chinese Courier, which attacked the Honorable Company directly. When Wood published a particularly biting attack on its policies, the Company canceled its twelve subscriptions. The Courier limped through another year and a half and then went out of business. Because the Company’s charter had been revoked, the paper had lost its principal raison d’être anyway.120 Undoubtedly the best known of the community’s publications was not commercial at all—the Chinese Repository was a missionary monthly edited by the American minister, Elijah Coleman Bridgman. Bridgman and later S. Wells Williams were the soul of the journal, but other missionaries and even several merchants contributed articles, and virtually everyone in the community subscribed. This periodical continued for many years at Canton and Macao and is now one of the richest sources of information on the Canton foreign community in the decade prior to the Opium War. Also in the field of book publishing, the missionary press was much more productive than the commercial ventures. The latter had to rely on descriptions of the area, almanacs, calendars, and printing demanded by the commerce for their business. The missionaries, on the other hand, turned out whole shelves of translations from the Chinese, dictionaries, histories, grammars, and religious works. Possibly more significant in the long run was the missionaries’ work in setting up Chinese presses for the publication of a translated Bible, tracts, and other religious works.121 Whether or not it was due to the commercial influence, even in the work of the missionaries, there is a surprisingly practical note. This remark applies even to their scholarly and religious publications. It was to spread the faith that these determined men had come to China, and everything else

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served that evangelistic end. Confronted by an ancient, highly literary culture, they scarcely had a choice in the matter. The demands of utility persuaded even the economy-minded home boards to become interested in scholarship. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions instructed its first agent, Bridgman, to study the “heathen” and to report fully on their “character, condition, manners, and rites.”122 Unfortunately no amount of erudition could impress the Chinese literati, and it took comparatively little to reach the common Chinese. The cultural gap was enormous, and it was made still wider by the extraordinary ethnic chauvinism of both the Chinese and the missionaries. One authority has concluded that, in their efforts to reach and inform the Chinese, the members of the Protestant Mission were “unwitting participants in the frustration of their own evangelical objectives. Their literary efforts assisted those [Chinese] who wanted to keep China closed.”123 They had more success in missionary schools but at the cost of the students’ Chinese background. What bridged the abyss most effectively were the Western hospitals modeled upon Peter  Parker’s remarkable Ophthalmic Hospital at Canton. Here the missionaries provided the “shock necessary to change the Chinese point of view,”124 though the results of any of the missionary methods would continue to be meager for many years. Both missionaries and home boards, then, were interested in learning the language; studying the culture, economy, government, religion, and history of China; and in finding means to accomplish their divine purpose. In this practicality and readiness to experiment, the missionaries showed an affinity with the merchants, for these qualities were also profoundly commercial— at least as the Americans and the free traders practiced their trade. The American Board was an innovative and pragmatic combination of several denominations, though led by the Congregationalists. It was formed for the purpose of pursuing missionary activity more efficiently. This union, though temporary and shifting, existed at a time when the ancient Protestant tendency to split over doctrinal issues was increased by the growing sectional and theological controversies at home.125

The Working Regime As varied as were the other activities in which Americans participated at Canton, all were subsidiary to the export-import trade. Tea, silk, and opium and the Chinese government and customs together set the framework within which all other activities took place. By their very nature these products, and especially tea, made certain demands upon those who dwelt and traded in Canton. The rhythms of the harvesting seasons; the necessity to store, preserve, and protect the product; the vicissitudes of the market and the weather were all hard facts to which Canton residents had to adjust the

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pattern of their lives. In the early days foreigners always moved to Macao in the spring when their work was completed and before the hot, wet Canton summer arrived. The first of the “Eight Regulations” was predicated on the assumption that there would be no business during that part of the year, a  generally well-founded premise before the Americans began to arrive at all seasons. To the end of its days, the Select Committee of the British East India Company took its staff downriver at the end of the tea season. It was largely the private merchants and the Americans who found various excuses to remain on afterward until, in the later years of the old China trade, yearround residence was common.126 Such a regime meant busy times alternated with leisurely periods of relaxation and amusement. During the tea season a resident’s day began early, and he not infrequently put in twice as many hours as is customary today. Most of his time was spent in the countinghouse, although occasional trips outside were necessary to inspect chops of tea or silk, to supervise the weighing of teas, to buy chow chow items in the shops behind the factories, and the like. One traveler mentions speaking with the head bookkeeper of an American company, who stated that he had been so rushed since his arrival in Canton that he had never found time to visit Old China Street, not fifty yards from his factory.127 Few of the residents ever went to bed early, and they often worked far into the night. All slept and ate in the hong, and traders often were at their desks before breakfast as well. The immense amount of work performed in one of the large Canton houses is indescribable, and the clerks are occupied on an average of from twelve to fifteen hours a day. They seldom quit the desks before midnight, being all the time occupied in the various processes of receiving and dispatching cargoes, of making out sales and interest calculations, copying letters, filing away papers, and the perpetual round of business employments. This of course is during the most busy season, when ships are pouring in, each one requiring several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of care.128

Countinghouse operation was pretty standard, but there were some variations, particularly as a firm grew in size. Partners often worked in the same room or rooms with clerks and copyists, while servants lounged about just outside ready to be called. The organization of work was sometimes pretty primitive. The principal specializations were functional—copyist, bookkeeper, tea-taster (which only the largest firms could afford), and “outside man.”129 The copyist was generally the lowliest in the countinghouse family. Penmanship was learned early in school, and in the days before instant reproduction (and even after the invention of the letterpress), a reasonably legible hand was a commercial necessity. However merchants were far less insistent on the traditional “round, commercial hand” than they had been in the previous century. The “outside man’s” work consisted of almost anything that required leaving

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the countinghouse, such as readying the ship; hiring crew members or officers; inspecting chops of new tea, silk, or other goods; supervising the weighing and packing of tea; loading chop boats; and even stowage and provisioning. At Canton, of course, a good comprador relieved the outside man of much of this work. The bookkeeper was an important person, because his skill was central to the workings of the countinghouse. A bookkeeper was far more likely to be made a partner, for example, than was a copyist. American Canton houses often hired Macaoese copyists, but bookkeepers were always American. Yet even among Americans a man with a good hand but little else to recommend him might never be advanced beyond the copyist’s stool. As the firm’s size increased, it became necessary to organize the work more explicitly. Firm members became separated from clerks and clerks from copyists.130 Clerks had to be assigned duties and even partners specialized. In Augustine Heard & Co., in the early 1840s, for example, George B. Dixwell was particularly occupied with the company’s opium trade, while others selected teas, composed letters to constituents, did outside work, and performed the myriad other tasks.131 Much of this organization was traditional, and it does not seem to be that conscious, orderly reorganization was the continuing concern that it is today. Indeed Russell & Co. got into major difficulties because of its failure to rationalize itself after it absorbed Perkins & Co. Had it not been for the genius of John Green (as will be seen presently), the firm might have been severely limited by its failure to adapt. The functional departmentalization, the specialization of labor, the increasing stratification, and growth of trade slang were beginning in this period. The origins of this articulation seem to lie in the practices of the British East India Company. As the private firms became larger, they had to deal with many of the same problems the Company had confronted in its time, and they adopted many of the same solutions. In fact Canton countinghouses were not greatly different from countinghouses everywhere from the end of the Middle Ages until the onset of the Industrial Revolution. A  few changes were attributable to the special nature of the China trade and the great distance lying between Canton and home. For example a large part of the business between hong merchants and the larger firms was done verbally. Bookkeeping entries took the place of legally enforceable contracts. Not that agreements did not exist, but well-established businessmen trusted each other’s word. Because nothing like Western commercial law existed in China, contracts were enforceable only at Macao. With transient supercargoes, on the other hand, hong merchants giving credit seem generally to have required signed and notarized papers. These notes were then forwarded to friends in America for legal action, if the supercargo failed to perform as he had agreed.132 In some ways business at Canton was more highly documented than in America.133 The chit (a pidgin word borrowed from India) was an institution.

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A merchant virtually never carried cash; after all silver and copper were heavy. Whenever he purchased something, even in a shop, a trader wrote out a chit, which was later paid either by the comprador or by the merchant’s personal servant, who was nearly always a step or two behind his master. Used in this manner the chit became something like a personal check. As evidence of purchase it became the very basis of the opium trade, as will be seen presently. As a result, both in his personal and commercial dealings, a merchant became accustomed to dealing in short-term notes. Clerks were treated with more respect at Canton than in America. The Western community was self-contained and, in the later years, was socially united vis-à-vis the Chinese. Other than the merchants with whom they dealt and a few lower officials, especially linguists, American residents had few Chinese acquaintances other than coolies, houseboys, cooks, and other servants. The noiseless, efficient, and ever-present servant also subtly altered the status and self-regard of every foreign resident, as it did for British officials in the Raj and for slave owners in the antebellum American South. Partners felt closer to the firm’s American employees and gave them substantially more perquisites than the young men would have enjoyed in a stateside concern. In return the firm expected a certain loyalty. Robert Bennet Forbes was greatly offended when this code was violated in his presence in 1831. William Sullivan, socially prominent son of a former Massachusetts governor, arrived in Canton in that year with letters of introduction from T.  H.  Perkins and others. Such connections should have won him a place in Russell & Co., but he made the mistake of confiding his rather devious plans to Forbes, who wrote Col. Perkins indignantly. Apparently Sullivan planned to stay as a clerk in Russell & Co. no longer than necessary to learn the firm’s method of operation and to become familiar with the trade at Canton. Then he planned to set up on his own in competition with his former employers.134 Improved status and the enforced closeness of the foreign ghetto may even have made it easier to admit apprentices to partnership, but it also compounded the difficulty of discharging unneeded workers. W.  H.  Low commented in a letter to Russell on 27 March 1833: We have this day arranged with the late bookkeeper Mr. Smith to go home. . . . Smith is very competent but not very forcible [forceful?] in cases of emergency. He was unwilling to quit, and as he came to us when we were in great need of his services I felt rather unpleasant at serving notice to quit.135

Salaries were high compared to the pay in similar posts in the United States, but even the best136 bore little comparison with the compensation of a member of the firm. Consequently, when a clerk was offered a junior partnership in lieu of salary, he rarely refused. Young men employed in a firm were expected to “adventure”—to ship goods on speculation—when they saw an opportunity. For this purpose they were often provided free

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space aboard a company vessel or perhaps on a constituent’s ship. Apprentices were often financed by one of the partners, given advice, and otherwise aided in these enterprises. In this way a clerk learned the trade by working in a countinghouse and also began the accumulation of his working capital. The attitude that whatever capital one had should be constantly employed was universal among businessmen, then perhaps even more than now. The truth of the proverb that fortunes are not made from salaries was much more obvious in those times. Yet even a few employees took home substantial sums.137 As time went on the number of clerks at Canton increased. In their leisure hours these young men sought each other out, creating an informal fraternity whose youthful spirits and pranks enlivened the dull routine of life at the factories. They were the soul of the boat races and ball games that became common in the 1830s, and the younger set became a recognized grouping that was perpetuated at Hong Kong and elsewhere on the coast in later years. Here was a lateral cultural division of the community, which cut across company lines, made for new friendships and mutual interests that further consolidated the foreign settlement in a way which could never be shared by the Chinese.

Cooperative Action: Successes and Failures Common customs, accepted practices, membership and participation in the same organizations, and identical sources of information and means of recreation, together with the necessity of living and working in close proximity, made a single community of the Canton foreign settlement with its outposts in the Pearl River and estuary—Whampoa, Macao, and the outside anchorages.138 A central factor in the community structure was commercial custom, which was a particularly strong force in the early nineteenth century. One is struck by the almost universal nature of these habits, until he realizes that many of these patterns had been in existence for centuries. A very compelling consideration that gave shape and continuity to the community was the concern with which every merchant regarded his own commercial reputation and the need to keep it untarnished if he was to continue in business at all. Most disputes and questions concerning proper behavior were settled by this body of universally recognized commercial usage, but some customs were peculiar to Canton. During the long years when employees of the great national monopolies were the only trading partners of the hong merchants, a number of commercial practices grew up—business customs that often seemed strange to the private traders who arrived later. One of these was the practice of paying something like a socialized wage. Room, board, postage, medical services, and vacations at Macao were all provided at the expense of the house in the

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larger concerns. The confinement of the community to the factories hardly offered much alternative to some of these perquisites, of course. The British East India Company had provided all of these fringe benefits. It had always kept a surgeon on its staff by the same logic that moved it to place supercargoes in Canton. Both occupations originally had been Company shipboard positions. William Jardine had begun his service as a Company surgeon and continued in that capacity for fifteen years before deciding to strike out for himself. The resident American houses, like the private British firms, merely took over the established practice. Toward the end of the old China trade, when families of partners began settling at Macao, they also received the best medical attention in the community at no cost. The service was covered by an annual retainer paid by the house to one of the private physicians who had settled there.139 Room and board was considerably more than mere living quarters and humble, Dickensian fare. A more lavish board and a more complete domestic servant corps was not to be found elsewhere in the bourgeois world at that time. One must look to the privileges of nobility to find comparable contemporary living conditions. Vacations at Macao were facilitated by the maintenance of a company house in that colony. This genial custom was reinforced by the growing necessity for a Macao agent to make early contact with incoming vessels, sort out and forward important mail, solicit trade, collect information, supervise business at Lintin, and perform other needed services. Sometimes patterns evolved by usage were simply convenient and rational ways of doing business, but in other cases they suited only one party or were seemingly irrational. An example of the latter sort might be the Chinese practice of crushing the tea and forcing it into chests by stamping on it. The result was that the tea was often damaged and soiled, the chests were sometimes broken, and the salability of the product was impaired. Traders often complained about this procedure but to no avail140 until the later years of the trade. In time the Chinese became more amenable to the suggestions of American merchants. Although this flexibility may have solved one problem, it created others. One was the facilitation it afforded for deceiving the customer. In 1816 Edward Carrington & Company wrote in its instructions to supercargo P. W. Snow of the ship Nancy: You are aware that the American Market does not require the best qualities of tea, nor, will the consumers here pay a price for them; good fair quality does well enough, if in handsome chests & boxes & in good order.141

Attention to packaging was as important then as now. The same firm was more explicit later:

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Packing Tea in a Chinese Merchant’s Hong. Watercolor by unidentified Chinese painter, E19144.12. Note the packers stamping down the tea to increase the chest’s capacity. American merchants protested in vain against this practice which damaged the tea apparently without benefiting either buyer or seller. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum, where there are a number of similar paintings dating from the 1790s to the 1820s. The chief differences in the various pictures appear in the costumes of the Western buyers. Photo by Mark Sexton. We can add that we find great benefit in having the boxes of teas covered with fancy papers, say deep green with flowers yellow, scarlet, and any other fancy papers. Anything for show. Fine colours attracts attentions. It has a wonderful effect on sales.142

Still later this device had developed even further. An American company requested “200 tea papers for the outside of chests marked with the Hon. East India Compy mark.”143 It seems unlikely that these papers were intended for any innocent purpose. Fraud and deceit of one variety or another is perhaps to be expected wherever competition lacks firm regulation. As we know from modern experience, the pressures of a market economy hold out a continuing temptation to cheat. Consequently it sometimes appears as if competition were the natural enemy of the businessman, despite his rhetoric to the contrary. In the commercially lawless situation of old Canton, commission merchants continually attempted to fix the rates charged for their various services.

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On 1 November 1821, 1 March 1825, and regularly thereafter, resident American merchants agreed on standard rates, but probably not a single firm adhered to the published minimum. Price currents, the Anglo-Chinese Kalendar, commercial guides, and even stateside publications carried these schedules of charges. Yet in 1834 Augustine Heard was able to report to Russell with some satisfaction that Wetmore had approached him for an understanding on all types of charges “not to be deviated from.”144 Heard’s jubilation was premature, for complaints about price cutting continued to the end of the old China trade. Policing was next to impossible, and everyone gave special rates, rebates, or extra services to favored customers. Weaker firms occasionally even provided free some of the services for which others charged a healthy percentage. John Green complained in 1837 that Gordon & Talbot, a small firm, violated the commercial code because “they negotiate, draw & indorse Bills for the owners without commission.”145 The frequent charges of unethical behavior strike an historian as ironic, because he knows that the complainers often secretly gave the same sort of preference they were protesting. Additionally a Roman sense of honesty would have condemned a great deal of arm-twisting and simple pettiness: Mr. [Samuel] Archer here [in Philadelphia] who took up a considerable tonnage of the Brig,  .  .  .  arranged to exclude all shippers not consigning to his son [Joseph Archer, then in Canton]146 Wm Blight said nothing [on the ship]  .  .  .  could be taken to your address—he added that you & his brother J. B. were at outs.147 . . . [The] agents for M & Co. and D. & Co. [in India] took particular pains to prevent the free circulation of our American Bills, & the consequence was that they were kicking about the market, & would not negotiate so well by 1 per cent as those of M & Co. & D. & Co. [British firms].148

Probably nowhere in the world was Polonius’s advice to “give every man thy ear and few thy voice” more closely followed than at Canton. Most traders made every effort to keep their business secret. Carrington counseled absolute silence, even in minor matters, for he believed fellow merchants would damage his sales if they could. Also he seems to have had other reasons for his secrecy: Whatever Teas you purchase, of the preceding Season, we recommend you keep either in your own Factory, or, in that of your Hong Merchant, ‘till the regular season of shipping and then let them be shipped as having the appearance of New Teas—because should you ship them immediately, it will be notorious to the Canton residents you are loading with old Teas—and with all the caution, you can take, it will be known, but then [i.e., if you keep your old teas out of sight] the quantity you buy will be only guess work—and if you are accused of it, you can always say, “tis but a few chests.”149

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And complaining about an information leak that had embarrassed his drug trade, Latimer declared with righteous indignation, I cannot discover who has been so obliging as to volunteer this piece of gratuitous mischief . . . I hope it comes from the Chinese themselves, as I should be sorry to suspect one of my own countrymen of being capable of such acts. The Opium dealers have their spies at Lintin, to watch all the transshipments from ships arriving . . . I hope the report comes from them.150

The great store set by secrecy made spying profitable, as Latimer implies. Commercial information was gold in any case. Latimer noted later the same year: [T]he letters by the Crusoe at Manilla from Boston were received here on the 6th July—what induced Mr. Tilden to send them over before he came himself is a mystery—these letters it appears instructed Russell & Co. to prepare for the Alert and Talbot for the Nile—the latter was at Macao [and thus received the mail early]—and to prevent suspicions sent his orders up to Gordon [his agent at Canton]—who acted on them—he and Heard [of R & Co.] in the market, excited no suspicions,  .  .  .  but making good use of their time—all the ready Silks and old teas were secured—and when Dekoven [the newly arrived ship’s captain] landed on the 25 or 26th July—he soon found he had by some ill luck lost all the advantage of being first to arrive.151

Supercargo Arthur Grelaud wrote Stephen Girard on 29 October 1815 that Howqua had confided to him that he hoped for an 80 percent profit on teas freighted to Holland aboard two vessels already underway. Grelaud then stated that he intended to sail very shortly and overtake these ships, beating them to the Continental market and undercutting Howqua’s profit.152 It is hardly surprising that merchants sometimes became exasperated and leveled exaggerated accusations against the whole community, such as Latimer’s charge: “There is not a port in the world where merchants have so little feeling for each other as the american [sic] residents here.”153 Very clearly Latimer was wrong. Examples of sharp trading and petty advantage-grabbing could be cited in any business community anywhere. It  may have been the close quarters that made such actions more resented at Canton than elsewhere. In sober fact there were at least as many reasons to cooperate as there were to compete. Canton residents simply had to work together if there was to be anything like orderly or agreeable living, not to speak of commercial necessities like negotiating bills, repairing stormdamaged ships, collecting debts, and establishing regular procedures for dealing with bankrupts or with the estates of merchants who died in China. Traders of all nations at Canton found a very considerable community of interest once the wars of the first two decades of the nineteenth century were over. Business, friendships, recreation, and even political views crossed national lines. One body, the Canton General Chamber of Commerce,

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was the logical outgrowth of this increasingly complex interrelationship. Certainly it was the most inclusive of the community’s many organizations. It was originally created as the British Chamber of Commerce at the suggestion of Lord Napier, the ill-starred first Superintendent of British Trade, who succeeded to the authority formerly exercised by the East India Company up to 1834. Napier soon discovered that some medium was needed to deal with the hong merchants, because the Chinese governorgeneral refused to treat with him directly. The king’s representative could hardly submit to the implied derogation of negotiating with mere merchants. Moreover some central body was required for effectiveness. One man could hardly control all British trade, especially because the numbers of private merchants were increasing dramatically now that the Company’s monopoly was gone. The Chamber was expanded in 1836 to include other foreigners residing in Canton.154 Thereafter the Chamber always had three Americans on its governing committee and sometimes even elected an American as chairman.155 At the first meeting it was resolved that the Chamber was to be “purely Commercial, it has nothing to do with Political Questions,”156 a motion doubtless intended to reassure the Dent faction, the Parsees, and the suspicious Americans. The regulations adopted at this meeting set forth the purposes of the body: The object of the Canton General Chamber of Commerce, is to protect the general interests of the foreign trade with China, to collect and classify useful information on all subjects connected with its commerce, and to establish a court of arbitration, for the purpose of adjusting all commercial differences and disputes which may be referred to it.157

The Chamber accomplished many of its aims and assumed a number of additional tasks. It centralized complaints against excessive charges by customs officials and attempted to establish standard commercial usages wherever such were desirable and lacking. An ambitious venture was the Chamber’s much needed but ultimately unsuccessful post office, which undertook regular deliveries between Canton, Whampoa, and Macao. Two very visible services the Chamber performed were the purchase of the East India Company’s old “public clock,” by which all traders set their watches, and the arrangement with the Cohong for the removal of the garbage regularly deposited in front of the foreign factories.158 One of the most useful tasks of the Chamber was the creation of Canton’s first formal mechanism for the adjudication of commercial disputes. Foreigners in China theoretically were under Chinese law, but, in fact, they were not really subject to any law at all as long as they did not commit murder. When other misbehavior occurred, the Chinese government held the appropriate hong merchant responsible. Civil law was totally lacking outside of Macao, where matters were occasionally settled. There was simply

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no legal force to collect a debt, enforce a contract or to settle a dispute. The usual recourse was to appoint a referee or an arbiter in cases that proved too difficult for settlement by direct negotiation.159 The Chamber centralized and ordered the process. The Chamber of Commerce took up the question of bankruptcy in its first annual report. It defined misconduct in bankruptcy as dishonor of an acceptance, &c.; that, in case of insolvency, and the bankrupt refusing to deliver his property for the benefit of his creditors, it is recommended, that publicity be resorted to, that his conduct be exposed to deserved reprobation, and the public put on its guard against granting him further credit.

and then lamely advised, As no compulsory measures can be adopted in Canton, it is recommended, that merchants be mutually accommodating, and in all cases voluntarily and promptly pursue that course to which they could be compelled in countries where law prevails.160

Luckily for this makeshift system, both hong merchants and the majority of foreigners appear to have been men of considerable integrity. They valued their good names and took care to meet their obligations. Because the great bulk of the trade was carried on by British and American merchants, who had similar cultural backgrounds, there was a large area of general agreement regarding commercial and other behavior. The Chamber of Commerce had no coercive powers of any kind, but it was as close an approximation to a source of authority that the foreign colony had in pretreaty days. Yet ultimately it had to rely on its ability to focus the force of community opinion against an offending member161 or to appeal to the Chinese government. The latter course was never popular, because foreigners were highly suspicious of Chinese justice. In fact in what was probably its strongest single policy statement, the Chamber showed its low opinion of the Imperial Government on this very point. The first annual report contained the following declaration: It belongs exclusively to the Chinese Government to vindicate the authority of its own laws, by apprehending those who may be accused of violating them; and without undeniable proof of wilful murder, justly involving the extreme penalty of the law, it would be inexpedient for the commander of a vessel to detain the accused party since it would be affording facilities to the Chinese to enforce their barbarous and unjust demand of life for life, however much palliating circumstance may have occurred to modify the nature of the crime.162

The Chamber never went further. Indeed during the opium crisis of 1839, it is significant that Captain Elliot, the Superintendent of British Trade, instead of the more representative Chamber of Commerce, headed the foreign community

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in its negotiations with Commissioner Lin. In the face of determined Chinese action, on a motion by Warren Delano of Russell, Sturgis & Co., the Chamber voted itself out of existence.163 The Chamber’s action was exemplary; it was the logical step of a group dedicated to the type of policy adopted by the Americans in China. Elsewhere it has been noted as an American paradox that the very men who struggled so hard to free themselves from the relatively mild “tyranny” of George III submitted meekly to a far more rigorous despotism in China in the cause of trade. But there are other ways of viewing the situation. The Americans in China were primarily businessmen, who had come thousands of miles and risked their lives and their worldly goods, not to mention those of their constituents, hoping to wring a competence from the fabulous China trade. They had not come to champion any cause but their own economic welfare. The Chinese government permitted this lucrative commerce but only on its own terms. To challenge its laws in the manner advocated by the “forward party” among the British residents was to raise the question of sovereignty. Indeed a later generation would call such a policy imperialistic. American traders, in the interest of making their way in the world, were willing to submit to the “Eight Regulations,” take their chances with Chinese justice, work a grueling schedule, and enter into any number of subsidiary businesses in order to take home their lac in as short a time as possible. Most found the old Canton trading system a convenient if flawed mechanism for attaining their purpose. They respected and trusted the hong merchants and regretted the fluctuations of Western markets far more than Chinese “oppression.” Finally many of these merchants actually accumulated the fortunes they came after and returned home to put their capital to work in America. If they did not care to risk everything on the unlikely chance of improving the lot of the foreigner in China, who can blame them?

3 Opium Transforms the Canton System The Period of Specie and Exotic Commodities, 1783–1812

The

traditional story of the old China trade emphasizes the search for something—anything—that the Chinese would buy. Here was a reclusive nation with inexhaustible supplies of teas, silks, and other highly desirable products, that wanted nothing that Americans had to offer in return. Here was a challenge worthy of the enterprise for which the early United  States became renowned. In response American merchants proved endlessly inventive. Tiny, fast-sailing vessels, manned by intrepid Yankees, scattered all over the globe in pursuit of the strange products that the Chinese demanded. Among other peculiar items were amomum, aniseed stars, benzoin, bezoar, dragon’s blood, cudbear, cubebs, gamboge, olibanum, asafoetida, Terra Japonica, damar, gambier, galangal, hartall, putchuck, smalts, and whangees.1 In this process of scouring the world’s oceans, American traders opened a number of new commercial fields, discovered unknown islands, and even touched Antarctica, but they also destroyed some priceless and irreplaceable natural resources, especially in the Pacific basin. The sea otter, the Antarctic fur seal, the sandalwood forests of many Pacific islands, and the native American ginseng plant were among the items threatened with extinction by mercantile greed. Yet fortunes were made by daring young mariners willing to risk their lives and ships for the wealth that would make them social, political, and economic leaders of the new nation. So goes the story that has proved so absorbing that it long ago passed into the national folklore. Folklore, however, is not history, and the writings of nostalgic China traders, their descendants, and local colorists have sometimes distorted the picture as much as they have popularized it.2 The most obvious truth is that exotic products were never very significant in the American China trade. Although figures from the early days are generally untrustworthy,3 it is certainly true that the most significant of the strange goods brought to Canton was fur. Yet the value of that commerce, famous for its dangers and quick profits, never amounted to more than one sixth of the total annual American trade to China,4 and it was necessarily very short-lived.5

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By the War of 1812, the palmy days of the commerce were at an end. Henceforth it would take large resources in capital, organization, and political preference to exploit the peltry trade profitably. Astor clearly had such an imperial end in view as early as 1808. Two years later, when his Pacific Fur Company was incorporated, he planted a colony—Astoria—at the mouth of the Columbia River. Thereafter his agents could penetrate the interior of the continent from both directions. Astoria was to serve as a West Coast emporium, a conduit from which furs, gathered from all over western North America, could be taken to Canton. It was a grand scheme, but the war foiled Astor, although he rolled with the punch most gracefully; his agent sold out to the British Northwest Fur Company at the eleventh hour.6 Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson have discovered that where Astor’s vast plans failed, the Perkins’s crafty dealings succeeded, at least for a few years. Although the Northwest Company achieved a monopoly of sorts with its purchase of Astoria, it was a British firm and thus could not tap the riches of the China market because of the East India Company’s exclusive franchise. The Perkins, long friendly with William McGillivray, the Northwest Company’s Montreal chief, proposed a very simple method for solving the problem. The Perkins’s vessels would supply the Company’s Northwest settlements, do some desultory trading along the coast, and then convey the Company’s furs to Canton as the Perkins’s (i.e., American) property. As such it was not subject to the East India Company’s restrictions. In payment the Perkins brothers got one quarter of the gross profits and a 5 percent commission on sales in both China and America. It was a shrewd bargain. It took the speculation and risk out of the business for the Perkinses. It gave them a sure profit at each end of the trip, speeded up the frequency of the voyages and thus the returns, and put the trips on a regular basis.7

Every year from 1816 to 1821, the Perkins sent one ship to China via the Northwest Coast. The business seems to have been a businessman’s dream. It involved very little investment, no risk, and guaranteed profits. The Bostonians cleared ninety thousand dollars on their one-quarter share alone, and the fat commissions obviously raised the total considerably higher. This was probably the last major coup made by American China merchants in the Northwest fur trade, and, though it is striking evidence of the Perkins’s ingenuity, furs remained a small and steadily diminishing part of the total American trade with China. The bald fact is that, despite the temporary profits and romantic allure of the various exotic trades they developed, American merchants never had a dependable source of marketable goods sufficient to pay for their China products. Therefore they were forced to rely on specie for the bulk of their imports to Canton.8 Naturally this fact made for a number of difficulties, not the least of which was the loss of that merchant’s delight—the double

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profit involved in exchanging goods for goods. Also specie was a most inconvenient cargo for the citizens of a small, agricultural nation lacking gold or silver mines. For years it was necessary either to pay a premium for bullion or to venture on an extended cruising voyage to the Mediterranean or Latin America to collect enough silver to finance a China cargo. Even in China, Americans found problems with their treasure. A specie cargo was a prime target for the pirates who swarmed in the Eastern seas. The Chinese government also raised obstacles, since it forbade ships carrying only money from entering the river. To be sure, there were many ways of circumventing this regulation, but it was still another difficulty presented by an already troublesome commodity. In addition the Chinese did not value all silver equally; they preferred Spanish milled dollars.9 The most highly prized were those bearing the head of Charles  III or Charles  IV (“old heads” in pidgin). After the War of 1812, dollars carrying the profile of Ferdinand VII (“new heads”) were the next most prized, and still later “republican” (Latin American) and, less frequently, US dollars were also accepted, though at a discount. Letters in the Russell Papers show a premium range on old heads from 4 percent in 1835 to 12  percent the following year and a discount on republican dollars of 1  percent to 4 percent in the same short period. The extraordinary overvaluation of Spanish dollars at Canton may have tempted some merchants to mint their own. When his factory was in danger of attack in 1840, James Matheson, using his pseudonym of Santiago Thomasen, wrote his Canton agent, You & Mr. Shillaber may consult whether it will be possible or advisable to remove the large Coining Machine. But whether it is removed or not, I think you should bring or send to Macao, a small box containing dies of dollars for the Machine which is in the godown under Mr. A. Jardine’s sleeping apartments adjoining Mr. Boyd’s. The big Coolie knows it.10

Handling silver meant special facilities. Each factory had to have a treasury, usually an armored, locked, secure vault, generally encased in granite and not easily entered. Whenever there was a fire in the area or a civil disturbance, both of which occurred with increasing frequency in the later years, the treasury became a target for looters. Each firm also had to retain a shroff,11 a Chinese assayer, who examined and stamped each coin or ingot, certifying its weight and purity. Silver gave the Americans some very considerable benefits in China. To the usual advantages enjoyed by anyone paying in cash was added the driving need of the hong merchants for specie. Both the Hon. Company and the British private merchants commonly engaged in “trucking” (bartering imports for tea), a practice that endangered a hong merchant’s profit as well as his liquidity. In a market lacking an elastic credit structure, specie shortages were common. American supercargoes with chests full of dollars were

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able to exert great commercial leverage as a result. In this way Americans were often able to command better cargoes and get them faster, because they had ready money. Still another advantage was flexibility: surplus funds were easy to employ; however the silver trade was cumbersome, dangerous, and expensive, so American merchants tried many expedients to avoid it. The problem of dealing in specie was not new. Westerners had always brought quantities of silver to pay for their teas. It was the Manila galleons, beginning in the sixteenth century, that had brought the metal from Mexico and by means of the junk trade had made the Spanish silver dollar the standard of exchange in East Asia.12 Later the various national East India companies, the Royal Philippine Company, and private traders had all brought specie. These sources, like the galleons, were dependent upon Spanish American mines, although only the Spanish regularly brought the bullion across the Pacific. Like the Americans, Europeans continually tried to find some substitute for the silver trade, but up until the early nineteenth century, no one had been very successful. The British sold some Indian cotton and Midlands woolens; the Spanish and Dutch found rice intermittently acceptable; and traders of many nationalities brought Straits produce, some furs, tin, copper, and any number of more exotic Asian and Pacific commodities. But all of these imports together failed to even the balance of payments. In the meantime China gradually was absorbing a substantial portion of the world’s silver supply. Then in the 1790s a series of events altered the situation. The European wars, the loosening of Spain’s control over her New World colonies, and the decline in silver mining threatened to interrupt the importation of precious metal. Temporarily the Americans relieved the pressure by replacing Spain and Britain as the channel for specie from the Mediterranean and Latin America. Yet it was probably in the nature of things that this infant commerce could not continue. In fact it lasted about a generation before opium reversed the East-West balance of payments.

Opium and International Credit Replace Specie It was the British who first managed to find a solution to the problem of the long Chinese drain on the West’s stock of silver. China might not want the products of Europe, but around the turn of the eighteenth century, for some reason not yet adequately explained, China began to take larger quantities of Indian goods, especially cotton, and the demand for opium also suddenly rose. By 1804 the balance of payments had shifted, and by 1807 the glittering stream of metal was flowing in reverse—from China to India. But exporting specie, besides being against Chinese law, presented the same problems as importing it. When sycee (shoe-shaped Chinese silver ingots) was cheap, it made a profitable cargo, for it was purer than the dollars

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brought from the West; however, country merchants generally preferred more convenient and safer remittances. The new surplus largely was earned by country traders, not by the East India Company. On the contrary the Honorable Company still had the same old problem of importing something to pay for the annual tea investment. To employ the country merchants’ bullion, it needed some way of transferring that silver into its own coffers. To do so it turned to the sale of bills on India or London by the “Exchange Office” (the treasury) of the Select Committee at Canton. At the same time, in order to tap into the supplies of silver brought by the Spanish and Portuguese, the Exchange Office began to accommodate merchants of those nationalities as well. But the amount of surplus metal exceeded the needs of the “Select” and that body was opposed to becoming “something of a central bank,” as W. E. Cheong suggests it might have done.13 Thus, although it regularly acquired more silver than it needed for its yearly exports, the Select Committee set limits to the amount it would accept and sometimes closed its treasury when there was still a sizeable demand for its bills. Of course such a decision meant that the private trade had to keep up the search for some alternative to either an undependable (and undesirable14) Company credit facility or the traditional commerce in precious metal. By 1825 the British were shipping more silver out of China than the Americans were bringing in, and India was exporting bullion to England. Such a situation made a new trade possible for the Americans. If a Yankee trader could establish his credit with a merchant bank in London, he might take some kind of interest-bearing instrument out to Canton, where he could sell it for silver to an opium trader, who wished to remit funds to England. It cost money to ship, store, and insure specie, while bills paid interest. Therefore, when offered the opportunity to buy such paper, presumably Indian nabobs would be only too pleased. For the Americans a simple paper transaction could replace an entire branch of commerce. No longer would they have to engage in a tramp trade to Latin America or the Mediterranean. It was a major breakthrough for the American China trade. The mystery is why the bill trade did not begin earlier, but probably the small scale of most American business did not immediately suggest such globe-spanning credit arrangements. Even before the turn of the century, Americans had been able to negotiate some bills. Charles Vaughn, of the London house of Samuel Vaughn & Sons, signed a letter of credit for £12,000 for William F. Megee of Providence in 1796.15 This was a rather different instrument from the bill of credit of later years, but its appearance at so early a date indicates that at least some American merchants were aware of the possibilities of international credit as an alternative for financing the China trade years before the bill trade really began. The method was quite simple. Bills of credit were issued in the United

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States by agents of London merchant banks, payable in London, generally two or three months sight (i.e., after presentation in London). The first year such bills appeared in any number was 1808, the time of Jefferson’s Embargo, but it was the season of 1810–11 that they arrived in such quantity as to attract the attention of the Select Committee.16 Very possibly this promising beginning might have continued, growing with the commerce in opium, but the War of 1812 brought it to an abrupt halt. The simultaneous ending of this infant trade and the massive American silver importations created a financial crisis at Canton during the Anglo-American conflict17 and toward the end of the war compelled the British East India Company once again to import bullion. It brought $2,561,103 in 1816 and $1,982,941 in 1820. The September following the peace the Select Committee reported that American vessels had again brought bills,18 but for about a decade thereafter, they remained a minor import. Instead the silver trade became heavier than ever despite the increasing difficulty in collecting the metal, which was getting scarcer as Latin American production slowed. The Spanish record is very hazy, but the chief Spanish supercargo at Macao estimated that his nation had brought $1,500,000 annually from 1816 to 1821. The Americans eclipsed everyone else, importing $1,922,000 the first season after the war, $4,545,000 the next, $5,601,000 in 1817–18, and an amazing $7,369,000 in 1818–19.19 It is not at all apparent why traders of all nations resumed the old-fashioned, expensive practice of specie importing, when a cheap, convenient, and profitable alternative lay within reach. Meantime British exports of silver and sale of Company bills increased, and the opium trade flourished. It was a worldwide financial crisis in the mid-1820s that triggered the change. The Bank of England suddenly tightened credit and provoked a run on London merchant banks, bringing down a number of them in 1825 and 1826 (including Samuel Williams, the most prestigious American banker in the city). Subsequently agency houses in India and several of the largest silver shippers in America failed; notable among the latter were Thomas H. Smith of New York and Edward Thomson of Philadelphia. Naturally increased silver exports and decreased imports raised the price in Canton. Thus by 1825–26 British merchants in China faced a “remittance crisis”20 that compelled them to reconsider the possibilities of buying American bills on good London houses. To be sure the export of silver continued, but in the next few years, the dramatic increase in American bills on London is the remarkable feature of the commercial statistics.21 From an estimated $400,000 in 1826 (less than one eleventh of the American export investment in a slack year), bills soared to an impressive $2,480,000 (about five twelfths) five years later. The following year, 1832, the dollar value of American bills doubled again, probably as a result of the failure of house after house in India, which “commercial earthquake”

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deprived British merchants in China of one of their commonest means of remittance. From 1829 to 1834 most, if not all, of the British commission houses in Calcutta failed, and the long-continued crisis turned the experiment in American bills into a habit.22 Thereafter silver was a minor item in American cargoes, except for 1835 and again in 1839 as the Chinese attack on the opium trade became more effective. For the remaining years of the old China trade, bills on London were the chief American import, especially for those merchants who did not deal in opium but who wished to avoid hypothecating their cargoes. Yet even these traders benefited from the opium trade, for it provided the specie for which their bills were sold. Moreover, there is some evidence that Indian opium merchants actually increased their exports to China in order to obtain the American bills, which were such a convenient and profitable way to send money to England.23 In this way even those who were morally opposed to the drug trade reaped substantial advantages, encouraging the illegal traffic by the very fact that they took bills to China. In its evolved form, the bill trade embraced large numbers of people on three continents in several different kinds of commerce. The most important merchant bankers concerned were located in London, although a few were in Liverpool. The larger banks had branch houses in a number of different cities in Europe and America. Alternatively they maintained trusted agents in the United States—men whose knowledge of American business made them better able than their English principals to judge good risks. These agents, the best known of whom is probably Thomas Wren Ward,24 representative of Baring Brothers & Co., were soon issuing the paper that financed the bulk of the American China trade.25 The bills, sold in Canton to opium traders who had brought their drug from India and Turkey, ultimately returned to England via India and were cashed against the drawers’ accounts. These accounts were kept in funds through American exports to Britain. Thus Americans drank Chinese tea paid for by Southern cotton through the medium of London bills and Asian opium. Convenient as it was, the bill trade could be treacherous. The trouble with international credit was exchange. Sooner or later confidence sagged, and someone had to pay in metal, securities, or something else the creditor would accept. Because the investment in a single China cargo was so huge and because the more important American traders kept several ships plying the commerce, the amount to be liquidated often was immense. An American who owed money in London was subjected to the fluctuations of the London money market. Faced with a tight money situation in England and an unfavorable market at home, he could get into very deep trouble.26 Conceivably an American bank would have been more willing and able to accept American money, paper, and property than a London bank, thus reducing the damage of this kind of crisis. However President Jackson’s war on the Bank of the United States (BUS) in the mid-1830s effectively destroyed

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any possibility of an American counterpart to the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.27 Earlier BUS bulls had been rather favorably received in China, but private American paper was generally not negotiable in Canton unless it was backed by someone with an international reputation, like Astor or Girard. Despite these disadvantages bills were such an improvement over the silver trade that they quickly replaced it. No city offered much of a locational advantage over its competitors in the bill trade, and those who derived the greatest benefit from the new commerce were the well-established firms, especially those with personal connections with the London houses. The Perkins-Sturgis group had a relative in Baring Brothers & Co.; Wetmore’s former partner, John Cryder, was a principal of Morrison, Cryder & Co.; and the Archers and Dunn had long worked closely with Brown Brothers.28 Based as it was on personal and family connections, and involving a commercial and financial world of which none but a few hong merchants were aware, the bill trade was incomprehensible to the Ch’ing government. Without her consent and even without her knowledge, China was pulled into the Western trading and banking system through the actions of smugglers. This credit structure, and indeed the entire China trade, was based on the opium traffic, which had grown up alongside the commerce in bills. Without opium it is difficult to see how the legitimate China trade could have developed much beyond what it had been during the first decade of American participation. The growth of this remarkable traffic is a study in the dynamics of unrestrained private enterprise among an alien people half a world away from home.

The Growth of the Opium Traffic, 1802–39 Opium had been coming to China in small amounts for about a century when the Empress of China arrived. The first edict against the drug appeared in 1729, but there were few interruptions of the trade. The demand was very small until after the turn of the century, a fact that was illustrated in 1791 when a shipload of 158 chests flattened the market.29 It was mainly Easterners—Armenians, some Parsees, a few Macaoese, and Manila Spaniards—who imported the drug when, around 1800, a few restless Scots began to import somewhat larger quantities. Suddenly about 1802 the price began to soar. “From 1802 opium was king,” writes a Bengal historian. “Exports [from India] to China leapt up from SR [Sicca Rupees] 38,64,547 in 1802–03 to SR 70,79,651 in 1805–06 of which SR 32,94,370 was in opium.”30 This boom seems to have been the result of a remarkable and unexplained increase in demand. “In 1804–05 the price of Patna . . . practically doubled,” and though it fell off in 1805, the price remained two or three times what it had been only five years earlier.31

Papaver Somniferum (opium poppy), ca. 1829. Gouache on paper by unidentified Chinese artist, E82056.42. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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View of the Town and Bay of Smyrna (modern Izmir, Turkey), 1829. Oil painting by Raffael Corsini (active 1829–1880), M25790. Smyrna was the source of all the Turkey opium sold in China. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

Americans and the Turkey Trade Catching wind of this new market, several American vessels appeared in Smyrna in 1804–05.32 This Turkish city, the modern Izmir, was “the first commercial city of the Near East” and the principal outlet for Levantine opium.33 Most of the export drug in the Porte’s dominions was grown in a district about five days’ journey overland (ca. 175 air miles) east of the city. The bazaar town for the poppy-growing area was Afyon-Kara-Hisar (also known as Afyun Kara Hisari, Afyonkarahisar, or more simply, Afyon).34 The crop began arriving in Smyrna toward the end of July or the first of August and continued coming until the following spring.35 Merchants residing at Smyrna, a notably cosmopolitan, un-Turkish city, purchased the raw opium for shipment overseas, especially to East Asia after the War of 1812, though one quarter to one half seems to have gone generally to Europe and elsewhere. As the trade developed American houses appeared at Smyrna and gradually replaced the British, Greek, and other concerns that had handled the American trade earlier. The United States had no formal agreement with the Porte until the Rhind Treaty of 1820, so Americans usually operated through a resident who was a citizen of a power which had such an agreement. By the late 1820s at least four American commission houses existed at Smyrna. The earliest was probably that of the Perkins Brothers, which was not organized formally under that title until 1816, though it had been in the city since the 1780s. The brothers were Tories, who had fled Boston during the Revolution. Other early American settlers were David Offley of the Philadelphia firm, Woodmas and Offley, established in Smyrna in 1811. John W[alley?] Langdon, of Langdon & Co., was another, although he appears most importantly after the War of 1812. By 1827 a fourth American firm existed: Issaverdes, Stith & Co. Actually this was not solely an American

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enterprise: two of the partners, George and John B. Issaverdes, were Greek. The third member was Griffin Stith of Baltimore.36 As early as the late 1790s, American vessels were calling at Smyrna, but it was not until 1804 that ships from Philadelphia and Baltimore began the opium traffic in earnest.37 The first figures of any consequence in the Turkish drug trade to China were two Philadelphians, the brothers James and Benjamin C. Wilcocks, who sailed for their relatives, R. H. Wilcocks and William Waln, sedentary merchants of Philadelphia. James Wilcocks arrived in Smyrna in 1804 as the supercargo of the brig Pennsylvania, Captain Hugh McPherson. The ship cleared for Batavia carrying forty-nine chests of opium. Both brothers were in China by the following October: Benjamin remained until 1807 or 1808, but James seems to have gone home, to return the following year with more of the drug.38 Apparently the commerce paid, for several other American China merchants immediately showed an interest. The brig Eutaw, Capt. Christopher Gantt of Baltimore, was in Smyrna from July to November 1805 before sailing to Canton with fifty-one boxes and forty-six chests of opium aboard.39 Willings & Francis of Philadelphia sent opium aboard the Bingham, Captain James I. Williamson, in the spring of 1805. When the supercargo, William Read, arrived in Canton, he found that two opium vessels had preceded him, and he later noted that more Turkey opium had been brought to market that season than ever before. The price dropped steadily as more arrived. The Ploughboy, under Captain Jones, appeared first and got the best prices. The brig Pennsylvania, consigned to the Wilcockses, was next, with ninetyfive piculs of opium, the largest amount to appear that season, but that parcel still remained, mostly unsold, when Read finally succeeded in selling his. Moreover Read wrote that a Baltimore ship was reported at Batavia with seventy-five piculs more and that it would probably come to Canton. He then commented to his owners, “Your speculations from America should not be made to this market at a price above $4.50 p. lb. and then not in a quantity to exceed 15 or 20 Picul in one Vessel [sic].”40 Despite the great supply on hand, Read wrote that the profit on his narcotic was $11,127.24, which must have seemed encouraging to owners who lost money on the voyage as a whole. The news spread fast. It reached the Perkins brothers in Boston the following fall, when they inquired of their nephew at Canton about the market for Turkish opium.41 Stephen Girard, probably the richest merchant in America at the time, wrote two of his supercargoes in the Mediterranean, “I am very much in favor of investing heavily in opium. While the war lasts, opium will support a good price in China.”42 Others soon joined in, and the first of a series of “opium rushes” was reported at Smyrna by Girard’s disappointed agents.43 In 1807 another Philadelphian, George Blight, reported from China that while opium “at times paid very well,” it had “disappointed many the past season” because the trade had been far overdone.44

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A pattern had become typical in the American China trade. Precisely the same configuration had appeared in the commerce in ginseng,45 sealskins,46 sandalwood,47 and just about every other specie substitute American merchants had discovered. The first ships would make a killing, the scent of which would draw others into the trade until the market was saturated, and the trade ceased to pay. Thereafter periodic gluts would occur, until the supply became exhausted or until a few of the stronger firms established some sort of loose organization of the market. In the Turkish opium trade, the organizers were Perkins & Co. and its allied concerns in Boston and Canton. Because opium played such a critical role in the old China trade and because the Turkey traffic was heavily American until the late 1830s, leading Americans into the much more important India drug trade, it merits special attention. As early as 1807 the new commerce had attracted the attention of the Select Committee of the British East India Company at Canton,48 but it failed to worry them until after the War of 1812 when the trade suddenly mushroomed. Up to this time the Hon. Company had been running a very tidy system based on “the technique of growing opium in India and disowning it in China.”49 The Company had long refused to permit the drug aboard its China ships, and the Chinese government had banned all importation of opium since 1800. However the Company was the government of India, and it enjoyed a monopoly of opium production within its dominions. It also licensed British subjects to trade from Bengal, where Company auctions were held annually, to China, which became the principal market for the drug. In addition the Company’s Indian revenues became increasingly dependent on opium sales as time went on.50 Competition in the drug trade, therefore, threatened the British East India Company in an important way. Because American traders lacked a convenient source of opium in East Asia, they had to look elsewhere. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, they developed the Turkey trade,51 neatly turning the British Company’s restrictions into an American monopoly. In order to protect its own business, the Company forbade British ships to carry foreign opium in the area of its jurisdiction. The outbreak of the wars of the French Revolution cleared the Eastern seas of all Western ships except those flying either the Union Jack or the American flag. In this manner the East India Company’s prohibition freed the Americans from competition in the newly discovered commerce in Turkish opium to East Asia. The long trip through the Mediterranean was time-consuming, and Smyrna was notorious for frequent visitations of the plague. Consequently the Americans soon developed the habit of picking up the drug in ports in the Western Mediterranean or in London—places that also supplied much of their silver. Naturally this situation created a new business for commission merchants in Smyrna and the other cities involved. The commercial dislocations of the era interfered badly with the developing

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Turkey trade, and the War of 1812 halted it altogether for a few years but did not pale the memories of the merchants. Benjamin Wilcocks, who became US consul at Canton in 1812, carried out his official duties religiously. However his wartime despatches mention no American arrivals from Turkey or any of the various pick-up points. A two-year cessation in the Turkish opium trade alone, however, cannot explain the phenomenal growth of Chinese opium consumption in the years following the war. Oddly enough, that development may have been an accident. Fluctuations in the price and the high rate of profit in drugs attracted speculators. An agreement among the importers had forced up the price in 1814 and 1815.52 The combined effect of the artificially high prices and the release of enterprise from the restraints of war meant that “opium rushes again took place at Smyrna”53 and Canton. Yet astonishingly the glut in China was not so great as might have been expected. Not only were the Chinese willing to buy, but the quantity of Bengal opium fell off.54 Americans bringing Turkey and country merchants with Malwa (non-Company opium) both increased their importations at Company expense or so it seemed. Because both non-Bengal varieties of the drug yielded more profit and more opiate per pound (and per dollar invested), they found a warm welcome among Canton dealers.55 More fatefully, in winning a share of the Chinese drug market, Turkey and Malwa opium permanently expanded the demand. From London the Court of Directors of the East India Company had been watching the growth of foreign opium supplies with increasing alarm for over a decade.56 During the next few years, the Company tried a number of expedients to counter the Malwa trade especially, because it was a far greater threat to the Bengal monopoly—it was closer in quality, its production was easier to expand, and it was also closer to hand. At first the Indian government tried to buy up the entire supply of Malwa and resell it with the Bengal product at the regular auctions. For a number of reasons, this effort failed, but not before it had given a temporary fillip to the price of all opium and greatly increased the quantity going to China. By 1823 this huge new supply had ruined the Chinese opium market. Seen from Canton this picture looked somewhat different, and it is still not wholly clear. No one really knows why the Chinese kept increasing their consumption of the drug, but there is enough evidence to hazard a guess. The total of 4,186 chests landed in the season 1819–20 was about what it had been ever since 1805–06 although the composition was somewhat different. In 1822–23 the market took 7,773, the next year 9,035, and in 1824–25 the Chinese bought 12,434 chests of the drug, for an increase of around 300 percent in only five years.57 Returns in India tripled between 1819 and 1822;58 in China during the years of heaviest importation, the amount realized remained stable though the quantity imported increased by about one third.59 Such conditions invited speculation. Magniac & Co., the largest British dealer, managed to corner the market in Patna at the outset of the decade,60

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and Yrissari & Co. (James Matheson’s firm) tried to repeat the coup in 1823,61 but that was the year the bottom fell out of the market. Finally Perkins & Co. made the attempt with Turkey in 1824–25. Each of these ventures resulted in stretching the drug market still further. Thereafter the production of opium kept ahead of demand, because the Honorable Company resigned itself to increasing the planting of poppies in Bengal and charging a moderate transit duty on Malwa at Bombay. This British port was a much more convenient outlet for Malwa, and the roundabout old route through Portuguese Damao was soon abandoned. Gradually the everincreasing supply beat the price back to where it had been at the turn of the century. From the standpoint of the supplier what had happened was that two remarkable spurts in Chinese demand had caused a scramble among Western smugglers to meet the expanded demand. Speculation and the continuing competition between Company and Malwa opium had led to a more or less chronic oversupply. But somehow smugglers managed to work off the enlarged production of the drug. Oversupply in a narcotic has a rather different effect on its market than does a glut in most commodities. Excess supply, if maintained year after year, will tend to produce the demand needed to take it off the market. Perhaps this is the dynamic that operated in China during the 1820s, but unless China historians can find substantiating evidence, the question remains moot.62 Americans were certainly not the most important drug traders, but their increased participation in the traffic would have some important results in the next few years. It would involve them in difficulties with the Chinese government, which launched a series of crackdowns on the traffic—a prolonged campaign that continued some two decades. Being on the wrong side of Chinese law, many Americans would grow distrustful of that law. A number would even come to sympathize with those British residents who advocated a “forward policy” to alter relations with China in the West’s favor. Continued drug dealing would also give Americans in the traffic special facilities and techniques for smuggling, and Chinese legal actions would result in concentrating the Turkey trade in a few hands, notably those of Perkins & Co. Turkey sales suffered both from the sudden reentry of many Americans in 1815 and from the Chinese efforts to curtail smuggling. The officers of Girard’s Voltaire found their entire business disrupted by the difficulty of disposing of a small parcel of opium in the fall of 1816.63 The same season William Law, supercargo of the ship Lion (Captain Adam Champlin for Minturn & Champlin, New York), had great trouble selling his drug because the local dealers had just been chased into the hinterland. Ultimately he sold his narcotic, but at a minimal price, through Philip Ammidon, a resident from whom he had earlier purchased opium on speculation.64 The Chinese enforcement campaign was just beginning. From this time

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forward, the official attitude was always very hostile toward the opium trade. Handicapped by Western technological superiority and by corruption, dedicated mandarins nevertheless would make strenuous efforts to stamp out the traffic. Yet no sooner would they turn their attention to other matters than venal underlings would facilitate the illegal commerce, reportedly even using official craft to abet smuggling. The more vigorous the enforcement, the higher were the bribes and the greater the incentive to subvert the law.65 In May 1817 Chinese pirates seized the Baltimore ship Wabash, Captain Christopher Gantt, murdered several of the ship’s company, and robbed the vessel of seven thousand dollars in specie and thirty-five cases of Turkey opium. Consul Wilcocks reported the crime to the hong merchants who relayed the intelligence to the government. The thieves were quickly caught and subjected to exquisite Chinese punishments. The silver was returned, but Wilcocks’s demands for reparations were refused indignantly when the viceroy learned that opium was included in the loot.66 Also the discovery prompted the mandarinate to embark on a still more stringent antiopium drive. Such a policy could be very profitable for local officials, because it afforded them the opportunity to “squeeze” the hong merchants, but the common foreign assumption that this extortion was the only reason for zealous enforcement was probably erroneous and sounds suspiciously like special pleading. This time the officials “squeezed” unmercifully, and the hong merchants announced that they would henceforth secure no ships whose masters refused to sign bonds pledging themselves not to smuggle opium into China.67 The requirement was resurrected time and again throughout the subsequent history of the old China trade, but the hapless hong merchants were never strong enough to resist the opposition of their Western trading partners. In Chinese eyes responsibility was particularly binding upon those in authority. Hence the leaders of the Cohong and foreign taipans (chiefs or consuls) were especially vulnerable. Although the sporadic Chinese attempts to enforce the ban on opium may have discouraged some American shippers, Perkins & Co. viewed the situation optimistically,68 because Cushing and the Perkins brothers believed that such incidents would frighten away competition. They were certainly correct. It was during this disorderly period that Perkins & Co. built the machinery that enabled it to control the Canton market for Turkey opium. The growing concern of the imperial authorities and Howqua’s consequent anxiety led Cushing to divest himself of all direct connection with opium. On 26 October 1818 circulars went out announcing that all the commission business of the house would be handled by the new firm of James P. Sturgis & Co.69 This notice meant that all opium [and other] shipments from the Boston firms or anyone else would go to the new concern. But, although Cushing was ostensibly out of the trade, he was a primary influence in the founding of J. P. Sturgis & Co. and later of Russell & Co., both of which sold the drug in China. Cushing used his own and Howqua’s capital

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in the trade through the Boston Concern,70 and he helped decide how much would be imported from Turkey. Finally more than anyone else in Canton, he apparently set and maintained the price of opium in China. Although insulated from official wrath, Cushing continued to direct the drug trade as before. Cushing pragmatically spread his largesse elsewhere as well. A former employee, George Robert Russell, and a cousin, Henry Parkman Sturgis, organized a firm, Russell & Sturgis, at Manila in 1828 under the patronage and encouragement of Cushing.71 Russell & Co., the first exclusively commission house to be established at Canton, was formed with Cushing’s blessing and soon was handling considerable business for Perkins & Co. It is also clear that Benjamin Wilcocks and his new partner, John R. Latimer, received opium consignments originally sent to Cushing’s address.72 In this way Cushing was not only the leader of the Turkey opium merchants at Canton—it seems that he was more or less responsible for the establishment and prosperity of every important resident trader in that variety of drug in China. Most transients found it advisable to come to terms with Cushing. Astor, Girard, and the great Baltimore China merchant John Donnell73 excepted, Cushing was able to coordinate the sales of all major Turkey opium traders. As late as 1821 the efforts of the Ch’ing government to halt the drug trade were not taken so seriously as to frighten all hong merchants out of the commerce. That year, according to James Matheson, one such merchant took a large quantity of the early opium importation to barter with tea merchants, who carried it into the hinterland.74 Thereafter, however, this study has turned up no evidence of hong merchant participation in narcotics. Later that same year, the government’s efforts began to produce important results, albeit not those the authorities wished. John Donnell, owner of the Emily, had sent his nephew, Griffin Stith, to Batavia, another major drug market, to act as his agent, directing several of Donnell’s opium cargoes. Prevented by the Dutch from selling the Emily’s drug locally, Stith took the ship to Canton, where she arrived in May. For the next four months, the ship lay at anchor in Whampoa Reach, selling her drug cargo piecemeal and maintaining the price, to the relief of the apprehensive Cushing. An accusation of murder against one of the crew began an exchange that led to a stoppage of all American trade, a temporary coalescence of the American community, and, ultimately, tragedy for the poor sailor. After an extraordinary hearing aboard the vessel conducted by an impatient district magistrate, the seaman was taken off the ship and shortly thereafter was judicially strangled by the Chinese.75 Subsequently a Chinese bribe collector, arrested on charges unrelated to his illegal occupation, confessed all, revealing methods, sums collected, and the names of ships and the officials involved. The resulting pressure produced “the hottest persecution we can remember,” and the implicated vessels were ordered

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Perkins & Co.’s Levant and Milo off Lintin Island in the Gulf of Canton. Oil, unidentified Chinese artist, M11693. Lintin was the usual mooring place for station ships that sold opium to Chinese smugglers. In time, Lintin became a major port, even surpassing Canton in some commodities. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

from the port without a homeward cargo. One of the ships thus expelled was the Emily.76 The results of this incident were far-reaching. Opium dealers were compelled to find a safer system of marketing their drug. They were able to do so with remarkable speed, because many of the devices employed in the system had been used for decades. As early as the 1780s, the English had employed ships as storehouses safe from Chinese officialdom,77 and the superiority of Western gunnery and sailing technology was such that smugglers could anchor peacefully at almost any spot on the China coast.78 Also at least by 1815, the custom of purchasing opium at Canton for pickup at Whampoa had become common.79 All that remained, at the end of 1821, was to put the pieces together into a system. The British had done this by the spring of 1822. The Americans were slower, but, by the following year, Perkins & Co. had stationed the Cadet at Lintin Island.80 The sequence was symbolic, for after 1821, in almost all matters that risked confrontation with the Chinese authorities, the British private merchants led and the Americans followed—cautiously. An excellent example of Cushing’s caution, as well as

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of his economic rationality, is to be found in a letter he wrote to J. & T. H. Perkins shortly after the Emily incident: We think it would not be prudent or advisable under the circumstances to meddle with opium without it could be had at a very low price, say 3-1/2 to 4 . . . & in case it was put to order the vessel that brings it to proceed up to Lintin & on no acct to report or ask for a pilot at Macao. By proceeding in this way the Captain could communicate with the agent here before it could be known that the vessel had arrived, & in case the introduction of it shd be attended with too much risk, the vessel might proceed elsewhere without having any questions asked.

The letter is dated 17 November 1821. The rest of this communication and others of about the same time make it clear that Cushing never considered abandoning the traffic but expected it to continue at some place outside the river.81 Sales thereafter were made very expeditiously. J. N. Reynolds, who visited Canton in 1832 on the USS Potomac (Commodore John Downes) returning from a punitive expedition against Malay pirates, described one transaction: While our officers were at dinner with Mr. Lattimer [sic] Mr. L. left the table for a moment, and returned so soon that he was scarcely missed. He informed his guests that he had made a sale while absent, of opium, to the amount of two thousand dollars, and assured them that the Chinese are remarkably expert in [the] business.82

When fully developed, the new marketing method that H. B. Morse dubbed the “Lintin System” was simplicity itself. It was a model of efficiency, security, and profit, taking full advantage of superior Western technology, the flaws in Chinese governmental organization, and the avarice common to all mankind. Ships arriving off the coast would stop at Lintin and transfer their opium to a shoreship before proceeding upriver to Whampoa. Chinese brokers or local dealers would buy opium chits at a countinghouse in Canton, paying in silver. If they intended to take possession of the drug within a month or so, they would pay “bargain money” (usually fifty dollars), paying the balance when they appeared at the storeship. The resident merchant charged the owner a commission on each chest sold, and the ship generally received a demurrage fee as well. The dangerous and unpleasant parts of the business—bribing officials, delivering the narcotic ashore, retailing to addicts, etc.—were handled by the Chinese.83 The opium was picked up at Lintin by “smug boats,” long, narrow, heavilyarmed craft propelled by banks of oars. The Chinese called these vessels “scrambling dragons” or “fast crabs.” The broker would arrive alongside the storeship, present his chit, a five dollar cumsha per chest, and any balance due on his account. The chests were then emptied into mat bags and transferred to the Chinese boats. The smugglers were highly skilled, and the whole transaction took very little time. The vast superiority of the Lintin

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system over the old marketing methods prompted the historian of British opium policy to remark “the anti-opium demonstration of 1821–22 thus proved a godsend to the smuggling profession.”84 In their control of the Turkish branch of this illegal commerce, the Bostonians were not really secure until the mid-1820s. John Jacob Astor and Stephen Girard,85 undoubtedly their most redoubtable rivals, were frightened out of the trade by the Chinese government’s show of determination. But others remained: Joseph Peabody of Salem, William Gray of Boston, and most important of all, John Donnell were among the more substantial American merchants who continued to send opium cargoes to Canton after 1821. Generally their agents at Canton either held their narcotic for the price set by Cushing, or they sold to a resident who did. Even the British who managed to evade the Company’s restrictions and bring in Turkey looked to Cushing and later to Russell for guidance.86 This was price leadership of a type similar to that seen more recently in large, oligopolistic industries elsewhere. If there was no meeting of the minds, Perkins & Co. was prepared to employ more forceful methods. John Latimer described the system’s working to a correspondent several years after Cushing had left China: [D]uring the existence of the house of Perkins & Company, they completely commanded the market for Turkey. [I]f they were advised of a quantity coming to others, they put the market down by forcing a sale at something under their selling prices—when the new parcel arrived the agent had to come into some arrangement with them to sell conjointly . . . or be obliged to dispose of it, at much below what the quotations just previous to his arrival led him to expect, and then immediately after he has sold out, and before his Drug has been delivered, greatly to his mortification the market rises without any apparent cause. [P]erhaps the whole parcel has become the property of one of the foreign residents purchased through the agency of a Chinese broker.87

Occasionally, however, the Bostonians got caught. In the fall of 1825, Colonel Thomas H. Perkins apparently got the firm in too deep for Cushing’s comfort. Perkins apologized: “As respects Opium I must take all the blame in going so far as we have. I tho’t best to extend ourselves, to  prevent intruders; . . . I am mortified that the quantity that will go out in the spring so far surpasses y’r wishes.”88 The firm shipped at least 1,254 cases and probably more that season.89 Although Perkins & Co. was easily the largest dealer, others were also in the trade, so the total must have been considerably larger than the 56 chests and the 131-chest annual average given by Morse for the period.90 This was a great increase over the three to four hundred cases a year that Perkins & Co. estimated the market would absorb a half decade earlier,91 and the quantity does not seem to have gone much below one thousand cases a year until after the cancellation of the East India Company’s charter. Annual production in Turkey grew from about one hundred forty thousand to one hundred fifty thousand pounds during the period, but generally it seems to have been pretty stable, though it increased

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considerably later in the century. From about the War of 1812 to the mid-1830s, the Americans were, by far, the most important purchasers of Turkey opium. Judging from casual remarks in the correspondence of J. & T. H. Perkins & Co., the Boston Concern alone often took a major part of the yearly crop.92 Americans and the Indian Opium Trade The Americans’ domination of the Turkey trade and their freedom from East India Company discipline gave Yankee opium merchants some important advantages, as did their well-known connection with Howqua. On the other hand, they were excluded from buying at the Company’s sales in India and from the direct India-China trade. In this business, they could participate only through British subjects. Thus small Parsee merchants, especially of the Bombay area, became the Americans’ best clients. Traders of both nationalities were far more cautious about violating British than Chinese law, and both were more interested in trade than in asserting Western rights at Canton. The role of Americans in the Indian opium trade to China has never been adequately investigated. Its origins are cloudy, but it seems to have begun in a small way even before the War of 1812. Philip Ammidon, Benjamin Wilcocks, and Charles Blight all visited and did some kind of business in Bengal during their sojourns at Canton,93 and at least the first two were clearly involved in opium. In 1818 the American brig Alexander appeared in the Portuguese settlements on the east coast of India in an attempt to penetrate the Malwa trade.94 The enterprise was unsuccessful, however, and the Americans had to content themselves with acting as middlemen and occasionally as speculators in the drug from the subcontinent. To be sure there was a respectable trade between India and the United  States, some opium may have made the long journey to America and back to China, but such a circuitous trip would have put Americans at a serious disadvantage in competition with country merchants. Among the pioneers in the American trade in Indian opium, the name of Consul Benjamin C. Wilcocks frequently appears. This was the same crafty gentleman who was among the first in the Turkey trade, a fact that argues strongly for a biography of this remarkable personality. Although it is not entirely clear that he was in the trade continuously from his visit to Bengal in 180895 until his departure from China in 1827, there is important circumstantial evidence indicating that the exigencies of wartime pushed Wilcocks himself into developing a new method of marketing Indian opium in China. Certainly Americans stranded in Canton during the war had to have some means of paying their bills, because life at the factories remained luxurious and very expensive. The British squadron that lay in wait off the mouth of

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the river was a strong inducement to American merchants in the city to search for some livelihood that did not involve leaving the port. Therefore it is perhaps not too much to assume that Wilcocks, John P. Cushing, Philip  Ammidon, and others who were formerly in the drug trade found some means of making money in their accustomed manner. The fact that they all made fortunes marketing the Indian drug after the war still further strengthens the assumption. Since 1784 the sale of opium in China had been rather standardized. A relatively small gratuity persuaded Chinese officials to look the other way when opium cargoes entered the river. Having paid the necessary bribes, the vessel proceeded to Whampoa some thirty miles upriver from the mouth, anchored in a quiet part of the Reach, and began selling its opium to smugglers who called at the ship. It was only natural that residents were less anxious about sales than were transient supercargoes. Therefore they could often buy opium advantageously from ships whose supercargoes were chafing to be off. Also residents knew conditions, customs, and people in China and were thus in a better position to avoid difficulties or to extricate themselves if apprehended. As a matter of fact, American residents rarely got caught (even in the chaotic period of the late 1830s). For a number of reasons, opium was an ideal business for Americans marooned in Canton. A drug cargo frequently took months to sell to the many brokers and small dealers who purchased it for retail distribution. Also opium paid very well, in cash, and required someone on the spot. Finally it did not necessitate running the British blockade of the port. On 1 January 1815, one of the beneficiaries of the new smuggling system, John P. Cushing, rather disingenuously testified that smuggling “is now done with great facility, the Chinese have made considerable improvement in knavery since you [Edward Carrington] left here [in 1811] and will now undertake almost anything for money, which has in consequence of the stoppage of the American trade become a scarce article.”96 Apparently the War of 1812, by cutting off the American silver trade, had caused a severe money shortage at Canton, thereby moving both American and Cantonese to develop their smuggling techniques, so as to extract the needed specie from China herself. After the war this newly developed marketing system provided the means necessary for a huge growth of the illegal drug trade and the medium for a similar growth of the legal commerce. Because smugglers try to cover their tracks as much as possible, the traffic is hard to trace, but long before the news of the Treaty of Ghent had caused normal American trade to resume, the Wilcocks brothers were in just such a commerce. On 15 May 1815 Consul Wilcocks saved a cargo of Indian opium aboard the Lydia, a schooner owned by himself and his brother. The drug had arrived on a country vessel on 5 May, the day after the Select Committee reported hearing of the peace. The Wilcockses had taken the drug to Whampoa for sale. There Consul Wilcocks prevented a

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suspicious Chinese officer from making a thorough search of the little craft by bluff and the timely misuse of his consular seal.97 The Lydia managed to get away with a cargo of China goods shortly thereafter, presumably meeting with no further trouble. Unfortunately such of Wilcocks’s records as have been located begin only in 1824. In that year Wilcocks did $113,621.72 worth of drug business with Hormuzjee Dorabjee, his largest Bombay client, alone. That spring John Richardson Latimer, a supercargo in the trade since the end of the War of 1812 (and a relative through his mother’s family, the Richardsons), arrived and began helping out in the countinghouse. His presence allowed Wilcocks to make an extended trip to India for the purpose of drumming up trade with opium shippers. Thereafter his dealings in the narcotic were substantial. His opium commissions were $21,825.12 in 1825, $45,487.54 in 1826, and $25,738.70 in 1827.98 Considering that he had other customers on both coasts of India and that he was also a speculator, Wilcocks must have been one of the most important American merchants in the field. By 1827 he had made enough to retire, leaving his business at Canton to Latimer. John R. Latimer was a strange combination of contrasting characteristics. An excellent businessman by all accounts, he feared failure in business in America. Socially brilliant he was privately insecure, vain, suspicious, and grudge-bearing. Although he was popular among all the Americans who left records, he was politically very conservative to the point of harboring considerable bitterness toward those who disagreed with him. Latimer was perhaps the most ubiquitous merchant at the factories, always coming and going, engaging others in conversation, which practice earned him the nickname “the Gong” among the Chinese. Even though this never-ending activity served the commercial purpose of keeping him very well-informed, it  probably was due as much to his nervous nature as his need for information. His friend Henry Ralston commented on his “feverishness,” and Latimer himself admitted to smoking two dozen cigars a day. Despite his friendliness he craved formality. He boasted to his sister that no one at Canton called him “Jack.”99 Latimer developed the Indian trade far beyond the point where Wilcocks had left it and, at least for a short time, also threatened to dominate the market in Turkey opium as well. From about April 1829 to February 1831, Captain John Phillips, with Latimer’s patronage, kept a storeship, the Thomas Scattergood (owned by Wilcocks and named, inappropriately, after a famous Quaker preacher), on the Lintin station, where the vessel cleared some thirty thousand dollars.100 By 1834 Latimer was able to go home with what he called a “competency” that yielded him enough to settle down outside of Wilmington as a gentleman farmer and investor for the rest of his life. The very year that Wilcocks had gone to India, the newly created firm of Russell & Co. sent one of its partners, Philip Ammidon, to the same destination on the same mission. Ammidon, who had been resident agent for Brown

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and Ives for many years, had dealt in opium before the War of 1812; he was nearly as experienced in the trade as Wilcocks. In fact, if the Philadelphians had any rivals for the title of pioneers in this dubious traffic, they were these Providence merchants. Samuel Russell and Ammidon, the two members of Russell & Co., had been sponsored by the two major family alliances among Providence sedentary merchants.101 From the outset, then, Russell & Co. dealt in Indian opium. The firm was well connected and well run and—uniquely—was exclusively a commission house; it did no business on its own and thus never was in the awkward situation of competing with its correspondents. By 1827, the year Ammidon sailed for home, Russell & Co. was probably the most important American seller of the drug at Canton.102 Which of the firms was the biggest dealer was less important than the fact of their cohesion. Canton drug merchants of all nationalities, whether in the Indian or Turkish trade, worked far more closely together than did traders in legitimate goods. They used each other’s facilities, including storeships, and they signed and discounted each other’s notes and remained good friends both in Canton and after their return home. Within their closely knit fraternity, the opium trade was controlled about as well as it could be, considering that every year brought a larger supply, forcing a continual search for new markets. Price competition certainly existed, but it was rarely cutthroat, and everyone made money. Almost without exception Americans involved in opium during the last quarter century of the old China trade went home with fortunes after only a few years in the trade. The merger of Perkins & Co. and Russell & Co. in 1830 joined the most important American opium commission merchants and the largest Turkey importers in China.103 Although they had been allies before, they were now under a single, formal leadership. Russell & Company’s trade in the Turkish drug came mostly from its absorption of Perkins & Co., but the sources of its India trade may require further explanation. Perkins & Co. had imported some narcotic from India, latterly from a fellow-countryman, J.  B. Higginson, who was established in Calcutta, but the Lintin storeship also serviced a number of Parsee merchants. Notable among the latter were the Cowsajee, Framjee, and Hormajee families.104 The reader will recall that Ammidon seems to have traded in Indian opium very early. He had made several trips to the subcontinent and was well acquainted with the business. Heard (whom Ammidon recruited for the firm) had been an India captain for at least twenty years before joining Russell & Co., and his friends in Calcutta and Bombay continued to ship to him afterward.105 Despite these three sources of drug business, Russell & Company’s India opium trade seems to have been only about half as large as its Turkey business until after the cancellation of the East India Company’s charter and Joseph Coolidge’s drumming trips to the subcontinent.106 By the time of Lin’s opium confiscations, however, the great bulk of the concern’s drug was Indian. Although

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the old dominance of the Turkey trade had ended, Russell & Co. continued to be a major marketer of opium until the firm announced it would abandon the commerce early in 1839. Russell & Co. generally stood second or third in the trade, behind only the British firms of Jardine Matheson & Co. and Dent & Co. In the 1830s, the trade in Turkish opium declined in relative importance, although the amount imported seems to have remained fairly constant.107 The quantity of Indian narcotic brought to China, on the other hand, increased by 25 percent. The average annual importation was 3,000 chests higher for the period 1835–38 than for the previous three seasons. Of the over 20,000  chests surrendered to the Chinese in 1839, only 53 were Turkey. Russell & Co. gave up only four and one third cases of the Turkish drug out of the 1,437 it turned over to the authorities, although Hunter testified that the firm held back “about fifty cases.”108 Clearly the Turkey trade was both less important and in other hands by the end of the period.

Opium Opens a Second Seaport Where opium went, other goods followed. By the 1830s, smuggling involved more than drugs. Storeship captains at the outside anchorages soon developed a number of profitable lines of business besides opium. Robert  Bennet  Forbes wrote William Sturgis on 25 June 1831 that he had cleared some three thousand dollars in buying and selling provisions alone since he had arrived on the station eight months earlier. His cumsha and demurrage fees had amounted to another fifteen thousand dollars.109 He also dealt in rice, utilizing the Chinese government’s own regulations to help pry China open to trade still further. In an attempt to alleviate the occasional rice shortages that occurred in China, the government at such times reactivated an old law exempting ships carrying the grain from most of the port charges, thus creating another line of business for storeship operators. Although intended as a means of ensuring China against famine, the measure gave Western merchants a convenient means of avoiding the heavy duties at Whampoa.110 A vessel carrying rice could unload part of its cargo at Lintin, sometimes at a higher price than could be obtained at Canton. Other ships could take on as much rice from the storeship as needed to get by the Hoppo’s men. Rice was even rented on occasion. One supercargo noted with some amusement that he was paid five hundred dollars by an English captain for the privilege of being allowed to deliver part of his rice cargo upriver.111 Other opportunities immediately appeared. Manila and Batavia were both important sources of rice within a relatively short distance from Canton. Ships with insufficient funds for a China cargo could make a voyage to one of these nearby colonial ports and return with a cargo that would bring both a profit and privileged status at

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Canton. From opium, silver, rice, and provisions, Lintin merchants moved into other commodities, even bulky ones like raw cotton, textiles, metals, and occasionally export products. A permanent, small fleet of these floating warehouses grew up, and the trade there soon became so extensive that Lintin could no longer be considered a mere smuggling base. The Select Committee noted in 1825 that many of the Vessels engaged in the Country Trade now remain [at Lintin] during their stay in China without coming further up the river. Every facility is there afforded to the Opium Traffic and smuggling transactions to a considerable extent in other articles are carried on. A Vessel frequently remains there until a cargo of Opium is delivered and a lading of Rice has been obtained which  .  .  .  gives an exemption from Port charges.  .  .  .  The fees formerly paid to the Officers of Government for their connivance have been very materially diminished, the Opium Trade has nearly entirely forsaken Macao and a security has been given to it at Lintin which it has never previously possessed.112

In subsequent years the high port charges drove increasing numbers of ships from Canton to Lintin until most private vessels routinely engaged in at least some smuggling. “The Burthen therefore of Exactions is thrown upon the Honourable Company’s Trade,”113 and an additional advantage is given its competitors. “At one time during the last summer,” lamented the “Select,” “no less than 12 or 14 Ships were delivering or receiving Cargo [at Lintin]—at which time not a single vessel was at Whampoa.”114 By 1833 easily one quarter of the American vessels that came to China failed to enter the river at all, and a sizeable number of the rest touched at Lintin before making their way to the anchorage.115 Finally what the later years of the old China trade began, the Opium War completed. By 1841 the proportion was reversed. In the fall of that year, a typical issue of the Canton Press listed fifty British ships in China, only twelve of which were at Whampoa; nine American craft, four of which lay in the Reach; and four ships of other nations, only one of which was not at Lintin.116 Clearly Lintin had become a major port rivaling Canton itself well before the Treaty of Nanking formally “opened” China. In typhoon season and whenever the mandarinate became too threatening, the storeships would move elsewhere, most prophetically to Hong Kong, which ultimately became a dry-land and more or less legitimate version of the Lintin station. Lintin also foreshadowed Hong Kong in another respect—it became the base for trade up the China coast. As with earlier expansions of the opium trade, this northern extension of the trade developed as a response to the oversupply and low prices at Lintin. Moreover the trade in other goods, as with Lintin earlier, was dependent at first on the drug traffic. Woolens sold only when there was opium to lubricate the gears of coastal commerce. It was to relieve a burdened and depressed

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market that James Matheson had inaugurated the new trade in 1823, and others followed, including the American, Charles Blight, then a partner in Dent & Co. For reasons that are not quite clear, the trade was then abandoned.117 Another American, Josiah Sturgis, took the Grey Hound to the eastward in 1827, and others also attempted to reopen the coastal market from time to time.118 In 1833, when the Select Committee reported that the supply of opium at Lintin was so excessive that the price had sunk below delivered cost,119 William Jardine sent the Sylph, John Biggar, and Jamesina up the coast. This time the new trade paid off handsomely.120 Within a few years Canton opium houses were running small, swift schooners up the coast to supply their own stations. Little Lintins developed at Namoa, Chinchew (Ch’uan chou), Poo Too (Shanghai), and elsewhere. Clippers would bring the drug from India, even against the monsoon after the early 1820s and deliver their cargoes at Lintin or elsewhere as their consignees directed. The little vessels that took the opium up the coast often carried Chinese brokers with them in the later days of the trade in order to identify secret delivery points, as the station-ship areas became too “hot.” An elaborate system of signals would bring out “scrambling dragons” from the dealers on shore to collect the drug and pay in silver or sometimes even in gold. The larger firms worked their trade into very businesslike systems ensuring quality, honest weight, and stability. Captain William Morgan, Jardine Matheson & Company’s storeship master at Hong Kong and the kingpin of the firm’s coastal operations in the early 1840s, explained the routine: [A]ll the opium shipp’d from this [Hong Kong]  .  .  .  to the east coast is first examined by Mr. Stewart as to quality—and when the gross weight is short it is weighed and repacked.  .  .  .  When it is inferior in quality it is tested by the Shroffs and upon that valuation certificates are made out. I should tell you that when the opium comes over the Ships side the gross weight is taken, and the same is done when it is sent on board any ship for the Coast. If attention is paid to our gross which always goes with the opium, they can never be at a loss to find out if it has been plundered and when it has taken place  .  .  . if a chest is broken it is always repaired before it [is] sent over the Ship side.  .  .  .  I always send Mr. Wright the certificates as soon as the opium has been examined[.] . . . All our Captains that take opium from this sign for gross weight and are answerable with the ship’s company for any deficiency.121

Chinese official response to this new trade was slow, but it became steadily more effective. W. C. Hunter’s famous description of the placidly corrupt mandarin and the ease and expedition of the coastal trade on his voyage aboard Russell & Company’s ship Rose in 1837122 was certainly not typical of that commerce even one year later. Although the coast was long and patrolling made difficult by the many islands and inlets, by 1838 even Jardine’s

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Chinese Opium Smokers. Fanciful painting of an opium den, painted by Thomas Allom, engraved by G. Patterson. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

was complaining about the dullness of the trade. Chinese “persecutions”123 had finally become effective. From 1837 onward mandarin vigilance increased so markedly that Western boats, using the storeships as a base, began to deliver the drug themselves. The reluctance of the Chinese to attack foreign vessels made them safer than native craft, most of which had already been apprehended and broken up in any case. Even the junk trade was curtailed by the government’s enforcement drive and the consumption of the drug was drastically curbed both in the Canton area and along the coast. As William Jardine wrote shortly before his departure for home, The present persecution of Opium dealers & Opium smokers is not much more severe here, than on some previous occasions; but it pervades every province throughout the Empire, a circumstance never before known to have occurred.124

The campaign was empire wide in scope.

Lin Tse-Hsü and the Opium War To China the opium trade was an unmixed evil, and it is difficult to imagine any alternative to the course the Ch’ing government adopted. The drug was corrupting its officialdom, demoralizing its people (perhaps most importantly to Manchu authorities, its soldiery), draining its specie, raising the cost of living and generally undermining its authority, its finances and even what has come to be called its credibility. In 1838 Hsü Nai-chi, a high imperial

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official who had a close acquaintance with Canton, made a brief attempt to persuade the court to legalize the trade, but there never seems to have been much chance that the emperor would approve it. After September of that year, it was certainly a dead issue. Nevertheless many American and English traders continued to hope that the Chinese government would make the trade legal. Even granting the traders’ ignorance of Chinese politics, it is difficult to see what they thought the legalization of opium would have gained for China. They were well aware of the pernicious effect of the drug on the Chinese economy and government,125 and the physiological results of drug addiction were known to everyone. The opium trade was too damaging to Chinese interests, people, and power for China to permit it to continue. Yet not to legalize the commerce was to risk the possibility or even probability of a confrontation with British power. It was Hobson’s choice, even had the Chinese been aware of the degree of their own military backwardness. As the quantity of opium coming to China increased, the alarm of the Chinese government grew accordingly. Under the circumstances, the Manchu authorities probably did about as well as could have been expected in their attempts to stamp out the drug traffic, but we have no way of judging until China historians produce more particular accounts of the Ch’ing administrative record. Why these efforts were not more successful is not wholly clear. Western technological superiority was obviously a factor, but another important variable was the uneven commitment of Chinese officials. The number of honest mandarins was certainly higher than the opium traders believed, but underlings were notoriously corrupt. Whenever a dedicated governor would leave Canton on a tour of inspection, for example, the traders and brokers would prepare for a frenetic period of smuggling, even by the official boats themselves. Venality was surely part of the reason for this subversion, but mere greed may also be too simple an explanation. The Manchu rulers were less than popular among important segments of the population, and one wonders how significant a factor this dissatisfaction may have been in the government’s inability to enforce its will on foreign smugglers who were always able to find allies among the Chinese people.126 Beginning with the appointment of Wang Ch’ing-lien as provincial judge and growing more intense after the arrival of Governor General Teng T’ingchen in February 1836, the official attack on the opium trade mounted, and it was increasingly effective. Governor General Teng was an honest, rigorous administrator who later became very close to the ill-fated Lin Tse-hsü. Teng’s views on opium have been condensed into two sentences: “Let the law concentrate and hit hard at the wealthy and powerful; the rank and file will follow suit. Let decrees be strictly enforced on Chinese soil; the foreign goods [opium] will naturally disappear.” Teng was primarily “a  poet and a philologist,” who conducted the antiopium campaign “more as a duty and a gesture to please the emperor than as a crusade based on high principle.” Though foreigners accused Teng of all sorts of corruption,

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it is almost certain that the accusations concerning Teng’s venality were groundless. The alleged increase in the bribery rates during Teng’s tenure of office may well have resulted from his strictness in enforcing the opium prohibition. His faithfulness to the pronounced policy of the imperial government was fully reflected in Captain Elliot’s reports made throughout Teng’s three-year administration.

Elliot even worried that Teng’s program would force the trade into the hands of desperate men and thus create more, rather than less, trouble, a  prediction which proved only too accurate.127 Morse states that prior to 1839, “the trade, though not legalized, was fully regulated, and it is a misuse of terms to apply the word ‘smuggling’ to what went on then.”128 Today, especially amidst our own government’s efforts to stop the drug trade to America, this statement simply cannot be defended. The efforts of the imperial government to end the drug trade were more or less continuous, and they grew more strenuous in the late 1830s. “It is a fallacy,” a more modern authority reminds us, “to believe that before the advent of Commissioner Lin in 1838 the opium trade was not subjected to frequent and vigorous interruption by the Chinese authorities.”129 Year after year Canton traders noted the seizure of opium chests, the destruction of smug boats, and the imprisonment, execution, or deportation of brokers, dealers, and even smokers. As the East India Company relaxed its control and encouraged the production of opium, China was inundated with huge new supplies of the drug. Naturally the imperial government became concerned and redoubled its efforts to prevent smuggling, and it was remarkably successful from 1837 onward. If what was happening in the opium trade in Canton and along the coast was not smuggling, then surely it was war. When the “scrambling dragons” were replaced by European boats manned by armed Westerners and Lascars, the attendant risk of apprehension brought with it the virtual certainty of violence. Few Westerners were willing to permit an incriminating search that would result in their being exposed to the draconian Chinese drug laws. Strongly worded edicts and brutal incidents appeared with disturbing frequency. Captain Elliot’s reports and the commercial correspondence are full of mayhem and of the news that the drug traffic had stagnated as a result.130 Here was precisely the situation that the opium traders had always said would justify ending the traffic— energetic Chinese action which effectively cut demand. But the drug merchants were delivered from the necessity of abandoning either their trade or their moral pretenses at the last moment. After months and even years of deliberation, the imperial government finally took the one step that must bring it into conflict with Britain. At the end of 1838, the emperor despatched a special commissioner, Lin Tse-hsü,131 to Canton with broad powers to end the opium traffic. Lin was a very intelligent, resourceful scholar-administrator with a wealth of experience in

Commissioner Lin Tse-hsü, a special imperial representative who arrived in Canton in the spring of 1839 empowered to use all means to stamp out the opium traffic. His isolation of the foreign factories and seizure of the offshore opium provided the causa belli for the Opium War. Private collection.

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the Ch’ing bureaucracy. He accomplished his mission in short order, but his methods ultimately provoked war with the mightiest power in Christendom. The British government had always acknowledged the right of the Chinese to prohibit the drug traffic, but it eventually took military action because the law against opium in China had been a dead letter for a long time, . . . the local officials in Canton had connived and derived profit from it, and  .  .  .  suddenly Commissioner Lin had come on the scene and seized the opium by procedures entirely foreign to English legal usage.132

The late Hsin-pao Chang destroyed much of this argument by demonstrating the continuity between Commissioner Lin’s actions and the policies of Governor Teng before him. The law clearly had not been a “dead letter” for at least two years before Lin arrived. The isolation of the foreign community was another matter. Although less than “sudden,” the action was certainly “foreign to English legal usage.” Not even a Palmerston government would have been so arrogant as to insist that the Chinese adopt English legal usage in place of their own. Obviously the question is then simplified: Were the English ready to acknowledge that the Chinese were sovereign in their own country, even if that recognition meant stopping a trade that was important to England? By 1839 clearly the price was too high. Fairbank has put it cogently: the opium trade’s “economic value outweighed its moral turpitude,” and Western military and naval superiority enabled Britain to get away with it. Lin began by organizing a campaign against smokers, brokers, and dealers. He filled the prisons, closed opium dens, seized pipes, and opened a rehabilitation center to aid addicts who wished to reform. Then he turned his attention to the foreigners who brought the drug to Canton. Governor Teng’s exertions of the previous two years had already gone far toward stopping the trade locally, and along the coast other provincial governors had also energetically tightened enforcement of the drug laws. Yet though the price fell disastrously, the foreigners brought still more opium. When the commissioner arrived, there was a far greater amount on the ships at the outside anchorages than the Chinese were likely to consume, and much more would arrive in the course of the spring. After a brief but notably thorough investigation, Lin took action. Beginning 18 March he stopped all foreign trade, cordoned off the factory area, and ultimately demanded the surrender of all of the drug aboard the storeships. The novelty of Lin’s measures lay in the rigor of their enforcement and, most importantly, their direction against foreigners. Although Teng’s repression of Chinese smuggling had done its work, the barbarians were not touched. They remained free to inflict incalculable damage on China. At this point if China really wanted to stop the trade, some kind of physical seizure of persons and property of the non-Chinese involved in the traffic was inevitable. Commissioner Lin’s action was certainly not the most drastic form of

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detention. Presumably he could have arrested all known opium traders, driven all the residents into a stockade, thrown them into prison, or otherwise manhandled them, as some Third World nations have done more recently. In fact there was no violence. Lin merely isolated the community, withdrew its servants, and interdicted communications and trade until the opium was surrendered. The foreigners so restrained, were adequately fed, and though they complained about having to do their own work, after a few days their personal chores such as laundry, mending, cleaning, and cooking were performed by the linguists’ employees, whom Lin allowed through the lines. A holiday spirit prevailed at the factories. Hunter wrote at the time, “Our greatest fear is, that the Boats from the Shipping at Whampoa, where there is a force of 8 or 10 Hundred men, may attempt to force their way to Canton to relieve us—in which case, the Chinese would probably fall upon and massacre us.”133 Briefly Lin’s “durance vile” was not very vile. But in the Lockean atmosphere of the mid-nineteenth century, this sort of thing was regarded very seriously indeed, especially the uncompensated seizure of property. In particular it was unwise to sequester British property when Palmerston was in the Foreign Office. Moreover the Chinese doctrine of group responsibility for the crimes of individuals had no parallel in Western jurisprudence, except in the ominous case of wartime. It was considered barbaric by all Westerners at Canton. Lacking any protection by their government, the Americans were perhaps more sensitive to the mood of the Chinese government. Certainly Russell & Co. was under no illusions. R. B. Forbes had written nearly two months before Lin’s arrival: The Government are determined to put down the drug trade & I think in a year or two it will only be conducted by desperate men outside—We have already informed our Indian friends that we can make no further advances on the drug & that the 1 per cent which our Mr. Coolidge took off shall again be charged on remittances & our staunch friend Houqua says if we don’t cut the drug trade “in toto” he will cut us.134

On 27 February the firm sent out a circular announcing that it was withdrawing from the traffic altogether. On 4 March Russell & Co. wrote John Murray Forbes to explain some of the more prominent reasons for adopting this course. We are of opinion that the measures which the Government are pursuing must render the Opium business dangerous as well as disreputable.135 [H]eretofore you are aware that the connivance of men high in authority has given a legal character to the drug trade which had been conducted almost as openly & with as much facility as any other branch of business in which we have been engaged. [I]t has not had the character of a smuggling transaction until the river trade commenced[. I]n addition to the odium which we think will hereafter attach to the business we fear that the interests of our constituents generally might suffer if we Continued in it, & we are

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fearful that the Government will embarrass the legal trade by denouncing all agents dealing in Opium & it is quite possible they may forbid the Hong Merchants dealing with such agents.136

But it was too late. The foreign community, leaderless since the exodus of the East India Company and the failure of Lord Napier’s mission, could hardly resist Lin’s demands. For a few days it attempted to stall, and then, more by default than by conscious decision, it accepted the leadership of the chief superintendent of British trade, Sir Charles Elliot, who arrived from Macao on 24 March in full uniform. In fine Victorian style he ran up the Union Jack and took charge. The drama of Elliot’s action for a time obscured the fact that there was very little he could do except surrender the opium. His assumption of liability for the confiscated drug in the name of the Crown convinced even the most doughty of the holdouts, for the drug market was saturated. Her Majesty’s promise to pay was far better than nothing and may have rescued some holders from serious embarrassment. The detention lasted about six weeks, while the opium was being delivered to Lin. When he had received about fifteen thousand chests, the Commissioner lifted the blockade and trade resumed. The British immediately left Canton in protest, appealed to their sovereign for relief and redress, and refused to sign the pledge, required of them by Lin, never to engage in the opium trade again. The Americans signed with minimal hesitation, but eight of them followed the British example and appealed to their government. This group petitioned Congress to support Britain in her attempt to bring the Chinese to a recognition of Western usages. They did not ask for military support so much as for diplomatic action to secure for themselves the same advantages sought by the British.137 This memorial was quickly followed by another from China merchants in America. The latter was much more moderate for, although they were in many cases related to the Canton merchants, the stateside traders “most earnestly” deprecated any suggestion that the nation “interfere in the contest between England and China or . . . enter into any diplomatic arrangement whatever.”138 Confronted with conflicting suggestions from interested parties and having no China policy anyway, the State Department pursued its habitual course—it would do nothing. Regardless of what Britain did, the US government was not going to risk involvement in an East Asian war, and the Canton merchants would have been obtuse indeed had they believed that the United States would behave differently. Meanwhile until the British blockade of Canton became effective, American residents would be content to accumulate fortunes in the lucrative trade between Canton and the outside anchorages. British merchantmen were arriving daily, ready to discharge their cargoes and load up for the homeward voyage. Yet all British merchants had left Canton, and Elliot forbade any of his countrymen to resume trade. Thus the more accommodating Americans

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were soon busily engaged as go-betweens. As they grew rich on the river commerce, their opinions became noticeably milder, and they could afford to smile at the harsh remarks of the envious British traders, who had no choice but to pay the high freight charges demanded by American vessels. Of course it could not last. The first blood of the war was not shed until 2 November 1839, when a few British warships destroyed a junk fleet off the Bogue. This was the “Battle” of Chuenpi (Ch’uan-pi). On the following 18 June the Chinese unsuccessfully attempted to send fireships among the British vessels outside the river, and that very day the first ship of the British expedition, HMS Alligator, arrived in the Gulf. The rest of the fleet, under Admiral George Elliot, Sir Charles’s first cousin, followed shortly afterward. Still there was no ground action. Instead the expedition sailed north almost immediately to seize Chusan and continue to the mouth of the Peiho. With warships in the neighborhood of Peking, Elliot hoped the emperor would see the futility of resistance and open negotiations. The governor general of Chihli Province, Ch’i-shan (Kishen), the most exalted official the Elliots were able to see, persuaded them to return to Canton and conduct their talks there. Late in November 1839 negotiations began at the mouth of the river, but they bogged down. Ch’i-shan, if not his imperial master, was quickly brought to see the logic of the situation when the British fleet reduced the Chuenpi forts to rubble in a single day with great loss of life among the defenders. The Convention of Chuenpi, signed on 20 January 1841, gave Britain Hong Kong, an indemnity of $6 million, and the right to communicate directly with the upper echelons of the mandarinate at Canton. In retrospect it was a sensible agreement, and most of the American residents who expressed an opinion welcomed it, but neither belligerent was ready to accept anything so moderate. The emperor would ultimately be forced to accept worse terms, but not before enormous quantities of Chinese blood had been shed, and the war was brought much closer to Peking. Palmerston, even more ignorant than the Son of Heaven about affairs in Canton, also disavowed the Convention and scolded poor Elliot furiously. The treaty was either too generous or too severe, apparently, so the war would go on. Both Ch’i-shan and Elliot were recalled in disgrace. Elliot had little support among the British residents other than James Matheson, who was in the captain’s confidence, and, oddly enough, James Innes.139 A member of Dent’s probably voiced the view of most of his countrymen at Canton when he wrote that he had been unable to “discover that Capt. Elliot’s present arrangement has a single supporter—not even an American.  .  .  .  They are preparing to go to Canton, laughing at our disgrace, but still looking around for themselves.”140 This critic must have been blinded by his enmity, for few Americans who expressed an opinion disapproved of Elliot’s moderate policy, and most seemed to regret his recall. They regarded the British merchants’ criticisms as foolish, greedy, and/or bloodthirsty.

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While awaiting Peking’s reaction to the treaty, the Chinese feverishly began improving their fortifications, bringing in fresh troops, buying Western vessels and armament, and in other ways giving solid evidence that they regarded the agreement as a mere truce. In the second week of March, the British moved their forces upriver, demolishing all opposition, both on land and on the river, with ease. They took the foreign factory area on the eighteenth.141 The Chinese thereupon agreed to an armistice, which was broken on 25 May by a Chinese fireboat attack on the British fleet anchored in the river. This time the British riposte was more effective. Reinforced by the shallow-draught steamer, Nemesis, the newly arrived General Hugh Gough landed troops north of Canton and occupied the heights commanding the city. Hurriedly the local authorities agreed to a $6 million “ransom” of Canton, though they neglected to report that expensive fact to Peking. Gough’s attack was called off in the eleventh hour, to the disgust of the British military and naval leaders. The city’s inhabitants were relieved, but both peasants and gentry in the countryside were outraged by what they considered a craven capitulation and by the savage behavior of Gough’s soldiers. At San-yuan-li, a village north of Canton, the country folk launched a spontaneous but futile attack on Gough’s men. Chinese popular mythology has since converted this incident into the beginning of Chinese nationalism. In reality it was a local phenomenon that exacerbated the already strong native xenophobia of Kwangtung, something that would make for future problems both for foreigners and for the dynasty.142 Although the incident was reported at the time, foreigners paid it small heed. James Matheson quoted a member of Wetmore & Co. to the effect that the incident was merely “an affray occasioned by some of our Soldiers taking liberties with the Chinese women,”143 and the anonymous British “tea merchant” connected with Dent’s refused to believe it at all.144 Trade resumed after the truce, but there would be no peace without another northern campaign. During the summer the British, now under the leadership of Elliot’s replacement, Sir Henry Pottinger, took Amoy, and by the end of October they were once more in possession of Tinghai in the Chusan Islands and of both Chenhai and Ningpo on the mainland. Although the British had indulged in looting and indiscriminate slaughter before this time, Ningpo was the first city deliberately sacked. After the repulse of a Chinese counterattack on 9 March, plundering became less controlled and massacres grew more common. Two months later the British struck again. Chapu (Cha-p’u) fell on 18 May, Woosung on 16 June, and Shanghai on 19 June. The Yangtze was now open, and for the rest of June and July, the fleet proceeded slowly upriver. Chinkiang, at the junction of the Yangtze and the Grand Canal, fell after a particularly bloody battle. The members of its Manchu garrison either died fighting or committed suicide together with their families, and the expedition came to a halt before the walls of Nanking. Here, after some delaying tactics by the Chinese, negotiations

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began with I-li-pu, an elderly Manchu, who had dealt with the British on Chusan, and Ch’i-ying (Keying), a younger, less experienced Manchu, who had been made an imperial commissioner for the occasion. On 29 August the Treaty of Nanking ended the war. The document contained much harsher terms than the Convention of Chuenpi, reflecting the changed military situation. Britain received Hong Kong, a $21 million indemnity, and the right to conduct relations with China on a basis of equality. Five ports (Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghai) were to be opened to trade and to the residence of British subjects, including a British consul. Regular customs duties were to be worked out and published, and— formally ending an era—the Cohong was abolished.145 The Americans in the Canton-Macao area watched these events with mixed fear, outrage, pity, and hope. Most Americans were anti-imperialist, and they were repelled by the ferocity of the British soldiery. A number even wished Chinese resistance might be more successful. Persons as different as Isaac M. Bull, Augustine Heard, and Edward Delano wrote of their sympathy for the suffering Chinese and their disgust with the looting, rapine, and slaughter that accompanied British military action. Edward Delano was so upset by the completeness of British victory that he scribbled angrily, “I have now no pity for them—the idea of 10,000 men submittancing [sic] 10,000,000!!”146 This was the outburst of a frustrated younger man. Coolidge, who had been roughly handled the previous year by Chinese soldiers, called the treaty a “most lame and impotent conclusion” to the war147 and thought a resident minister in Peking worth more than the $21 million indemnity. “I should say the terms are altogether too lenient,” he stated flatly, and he blamed that leniency on the influence of Captain Elliot who was now at home.148 Coolidge had come around to the opinion of many British merchants (it may be important that he was writing to one of the most influential of the latter). Among some of the older merchants, on the other hand, there was a different view. “Whatever faults the Chinese may have, & they are not faultless, bad treatment of commercial foreigners is not one of them & they appear to me to have the right side of the question in their quarrel with the Eng,”149 wrote Augustine Heard. Still later he commented, [T]he Chinese have been severely & I think most unreasonably dealt by[. T]hey have been obliged to . . . relinquish the policy that has guided them for centuries & promise everything that their invaders required & although they dow [sic] not now openly avow their feelings and express the mortification with which their humiliating position fills them, . . . it seems to me evident that they are pursuing a course to enable them at a favourable moment, when they shall be relieved from the awe in which they now stand of a foreign force & when they shall have acquired some military Knowledge . . . to shake of they [sic] yoke which now galls them.150

Despite this sympathy it was a rare American, whether merchant or missionary, who did not welcome the opportunities presented by the treaty and clamor for equal treatment. That demand eventually produced the mission of Caleb Cushing, who stepped ashore at Macao on 24 February 1844.

Part Two The Residents and Their Firms

4 The Dominant Firms The Early Residents

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the road to fortune was the road of trade. Typically a young trader began as a clerk in an established company, where he received his basic business training. He then became a supercargo,1 a businessman traveling with a ship but having plenary power over the goods aboard. A sedentary merchant in America had no way of knowing what market conditions in Canton would be when the ship arrived, months after leaving home. Reliance on the supercargo’s judgment was necessary, and his power of decision was absolute within the limits of his instructions, which were necessarily very broad, as a general rule. The supercargo ultimately determined the destination of the ship, the length of the voyage, and the return cargo, if there was any. At times he even sold the ship itself and discharged the captain and crew in a foreign port. In 1789 four ships belonging to Elias Hasket Derby, the great Salem merchant, found their way to the anchorage at Whampoa. His supercargoes very wisely sold two of the vessels on the spot and loaded the others with teas for the United States. The following year Samuel Shaw disposed of the famous Massachusetts to the Dutch company at Canton. Sometimes a supercargo would remain abroad, settling in a foreign port where he found exceptional opportunity. In such cases his erstwhile employer would often help finance the young merchant in his early years. Thus, prior to the Civil War, many large American companies helped plant allied firms all over the world, and little American mercantile communities sprang up in such out-of-the-way ports as Honolulu, Havana, Batavia, Rio de Janeiro, Coquimbo, Monterey, Singapore, and elsewhere. It was evident from the start that the intricacies of business at Canton were such that a resident merchant enjoyed many advantages over a transient. A resident was usually better acquainted with Chinese ways of doing business, regulations and local merchants than were most supercargoes, and he was always more familiar with the current state of the Canton market and its fever-chart fluctuations. In addition he occupied a sizeable factory and was able to save the shipper the formidable expense of renting a hong. 143

Major Firms at Canton, 1784–1844 establishment at Canton an occasional or regular visits to Canton connections: sponsorships, transfer of business, mergers, agencies, schisms, etc. A few partnerships, most single proprietorships and all of the individual agents do not appear on this chart. The minor concerns shown here are those on which substantial manuscript information exists. Some dates are problematical, especially dates of first arrival, but most are documented. Some terminal dates should probably be explained. For example: Blight & Co. probably

directed its business to Dent & Co.; Latimer seems to have given his remaining commission business to Wetmore & Co. and his drug trade to Jardine Matheson; J.P. Sturgis simply retired to Macao for a number of years, but he was back in business by the time of the Opium War; Gordon & Talbot continued in business at New York for years after its dissolution at Canton.

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His credit was established in China, and in case a ship’s funds proved insufficient, he was better able to get a loan or find freight to fill the hold for the return trip. Probably the first to propose settling an agent at Canton was Robert Morris, one of the original backers of the Empress of China. He approached Samuel Shaw on the matter, but they failed to come to terms.2 However Shaw and his partner, Thomas Randall, operated briefly as commission merchants under the title Shaw & Randall while they were in Canton in the early 1790s.3 From that time on, merchants who settled in China generally welcomed any commission business that came their way. By the 1820s, a few agencies and commission houses at Canton dominated the trade and made up the year-to-year basis of the Canton American community. Some merchants continued to send supercargoes, however, and some supercargoes acted for a number of stateside merchants. Bryant P. Tilden of Salem, from 1815 to 1837, and John Dorsey Sword of Philadelphia, from 1835 to about 1841, were examples of men who ran this kind of operation. Other merchants at Canton disdained such primitive practice, but apparently it paid. There were several gradations of resident agents as well. American dealers in China goods would sometimes send out agents on a more or less temporary basis to handle their business.4 Once these agents had arrived in China, they not infrequently employed local commission houses to do their business. In fact a number of the founders of Canton houses originally had gone out as agents, and later agents often joined already existing firms. The largest agency ever at Canton was that of Thomas H. Smith of New York in the early 1820s. Smith paid very well, and his men were never tempted to set up their own concerns or join the competition, until Smith went bankrupt.5 Edward Thomson of Philadelphia avoided the problem of defections by sending out his sons as agents. In the later period agents were common,6 and they changed their status back and forth from agents to commission merchants to supercargoes with confusing frequency. Before the arrival of Samuel Snow in 1798, a number of Americans spent protracted periods in China. They generally did so because of an unforeseen event such as storm damage to their ship or the sale of the vessel that brought them. Captain John Kendrick, master of the Columbia on her first voyage to the Northwest Coast and China, provides a good example. In 1790–91 he spent over a year in the Canton area refitting the Columbia’s companion vessel, the Lady Washington. In the winter of 1792–93, he was again on the China coast for an extended stay. This second visit was prolonged because his ship had been dismasted in a typhoon only four days out of port on its return voyage to the Northwest Coast, and Kendrick was forced back to Macao.7 Another mariner stranded in Canton at this time was Amasa Delano, who arrived in 1790 aboard Major Samuel Shaw’s famous Massachusetts, Captain Job Prince. When Shaw sold the vessel to the Dutch East India Company, Delano, who had shipbuilding experience, was hired by the Dutch

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Company to supervise repairs on a ship damaged in a typhoon. For the next decade and a half, Delano, like many other American seamen, wandered in and out of Canton on various voyages about the Pacific and Indian Oceans.8 Another of these wanderers, John Howell, who had been a clerk on the Columbia, reportedly set up a “house of agency with Mr. Bagman, third Supracargo of the Dutch House” in 1795.9 Because the French occupied Holland that year, it was expected that Americans would come together with members of the Dutch factory at Canton to work out ways of circumventing the British interdiction of the continental tea trade, a great part of which entered Europe through Amsterdam.10 Louis Dermigny, historian of the European China trade, takes the career of the colorful A. E. Van Braam as exemplary of the Dutch-American connection in these years.11 It was not until the last few years of the century that American merchants established their countinghouses in the factories at Canton on anything but a temporary basis. Samuel Snow, a Rhode Islander who became the second American consul in China, arrived in 1798 on the Browns’ Ann and Hope (Captain Benjamin Page), of Providence. Snow was a pioneer in several ways. Not only was he the first substantial resident American commission merchant, he was also the first American consul to be really resident, and the builder of the American factory.12 He was soon joined by James Oliver, who represented the Blight family of Philadelphia.13 The Browns and the Blights continued to be important China trade families for years, but only the Blights sent family members to Canton. Oliver’s nephew, George Blight, arrived to relieve him shortly after Oliver had left in 1804. He remained until 1814 and may have been the first American in the Indian opium trade. When he died in 1835, he left a fortune of nearly eight hundred thousand dollars, an immense sum for the time. His successor in Canton, Charles Blight, became a partner in the British firm of Dent & Co. after the War of 1812, and he also retired with a large fortune. By the early 1830s Blight & Co.,14 manned by younger brothers William Pitt and James H. Blight and perhaps others, was established in both Canton and Philadelphia. Another resident, a contemporary of Oliver’s, was young Sullivan Dorr, who arrived in 1799 to handle the Canton end of his Massachusetts family’s fur trade from the Northwest Coast of America. His crafty father, Ebenezer, a Roxbury tanner turned mariner, was one of the earliest American merchants to enter the profitable commerce in peltries. He gained a reputation for sharp dealing and enjoys the dubious honor of being the first Yankee to land (1796) and commit improprieties at a California port,15 a practice that became almost traditional in the ensuing fifty years. Sullivan Dorr, whose crude spelling and primitive sentence structure betray an imperfect education, sold cargoes, bought and shipped China goods for his relatives in the United States, and reequipped vessels for their return to the Northwest Coast.16 Dorr also received some commission business from Rhode Island, for when Snow left Canton, he turned over his commission business to Dorr

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and Oliver jointly.17 As a consequence Dorr was able to leave China with thirty or forty thousand dollars18 after a stay of only two years and three months. He complained at the time that never had any American merchant other than his family consigned directly to him from the United States. His “agency business” came from his connection with Snow and from Northwest captains who, baffled by the complexities of the Canton system, preferred trusting a fellow Yankee to an unknown Chinese merchant.19 Other Americans came to seek their fortunes before Dorr left. Ten days before Christmas of 1802, the Providence ship Resource, under Captain William F. Megee, arrived, bringing a young man who was to become one of Providence’s greatest merchants. This newcomer was the talented Edward Carrington, who was to make himself a fortune in a little over eight years at Canton.20 Dorr, who never liked Canton and wanted badly to go home, was glad to turn over his business and the vice-consulship to Carrington within two months of the latter’s arrival. Carrington was a natural choice because Samuel Snow, the duly appointed consul, had written him a very favorable letter of introduction. They were old friends: Carrington had lived in Snow’s home in Providence during the 1790s. As consul, Carrington continued to act in Snow’s name until President Jefferson finally conferred the appointment on him in January 1806. He also carried on a commission business selling the incoming cargoes, negotiating the credit, and purchasing the homeward cargoes for ships consigned to him. At first Carrington’s correspondents were almost exclusively Providence traders, but he soon broadened his clientele to include merchants in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. In fact, he was probably the first resident Canton commission merchant to develop a truly national representation among the merchants for whom he did business. Carrington was also one of the first American residents to be an intimate of a major hong merchant. Apparently he served in somewhat the same capacity to Conseequa (P’an Ch’ang-yao),21 who was then one of the more affluent members of the Cohong, as Cushing did to the more famous Howqua years later. As with Cushing, Carrington’s special relationship provided him with credit and preferential treatment in purchasing cargoes. It must have proved profitable and may well have been one of the sources of Carrington’s fortune. Carrington soon found other means of making money as well. He had charge of the American factory, which was jointly owned by Snow and William F. Megee; he sold supplies to ships in port, loaned money at high rates of interest, and speculated on the Canton import market. It was this latter activity that probably brought Carrington the bulk of the fortune which he took home in the form of China goods in 1811. The time was auspicious, for the War of 1812 soon halted the China trade, and Carrington “managed” his teas and silks with such diligence that he was soon a very rich man. Carrington’s career as US consul was an illustrious one. He arrived in

Edward Carrington, American consul and founder of Edward Carrington & Co., a major East India firm of Providence. Portrait by James Sullivan Lincoln, oil on canvas, ca. 1843, Rhi X5 275. Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

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Canton just at the end of the short truce between the major contenders in Europe (the Peace of Amiens). Thus the next few years were a very troubled time for American commerce. He was constantly writing letters to British naval officers, the Select Committee, the Chinese, and the Department of State. British commanders in the area exhibited an insolence and callous indifference to American lives and property that seems almost incredible to a modern reader of Carrington’s correspondence. Hosea Ballou Morse, writing in the 1920s from the vantage point of the British East India Company records, said of Carrington, “Though only a mercantile consul, [he] showed himself . . . to be worthy of the diplomatic service.”22 From the departure of Carrington to the end of the War of 1812, no individual or firm at Canton really stands out. Trade fell off drastically with the beginning of hostilities, and the Americans stranded at Canton were hard-pressed to keep busy, let alone show a profit. There were shadowy concerns like Milnor & Bull, a New York concern with houses at either end of the trade; individuals like Daniel Stansbury, who represented Minturn & Champlin, also of New York; the Philadelphians James and Benjamin C. Wilcocks and Charles Blight, representing themselves and their families; Philip Ammidon, whose ship President Adams had been wrecked in the China Sea in 1812;23 and various others on their own account, like Rhode Islanders P. W. Snow (son of Samuel) and Captain William F. Megee, who drifted in avoiding his creditors. But after the war, increasingly, one name and one firm at Canton developed a preeminent commercial reputation— John Perkins Cushing and Perkins & Co.

Perkins & Co. In the fall of 1789, young Thomas Handasyd Perkins was in Canton as supercargo of E. H. Derby’s ship Astreae, Captain James Magee. Captain Robert Gray of the Columbia arrived in November fresh from the Northwest Coast. From Joseph Ingraham, first mate of the latter vessel, Perkins learned what John Ledyard had been trying to tell American merchants for several years past—that a trade in furs, especially the glossy black sea otter skins from the Pacific Coast of America, could be extremely profitable if exchanged in Canton for teas.24 The following year, Perkins, Captain Magee, and Russell Sturgis (Sr.) sent Ingraham back to the Northwest Coast in their newly acquired ship, Hope, on a fur voyage. From this time on, T. H. Perkins was in the China trade on his own account. In 1792, with his elder brother, Perkins formed James & Thomas H. Perkins, a firm that was to send dozens of talented young Perkins relatives into the commerce. The fur trade proved fabulously lucrative, if ephemeral, and, as we have noted, it made the fortunes of the Perkins brothers. It was to manage the Canton end of this commerce that J. & T. H. Perkins

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sent out Ephraim Bumstead the season after Carrington arrived. Bumstead, who had learned his trade in the Boston firm’s countinghouse, was to be the resident partner of Ephraim Bumstead & Co. of Canton. With him came John Perkins Cushing, the sixteen-year-old nephew of the Perkins brothers.25 T. H. Perkins had adopted the boy after the death of Cushing’s erratic father. Although the young man reportedly had literary and artistic leanings and little interest in commerce, he was to become the shrewdest and most successful American trader in China. Within two years Bumstead was dead, and young Cushing had assumed the whole burden of the Canton office some three years before he had attained his majority.26 Colonel Perkins, who had been badly frightened by the news of Bumstead’s death, was moved to admiration of his precocious nephew’s skill, when a masterfully selected cargo of tea arrived in Boston to an excellent market. The firm of Perkins & Co. was not formed until 1806, though it had been in operation for two years by that time, with Cushing as the sole resident partner. From Carrington’s departure in 1811 until its demise in 1829, this firm was easily the most important American house in China. A second major Boston firm was organized in 1810 by Perkins relatives, Bryant & Sturgis,27 which was often closely associated with the Perkins brothers. Cushing proved extraordinarily imaginative in developing new lines of trade and making mutually profitable arrangements with Chinese, British, and other American traders. He was to be a central influence in the building of several fortunes, including those of Howqua, his uncles, Thomas H. and James Perkins, Samuel Cabot, William Sturgis, John Bryant, Samuel Russell, George R. Russell, Henry Parkman Sturgis, Benjamin C. Wilcocks, John R. Latimer, the Forbes brothers, and a number of others. In his alliance with Howqua, in the development of the Turkey opium trade, the creation of a postwar commerce between Canton and South America, the subversion of the East India Company’s monopoly of the trade in British-made cloth, and in his never-failing judgment of China cargoes, Cushing repeatedly displayed a commercial talent of the first order. By 1830 the Perkinses’ London agent estimated that the firm carried on half of the American China trade and all of the European tea trade except that conducted by the Dutch East India Company.28 Ironically by that date Cushing had retired and Perkins & Co., Canton, had disappeared. The indispensable factor in Cushing’s success was his association with Howqua (Wu Ping-chien, 1769–1843). The great Chinese trader was the third son of the founder of his firm29 (Howqua I, Wu Kuo-ying, 1731–1810). The family had originally come from Fukien in the seventeenth century and settled in the Nan-hai district just outside Canton. By Howqua II’s time the family was of the gentry class,30 although its earlier status is not certain. Howqua’s wealth, however, was very clearly a major factor in consolidating the family’s social position in China,31 just as the collective fortunes of the

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Boston Concern members established the allied Massachusetts families in the burgeoning social hierarchy of America. Howqua specialized in what were probably the most profitable branches of the trade for a hong merchant. He contracted with tea merchants, making advances a season ahead of time, and he sold mostly to the British East India Company and to Americans, especially to Perkins & Co. before 1830 and to Russell & Co. thereafter. Because the Honorable Company’s credit was impeccable and the American trade was generally a cash business, Howqua was never critically short of money, unlike many of his fellow hong merchants. He also enjoyed several very important advantages, not the least of which was his own very considerable business genius. As head of the Cohong, he exercised great personal influence on prices and policies in the Chinese market. Because his own fortune was immense, he was able to avoid the difficulties that beset other security merchants, and he did not have to rely on the enlightened charity of the East India Company for aid in difficult moments. The only hong merchant who approached Howqua in shrewdness and success was Puankhequa I (P’an Chen-cheng), and he was of an earlier generation.32 Besides his domestic investments,33 Howqua seems to have made money in a number of ways: he acted as middleman for the products the foreigners took away from China; he owned land, buildings, and facilities used by the Chinese and foreign merchants alike at Canton; he speculated in commodities (he cornered the market in pepper in 1820)34 and on exchange;35 he acted as a money lender and he often shipped abroad on his own account. In this last capacity Howqua was in a very strong position. He bought at a reduced rate directly from the grower (or was, himself, the producer), and he sold in the auction houses in American and European cities. In this way, Howqua freed himself from the vagaries of the Canton tea market and collected the profits of tea grower, hong merchant, shipper, and commission house. Finally Cushing began a practice that the Boston Concern continued throughout Howqua’s life: investing the old hong merchant’s capital in American development, especially railroads. The one element Howqua could not supply on his own was a completely trustworthy American agent. Because he neither spoke nor wrote English,36 he needed someone with these skills who was also well versed in Western law and commercial procedures. In Cushing, Howqua found these qualities together with everything else he required—access to the superior technology of Western shipbuilders and navigators, the skill of American sailors, the business acumen of the Boston Concern and its affiliates worldwide, the advantageous American customs position of importing in American ships under American title, and superior connections in England and Europe independent of the East India Company. Howqua’s dealings with members of the associated Boston families date back at least to 1804, when John Cushing was only a clerk for Bumstead, and

Howqua (Wu Ping-chien, 1769–1843). Oil. Howqua (aka Houqua) was the shrewdest and greatest of the hong merchants. His was probably the largest private fortune of his day. He befriended the Americans, particularly the members of Perkins & Co. and later Russell & Co. Courtesy of the Forbes House Museum.

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Howqua I was still head of the Wu family and business.37 The relationship developed and deepened as the years wore on. During the War of 1812, Perkins & Co. could do very little, because the British fleet swept American merchantmen off the seas. At Canton, Cushing had very little business of his own to occupy his time. Thus he managed Howqua’s overseas business, directed legal protests against confiscations of the Chinese merchant’s property by the belligerents, and had Howqua’s funds forwarded from America through London and Calcutta.38 After the war Perkins & Co. and Howqua shipped on joint account, even in opium. This latter trade emphasized the hong merchant’s need for an absolutely trustworthy foreigner to handle his affairs. A very cautious, even timid man (his Chinese nickname was “the timid young lady”),39 Howqua would have been in very serious trouble had his American friends ever divulged the nature of all their dealings with him. So well kept was the secret that it was not even suspected until recently,40 and the closeness with which Cushing and Howqua cooperated was the subject of complaint even by firms that were not in direct competition. Samuel Russell & Co. (the predecessor of Russell & Co.) explained to Edward Carrington et al. on 6 March 1821: We could undoubtedly purchase of Mr. Houqua, and obtain as long credits as Mr. C[onsequa] used to do for you, but we know that we cannot, generally speaking, buy of him on so favourable terms, as we can of others. He will have a pretty good profit on his goods. & others are content with less, and independent of this consideration, we are not the first to be served, if he has a very prime chop of Teas, we might possibly be able to purchase it of him provided another person [i.e., Cushing] did not want it & we would give him a good price for it.41

As a long-range commercial arrangement, the Howqua–Perkins & Co. alliance worked very tidily to offset the fluctuations of both the Chinese and American markets. When prices were high and supplies short, Howqua always had more high quality teas than any other merchant in the Cohong.42 Conversely, when prices were low, Howqua could undersell anyone else in the market at New York and Boston and still make a profit. Howqua unquestionably was one of the greatest merchants of the century. His investments were huge and his fortune enormous,43 even by bloated modern standards. His methods, whether Chinese or Western, were so effective that the American merchants he employed found them useful in the conduct of their own business in later years. John Murray Forbes always gave due credit for his later success to the experience he received in Howqua’s hong. It was not until after the War of 1812 that the Howqua–Perkins & Co. combination took mature form. The great hong merchant increasingly restricted his American trade to Perkins & Co. Baring Brothers established a connection with the alliance, and Samuel Cabot became the workhorse of J. & T. H. Perkins in Boston. It was also not until the 1820s that the associated firms secured their dominant position in the Turkey opium trade.

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Although the story of Perkins & Co. in its last decade is not only the story of Turkey opium, there can be no doubt that the drug was a critically important item in the concern’s business. Perhaps some idea of the profitability of the commerce can be derived from R. B. Forbes’s estimate of the probable gain on a shipment of Turkey. He figured that on one hundred thousand pounds purchased at $3.00 FOB Smyrna, the firm might realize 37.5 percent.44 Such profits made control of the Turkey trade highly desirable, but such control took capital and reliable connections in several, widely separated places. Perkins & Co. had built up a worldwide commercial combination which functioned as smoothly as one could wish. The whole structure was based on a gifted, prolific, and powerful kinship group in Eastern Massachusetts whose two representative Boston firms, J. & T. H. Perkins and Bryant & Sturgis, were sometimes collectively called “the Boston Concern” or “the PCBS concern,” at Canton, so closely did they cooperate.45 Central to this informal alliance were the Perkins, Sturgis, and Forbes families, although other names also appeared from time to time. Members were linked by ties of blood, marriage, religion, business, friendship, and politics, and for many years they constituted the most formidable American combination in the China trade. The informality of the alliance should be emphasized, for as closely as the members cooperated, they occasionally fell out. In the era of family capitalism, domestic squabbles could affect business and vice versa. Moreover there were few of the binding legal obligations that modern business relies on. Instead there were the immemorial ties of the most personal primary group—the family. The combination has been described as “a network of personal relationships which remained, first to last, informal, fluid, complex and highly personal.”46 Just as the Concern kept a member in China, it also had one in London, Joshua Bates, a partner in Baring Brothers & Co. of London and Liverpool. Born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, Bates had close emotional and family ties to the Boston families. His wife was Lucretia Sturgis, a cousin of William Sturgis, and he always credited Thomas H. Perkins with giving him his start in business. Bates was sent to London by William Gray shortly after the War of 1812, but he soon developed an independent business. From very early in his residence in England, he seems to have acted for the Boston Concern in that country. Samuel Williams of London was the group’s banker until his failure in 1825. The following year Bates founded a house with John Baring and immediately received the Concern’s trade. When he joined Baring Brothers & Co. in 1828, that firm became the Concern’s agent in the British Isles with Bates as the partner who handled its affairs. In 1851, when Bates was ill and over sixty, he persuaded a cousin by marriage and former partner in Russell & Co., Canton, Russell Sturgis, to join Baring Brothers. Accordingly the Boston Concern’s influence in the great English house was preserved for many years after Bates retired.47 With sound leadership and a substantial capital base in both America and

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Britain, the Concern lacked only a similar component in China. Cushing’s intimate relationship with Howqua completed the triangle. Thus Perkins & Co. was able to command the most complete information, the best credit facilities, and the shrewdest commercial direction on three continents—the three corners of its global trade. After 1829 Howqua confined his foreign business almost exclusively to Russell & Co., which had absorbed Perkins & Co., thus reducing his risks and increasing his control. Howqua had always been a powerful influence on the policies of the firm, and in these latter days, he saw to it that the Concern was cautious, well-managed, and profitable. Small wonder that Russell & Co. was the strongest and best-informed American firm on the China coast. In the period from the end of the War of 1812 to the demise of Perkins & Co., Cushing and Howqua worked out their system, adapting to changing circumstances, increasing their security, and involving other Americans, seemingly as beneficiaries of Cushing’s generosity. As Cushing built up his own trade (i.e., that of the Boston Concern and Howqua), he grew less interested in commission work. In Cushing’s estimation, conflicts of interest, increased risk, the loss of personal control, and other disadvantages apparently outweighed the prospects for profit. The most important part of his import trade, the traffic in opium, was illegal. Because the Chinese government inaugurated several antiopium campaigns in these years, Howqua was growing apprehensive and Cushing certainly must have had second thoughts as well.48 Thus in 1818 Perkins & Co. announced that it was abandoning all commission business to the new firm of J. P. Sturgis & Co. Sturgis had arrived in 1809 aboard the Atahualpa, captained by his colorful uncle, William Sturgis. He had remained, patronized more or less by his cousin, John P. Cushing, ever since. On the same day that Cushing informed his correspondents of his firm’s abandonment of the commission business, circulars went out announcing the formation of James P. Sturgis & Co., with three brothers, James P., Henry, and George W. Sturgis as partners.49 The Sturgis brothers were not the merchants that Cushing was, and James P. was especially bullheaded in refusing to follow orders.50 Moreover Henry died in 1819, and George withdrew. In the meantime, Cushing began giving commission business to others, including Wilcocks, and most especially, Russell & Co. By the late 1820s, Sturgis’s business seems largely to have been confined to the management of the Boston Concern’s storeship at Lintin, in which function he was replaced by Robert Bennet Forbes in 1830. Some Cushing protégés had protégés of their own. James P. Sturgis befriended a young man named Timothy G. Pitman,51 who first appeared in China about the same time that Sturgis himself arrived on the Atahualpa. Some ten years later Pitman formed a partnership with the able but very nervous William French, who had come from Boston via the Hawaiian Islands in 1819. French brought with him a letter of introduction from Sturgis’s

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uncle William, and the new concern, Pitman & French, opened its doors within the next year. James Sturgis advanced funds “out of friendly motives . . . to enable this young firm to carry on its business,” and it shortly became a very diversified concern indeed. Pitman & French kept a hotel,52 ran a store, and sold ship’s supplies, in addition to its commission business and its own ventures to other ports. At the end of 1821, the firm added a $600-a-year clerk, Daniel T. Aborn, member of a Providence seafaring family, and Pitman went home for the second time in twelve years. Two years later the concern expanded. Pitman went to New South Wales as supercargo of the Euphemias, apparently to establish a branch office in Sydney. This office later attracted investments both from James P. Sturgis and B. C. Wilcocks. On 1 January 1826 Aborn was admitted to partnership, and shortly thereafter French set up another branch house in Hawaii. With such scattered interests and only one partner, Aborn, who remained regularly at Canton to coordinate the business, Pitman & French seems to have been spread very thin. After Aborn withdrew and went home in 1830, the firm went to pieces. A Hawaiian source states that it “dissolved of its own limitations as well as the death of the first named partner [Pitman],”53 who succumbed to tuberculosis on 29 March 1832.54 In some measure Cushing was forced to play Lord Bountiful to Sturgis and others at Canton. His business was becoming too extensive, too risky, and too time-consuming to be handled by the only system he knew and trusted. Had he decided to expand in the fashion that Russell & Company did in the 1830s, Cushing would have had to reorganize his countinghouse radically, as Russell & Company did under John C. Green.55 Thus instead of restructuring his tiny firm into a larger, more complex organization, Cushing spun off business to Sturgis, Wilcocks, Russell, and others. In venturing for himself, his Boston partners, and Howqua, he had developed new trades. During the Latin American revolutions, Cushing and others56 carried on a prosperous direct commerce between Canton and the Pacific Coast ports of the Americas. The rich trade in tea and silks formerly carried by the Manila galleons was in American hands for a few years, and it served to fill in the dismal years of the early 1820s when very little else paid a profit. More annoying to the British was a new trade supposedly opened by some enterprising Philadelphians but prosecuted most successfully by the Boston Concern. The Honorable Company had originally developed the Chinese market for English cloth. Company control maintained quality and created a monopoly that the Americans, together with British allies, were now able to evade very profitably. Because both Yankees and Philadelphians were already accomplished smugglers, it is perhaps not surprising to find them competing for first place in this trade. A biographer of Samuel Archer, a substantial Philadelphia

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merchant of the period, maintains that Archer entered the commerce even before the War of 1812.57 If this statement is true, Archer probably deserves credit for being the pioneer. Other Philadelphians, Nathan Dunn58 and Edward Thomson (before his collapse in 1825), were also deep in the business. Probably the most successful of the Americans in this commerce, however, were the members of the Perkins-Sturgis-Cushing alliance. They had entered the trade sometime around or even before 1818 and, through their superlative connections in England and China, were able to secure a large share of the trade. One of their agents in England stated flatly that they were the first in the commerce. He also admitted to practicing the same kind of guile that characterized the firm’s dealings in China—imitating the East India Company’s packaging, trademark, and other distinctive characteristics.59 Several years later, in a document intended for internal circulation only, R.  B.  Forbes explained this dubious enterprise in some detail. He warned against doing anything differently from the East India Company, as it injures the Sale at the rate of $1 pr ps as it enables the Country dealers to distinguish our goods immediately from the Comps  .  .  .  there should be no alteration in the mode of packing our goods & those of the Coy even in the most trivial aspect except tearing out their mark on the paper labels . . . the arms &c to be the same if there is no objection thereto.

Clearly the aim was to confuse the buyer. Later Forbes gave the figure of 22.6 percent profit on an 1828–29 cloth shipment aboard the Milo, which was sold to a shopman. He seems to have considered this low, for he estimated the possible gain on a hypothetical shipment of British woolens at 39.5 percent, a very tidy profit for the era.60 The head of the London operation at this time was Frederick W. Paine, a nephew of James Perkins by marriage. Paine married Ann Cushing Sturgis, a blood niece of both Perkinses, in London, thereby cementing further the family tie at the same time he was conducting the Concern’s European business. Paine had been the Perkinses’ agent in the Mediterranean, but as the Smyrna houses became more reliable and London became an important pick-up point for the drug as well as the source of woolens and the financial center of the firm’s European trade, he settled there in 1818. As the Perkinses’ general agent, he handled the buying and despatching of cargoes from England and Europe and the sale of China cargoes in the same area. He was aided by Charles Everett, who “superintended the orders and took delivery of the goods,” and by Samuel Williams, the Concern’s London correspondent and banker until 1825.61 Paine’s largest supplier of cloth was Benjamin Gott of Leeds, who was “probably the outstanding figure in the West Riding woolen trade” and “one of the ten or twelve largest employers in Europe.”62 In 1821 Paine placed an order with Gott for £28,000, the largest order Gott received in the period. The collapse of Samuel Williams in 182563 put a temporary crimp in the

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alliance’s cloth trade, at the time probably second in importance only to its opium business. Like the drug traffic the commerce in cloth depended upon the East India Company’s monopoly. The Hon. Company was obliged by its contracts to buy cloth dyed in London, although Leeds had made many technical advances and sold material at substantially lower prices. The Americans, of course, were under no such restriction.64 In addition, of course, the Americans enjoyed the support of Howqua and their usual shipping advantages. Their vessels were smaller, more cheaply built, and faster. Crews were far smaller; they did not travel in convoy and could change business tactics and ports at will. Captain and crew were personally interested in the voyage and were, thus, highly motivated. Finally there was none of the red tape that bound the Company’s vessels, so the Americans could operate with far greater flexibility.65 The East India Company simply could not compete. It was the British private traders’ envy of this American trade, combined with the pressure from Midlands textile manufacturers chafing under the Hon. Company’s monopoly, that ultimately brought the revocation of the Company’s charter in 1834.66 James Matheson, always a champion of free trade, informed a correspondent in 1822 that he doubted that the Select Committee could finance its investment by drawing on India alone because of “the diminution of their [the Company’s] export trade to China in consequence of American competition.” In a postscript he noted further, “A large importation from Liverpool in the American ship Columbia has occasioned a great depression in British Piece Goods.” Two weeks later Matheson wrote that Cushing’s competition in the cloth trade to Batavia had made him cautious in that trade as well.67 The cancellation of the East India Company’s franchise on the British China trade ended much of the American advantage in this commerce. The New Englanders, however, were soon buying Lowell cloth for the same purpose. American cottons had appeared in China earlier, the first major importations having arrived in 1826–27, a time when it was becoming increasingly clear that the attack on the Hon. Company would ultimately be successful. In that year the Americans brought as much calico to Canton as the British.68 This was the beginning of what became the great cloth trade of the latter part of the century,69 though for years American textiles would not be able to compete with British goods, especially as the English were wont to dump their surplus cottons in China. In 1820 Cushing installed his young cousin, Thomas Tunno Forbes,70 as  his clerk in Canton and began to train him to take over the business.71 Over the next eight years, Cushing and Forbes became very close, and the latter learned the trade thoroughly, showing much the same commercial talent for which other members of his family became renowned. On 30 June 1827, on the eve of Cushing’s departure for home, Forbes formally became a partner in the firm.72 Actually for the purpose of dividing profits, Cushing had considered Forbes a partner ever since the younger man had left on his last

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visit home in 1826, and in the intervening period, the business had prospered handsomely.73 Thus by the time he was admitted, Forbes was already on the way to becoming rich, and he began to think of going home himself. Meanwhile Cushing was finding business in America very different from business in China. Colonel Perkins had offered Cushing his own place as head of his Boston firm.74 The older man had long since turned his attention elsewhere; James Perkins had been dead since 1822, and Samuel Cabot, the colonel’s son-in-law, had been the effective force behind the business for several years. Cabot had the appearance of a pirate, because he had a patch over one eye, which he had lost in France years earlier.75 However he had the soul of an accountant and a personality reported to be glum, humorless, and taciturn. Cushing did not like him, and he had no wish to take on the burden of the Perkins sons, James Jr., an alcoholic who died that very year, and Thomas Jr., a playboy. Finally the authority on the family believes that the differences in business styles between T. H. Perkins and Cushing could not easily have coexisted in the same countinghouse. The colonel was an optimist, willing to take chances that the more conservative Cushing abhorred.76 R. B. Forbes probably reflected accurately the thinking of Cushing (and of Forbes’s brother Thomas) when in 1828 he reported that “each one of the former firm will in future do business separately or joining as the whim may take them [as was the fashion among members of the Boston Concern generally]. There will only be Thomas T. Forbes, commission Mercht instead of P & Co., Canton with the wt of millions on his back.”77 It was in the expectation of this state of affairs that Robert Bennet Forbes, at the urging of Cushing and William Sturgis, was preparing to go to Canton as his brother’s understudy when the untimely death of Thomas Forbes interrupted everyone’s plans. When Cushing had sailed away from Canton in April of 1828 on the Milo, he was confident that he had left the business in capable hands. And so he had, but he left nothing to chance. Not only had he trained Thomas Forbes thoroughly for several years, he left him extensive instructions, dated 31 March 1828, which describe merchants, business practices and policies, investment of idle funds, hong merchants’ debts, the management of ships that would come to the firm’s address, instructions in anticipation of future business and other matters that Forbes would have to manage. Had Forbes lived to train his successor, the later shape of the American trade could have been far different. However on 9 August 1829, Forbes drowned in a typhoon. Ironically it was the arrival of a Perkins ship, reportedly bearing the news of a major shake-up in the Boston Concern, that led Forbes to embark for Macao on his fatal trip.78 Among Forbes’s effects friends found a document placing the business of Perkins & Co. in the hands of Russell & Co. Samuel Russell, head of the five-year-old commission house, had been close to Forbes and was well

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acquainted with Perkins & Company’s business. He took charge and ran things smoothly and without interruption. As soon as he received the news of his nephew’s death, Cushing rushed back to Canton to save the business. Of course he could not have been ignorant of Forbes’s contingency plans; moreover, he was not one to waste a journey. He returned to Canton on the Bashaw, loaded with one thousand cases (133,300 pounds) of Turkey opium. Because he had no intention of remaining in Canton and no other member of the family yet had either the experience or the desire to succeed Forbes, Cushing made arrangements to dissolve the Canton firm that he had founded nearly twenty-five years earlier. He left the business of the Boston Concern with Russell & Co., thus combining the two most important American opium dealers in China. Their styles and functions were importantly different and merit emphasis. By 1829 Perkins & Co. was nominally a buyer of China cargoes for the Boston firms with which Cushing was affiliated, and it also shipped on its own account. Actually Cushing orchestrated the entire trade in Turkey opium, setting prices, regulating the volume, and disciplining interlopers who failed to come to terms. Cushing, his partners, and allies were the real owners of much of the drug they sold on their storeship. Russell & Co., on the other hand, was exclusively a commission or agency house with no property interest in the goods it handled. It sold only services, marketing imports (including opium, which it sold on Perkins & Co.’s storeship), investing the proceeds, securing freight, negotiating bills, finding insurance, and the like. And a smaller, but increasing proportion of its business came from India, especially in the form of opium. Thus in terms of the trade, the merger was not the radical change it may have seemed. Cushing had been the chief local patron of Russell & Co., which had largely succeeded J. P. Sturgis & Co., as the main recipient of Cushing’s commission business. One of the possibilities Cushing had considered for the future of Perkins & Co. had involved Russell. R. B. Forbes had remarked at the time that he might go to Canton and join Russell & Co.,79 but as he put it himself, he was never enamored of the idea of “learning my duties from strangers & crowding myself into a house from mere influence of freinds [sic].”80 Thus Cushing had little real choice. Under the circumstances he did the best he could for his family. He wrote Samuel Cabot, Bennet Forbes in his letters led me to suppose that he had made up his mind not to remain hear [sic] & in consequence of which I had come to an understanding with Russell that he should take another partner into his Concern who[m] I should approve of, & that our business in future should be confided particularly to that partner.  .  .  .  I also agreed with Russell that he should take John  Forbes into his house as an assistant & that as soon as he qualified himself he should become a partner, in this way I think there would be an opening for those who are coming forward quite as good as if a new establishment were formed.81

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Thus, with Cushing’s signature, Russell & Co. became the most important American house in the East.

Russell & Co. Samuel Russell (1789–1862) was a talented and extraordinarily amiable young trader from Middletown, Connecticut. He had arrived in Canton in 1819 under an arrangement with several leading merchants of Providence with whom he had been associated for several years, including Edward  Carrington (at this time the largest shipowner in Rhode  Island), Benjamin and Thomas H. Hoppin, and Cyrus Butler. For the first five years in China, he had operated under the style of Samuel Russell & Company, tied by contract to the interests of his Providence partners, but on 1 January 1824 he had gone into partnership with the merchant who shared his factory, Philip Ammidon.82 A diminutive man with a large, misshapen nose, Ammidon came from Mendon, Massachusetts. His sister had married the important merchant, Jonathan Russell (apparently no relation), and his brother Otis had married Russell’s sister. Also Ammidon had represented Brown & Ives at Canton for some time, so the new firm enjoyed significant commercial connections quite independent of Cushing. However some of these ties proved weaker than the partners could have wished, for both the Browns’ and Carrington’s interests soon turned elsewhere.83 Cushing’s support and the commissions he gave them, therefore, must have seemed very important to the members of the young concern. Russell & Co. had been founded exclusively as a commission house. At  least until the Opium War opened new opportunities, it apparently never deviated from this policy. Its risks were minimal, and as it was the only such concern at Canton, its profits were as assured as they could be. The firm was a success from the beginning. Besides its American trade, Russell & Co. soon developed a thriving business with India, Manila, and even Great Britain. The two partners spelled each other at Canton in twoyear intervals, so that there was always one member in China. By 1828 Russell’s business had expanded sufficiently to warrant taking in a third partner. Ammidon, then at home, had been scheduled to replace Russell at Canton that year. Instead he wrote that he was unable to come and sent in his place William H. Low (1795–1834), a trader with experience in Salem and Philadelphia. Russell accepted the substitution, but probably because of Low’s inexperience and the acquisition of Perkins & Co.’s business the next year, he  remained in Canton to direct the house. In 1830, however, when Ammidon again sent a replacement, Russell rebelled. He and Low accepted the new partner, Augustine Heard, but they terminated the old partnership as of 1 January 1830 and omitted Ammidon in the new reorganization that joined Perkins & Co. to the firm.84 Cushing, who had arrived on the Bashaw with

Samuel Russell, founder of Russell & Co. Courtesy of the Russell Library, Middletown, Connecticut. Photo by David Schultz.

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Philip Ammidon, founder of Russell & Co. Oil. Private Collection.

a cargo of opium, insured the continued influence of his family in Russell & Co. in several ways: 1. He named Augustine Heard, an old acquaintance and an East India captain for many years, as the representative of the Boston Concern. He alone would handle its business. 2. Robert Bennet Forbes and his ship Lintin were to replace James P. Sturgis and the Tartar on the Lintin station with a monopoly of all of Russell & Co.’s business at the outer anchorages. 3. Seventeen-year-old John Murray Forbes was to become an “assistant” in the firm, in line for advancement to a partnership.85 To clinch the matter Cushing introduced his young cousin into Howqua’s hong, where Forbes became the old merchant’s English secretary and eventually the manager of all his overseas trade (which went out in Forbes’s name). Although Perkins & Co., Canton, was formally going out of business, Cushing was leaving the Boston Concern powerful clews on its successor. In its absorption of Perkins & Co., Russell & Co. combined the business of the two largest resident American companies. It was never to lose that early lead on its competition. “Kee Chong,” as it was called in pidgin,86 was to remain the preeminent American house on the China coast throughout nearly the entire century. One of the reasons for Russell’s success undoubtedly

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was its refusal to conduct business on its own account. Knowing that the firm was not in competition with its correspondents, a sedentary merchant in America would, presumably, be more likely to entrust Russell & Co. with important business than if he feared a conflict of interest. However it was precisely such a conflict that the absorption of Perkins & Co. produced. The trade of the Boston Concern was so significant and the bond between that firm and Russell & Co. so obvious that others began to suspect the latter of favoritism in various forms, such as reduced commissions, better teas, and faster service.87 The record lends some substance to the rumors that soon began to circulate in the community at Canton.88 Russell & Co. seems to have collected only half commissions on the Boston Concern’s business. Another cause for worry was the appearance of two new competitors at Canton. The 1820s had been poor years for the China trade, a situation that was complicated both by the rather typical postwar depression that began in 1819 and the glut in China products that resulted from the customs juggling of people like Thomas H. Smith and Edward Thomson (q.v.). A number of well-established sedentary merchants had left the trade entirely.89 When Smith and Thomson collapsed in 1825 and 1828, respectively, the American market for China goods was thoroughly disrupted,90 and, at the end of the decade, Smith’s Canton employees were cast adrift. Soon two of Smith’s former agents realized that their families and their New York connections gave them an opportunity to strike out for themselves. Salvaging what they could from the wreckage of Smith’s business, they organized as Olyphant & Co. At almost the same time, three Philadelphia supercargoes came together to form Nathan Dunn & Co. As a result, in the very year that Russell & Co. acquired the Perkins firm, it faced two new and vigorously competitive concerns at Canton. Although neither was in the opium trade, a new set of problems soon appeared in the drug business also. John R. Latimer was fast building up an Indian opium business to rival Russell’s, and Robert B. Forbes was making a very good thing of his hold on the firm’s opium sales. Low estimated that he was clearing “upwards of $30,000.”91 This guess was very close to the mark,92 though Heard and Low had no control over the business; they were compelled by the agreement with Cushing to do all of their trade at the outside anchorages with the Lintin. They did not keep their views from Forbes. The quarrel soon involved J. P. Sturgis and left a legacy of bitterness after Forbes went home. At that time the matter was settled when Heard and Low put up twenty thousand dollars for a mere half interest in the ship! Forbes obtained the further concession that one quarter of the net profits from the firm’s share of the Lintin’s business was to go to his brother, John Murray, who was still a clerk at the Canton factory.93 It would be difficult to imagine more dramatic evidence of both the profitability of the opium commission business and the bargaining power of the Boston group. Russell & Co. was never again to

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William Henry Low, 1833, member of Russell & Co. Oil by George Chinnery, M23404. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

be forced into such an expensive expedient. Thereafter the storeship was commanded by an employee, Captain Frederic W. Macondray, who was chosen by R. B. Forbes and later by Captains Daniel Gilman, James B. Endicott, and others. This was not the worst of the firm’s problems. In the early 1830s, Russell & Co. began to suffer from the structural flaws of many partnerships—the personal failings of its principals and the difficulties of adjusting to greatly expanded business. While Heard was well liked by the other Americans at Canton, Low could be abrasive. He soon alienated a number of fellow residents, notably James Sturgis94 and John Latimer. Both of these men were well-connected traders with far more experience at Canton than either

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Heard or Low. Such a situation could raise a threat to the business if only through the bad reports enemies could send abroad. The genial Russell’s influence seems to have been maintained chiefly where it was now least effective—in the organization of the firm. Russell & Co., like Perkins & Co. before it, had operated very simply with one or two partners and as many clerks. Both firms had depended upon the traditional sources of kinship and friendship to produce more help as the company grew. Now the old organization was no longer adequate. Heard and Low had three clerks: William C. Hunter; young Forbes, who also had duties in Howqua’s hong; and Joseph  Coolidge, an attractive Bostonian of impressive connections sent out by Russell. Yet Coolidge was sent to India in the summer of 1833 as a response to the growing competition in the opium business. In any case there was no clear separation between work performed by the partners and that of the clerks, and the overlap between business and private matters was broad. The letters sent out in this period are particularly informative because they combine commercial with personal news, local gossip, and other irrelevant matters. Interesting as such correspondence is to historians, it is of questionable efficiency in the operation of a commission house. Business poured in—from the Boston Concern, from Russell & Co.’s regular correspondents, and from the new clients secured by Russell’s energetic drumming. The partners scrounged up help, but they were overwhelmed. They literally worked themselves sick.95 Hunter fell ill in 1831 and was forced to go home, not returning until March 1833. A month earlier Forbes had sailed for America on doctor’s orders and would not return until August 1834. Heard was forced to leave in the summer of 1834, and William H. Low contracted tuberculosis and died en route home that same year. This turnover, sickness, and consequent disorganization made for mishandled orders and irate correspondents. Some major clients even left Russell & Co. during this confused period, albeit temporarily for the most part. To give him credit, Cushing had foreseen the difficulty to the extent of making a vague arrangement with John Latimer to enter the house at an unspecified future date.96 Latimer was very much interested at the time, but as his relations with Low grew more strained and as he observed the deterioration of affairs at Russell’s countinghouse,97 his interest waned. Additionally the terms of Russell’s offer, which came rather late, were so much beneath Latimer’s expectations that he was insulted.98 Russell seemed unable to find anyone suitable in America; he had already exhausted the list of his own family members. Edward Augustus, his brother, had been forced to leave Canton several years earlier with a liver complaint and was now established elsewhere. John Murray Forbes had refused Russell’s offer.99 Heard, a bachelor, had several nephews, but they were still very young. David Low had suggested his nephew, Abiel Abbott Low, to Russell,100 but the young man had not yet begun his apprenticeship. Russell & Co. was

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desperate for a senior man with experience and “commercial friends,” a man who could take over immediately. Toward the middle of September 1833, at the beginning of the busy season, Low and Heard decided to admit Coolidge and John Forbes if the latter returned to China. They also agreed to approach John C. Green, then resident agent for N. L. & G. Griswold of New York.101 Green accepted, becoming head of the house on 1 January 1834, in place of the exhausted Heard. Green was from a line of New Jersey farmers and preachers. He had attended the Lawrenceville School and had spent his entire business career up to that time as an employee of the Griswolds, one of the most important China trade houses in New York. His acrid personality and outstanding business ability are well illustrated in a passage from a letter of John Murray Forbes, written some sixteen months after Green had joined Russell & Co.: Green’s mouth has been one constant pucker . . . he has . . . an immense deal of harshness . . ., scold and slam bang at his desk. I sometimes feel like telling him to be quiet or be kicked out of the office, the merry creature. And yet he’s good at business though I think too narrow-minded and grasping with the Chinese who all hate him—for this and for the ill-temper which he displays whenever he has no immediate end to gain with them.102

In the few months he and Heard were in the countinghouse together, they developed a venomous quarrel that eventually had to go to a referee for settlement. Green’s redoubtable commercial abilities more than compensated the firm for his grouchiness. His lack of social grace may well have been just what Russell & Co. needed to accomplish some of the necessary reforms. He quickly solved the more pressing problems with heroic measures. Under his leadership the house became an efficient, well-organized commercial machine. He soon rationalized the work of the countinghouse, assigning tasks according to rank and talent. Clerks did clerical and minor outside work, leaving the partners free for more important matters. He saw to it that correspondents were treated uniformly and quickly. The practice of favoring the Boston Concern with half commissions came to an end.103 Although the business of Bryant and Sturgis was lost, probably other matters figured more importantly in the decision than the cancellation of the preferential rate.104 Green revised the letter writing routine so that business communications thereafter rarely contained anything but business, and one looks in vain for the personal comments and other nonessentials that made earlier correspondence such interesting reading. Outgoing letters were numbered, went out promptly in triplicate, by different vessels. Even the penmanship improved, probably as a result of the new division of labor, under which professional copyists did such work. Getting rid of the factory’s supernumeraries was one of the most difficult reforms for a man of good nature. Fortunately no one at Canton ever accused

John Cleve Green, member of Russell & Co., railroad builder, philanthropist, leading benefactor of Princeton University. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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John Green of that besetting sin. From the beginning, Russell & Co., like other firms, had permitted the officers of ships coming to its address to reside at the factory, eat at its generous table, and generally come and go as they pleased. Unoccupied transients were forever wandering in and out of the office, asking questions, telling sea stories, and otherwise disturbing partners and clerks alike. Green soon drove the transients back to their ships by charging them five hundred dollars for “factory rent.”105 This unpopular but necessary reform enabled Russell & Co. to give up one hong, which had been rented for the sole purpose of giving free lodging to people the partners did not want in the factory. Thereafter the firm could plead lack of room to accommodate transients.106 All the evidence testifies to the effectiveness of Green’s reforms. Two months before Green was scheduled to leave for home, R. B. Forbes remarked admiringly on the “very high reputation which the house has acquired under Green’s administration.” He reserved special praise for the firm’s organization of business and division of labor.107 Even Joseph Coolidge, who had small reason to like Green, stated “no one else can take his place” for the company’s business depended on him, and Coolidge further noted that even Baring Brothers put its confidence in the firm because of Green. The British firm’s large ventures required a first-rate merchant in Canton.108 Besides the addition of Green, Russell & Co. had other strokes of good fortune. Earlier, in the spring of 1832, Russell had concluded an agreement with Thomas Wren Ward, American representative for Baring Brothers. Thereafter the Canton firm had the right to draw on the London concern— an immense advantage, because it provided great new resources at the place where they were most needed. It was particularly valuable as the firm was then making advances on opium consignments, a competitive necessity, because traders were growing more numerous with the end of the East India Company’s monopoly.109 Another stabilizing event occurred in the opium trade itself. One of the reasons for approaching Latimer had undoubtedly been the hope that his extensive opium business would fall to the company. Latimer had hoped to pass on his trade to an old friend, Joseph Whitall, but when the latter failed to arrive, Latimer seems to have given his American trade to Joseph Archer and his opium commerce to Jardine, Matheson & Co. For some years previously Latimer had been Jardine’s “confidential councillor on all transactions with my countrymen and their Tea inspector.”110 Because Russell & Co. and Jardine’s had cooperated cozily for years, there was no danger of disruption of the market from that direction. Also by December 1835 Russell & Co. had begun sending smuggling vessels up the East Coast of China, opening a potentially vast new market for the firm.111 There were also pangs of readjustment. Luckily they were temporary. In August 1835 John Murray Forbes returned to Canton as supercargo of the

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Logan for the Boston Concern to discover that he had been a partner in Russell & Co. since the first of the year. All that was required was his acceptance; he, of course, gave it but not without considerable soul-searching and a session or two with Howqua. One of the problems the decision created was a conflict of interest: Forbes had come out to manage two cargoes (the Tartar was following) for the Boston Concern. Now he had shifted sides, so to speak, and was doing his uncle William Sturgis’s business112 as a resident commission merchant in Canton. All might have gone well but for the market and the late arrival of further instructions from Sturgis. The result was a sharp exchange of letters in which Sturgis made it clear that he had been most dissatisfied with Russell & Co.’s handling of teas earlier and thought he had avoided the problem by sending Forbes out as his agent. Now Russell & Co. had mismanaged another season’s teas as a result of a decision made by that very agent, who charged full commissions for what bordered on malfeasance from Sturgis’s viewpoint.113 Although the matter was patched up by members of the family (Cabot and Cushing, presumably), the Concern switched its business to Wetmore & Co. until 1837. N. L. & G. Griswold, Green’s former employers, also deserted Russell & Co., probably for similar reasons, but, like the Boston Concern, the Griswolds also returned after a time. Whatever the cost of the temporary loss of Boston Concern business, the acquisition of new accounts more than compensated the firm. Howqua remained loyal, and John Forbes returned to his job as manager of the old hong merchant’s overseas business. His position made him privy to valuable commercial information and made his letters welcome all over the world. Forbes soon employed these advantages and his own talent for subtle advertising to drum up business at long distance. The nonresident partners and now Forbes’s brother, Robert Bennet, were doing the same thing more directly in America.114 The admission of Green also had other, unplanned results. Russell & Co. had begun as a rather typical “terminal general partnership,” kinship and friendship-oriented, which was dissolved and reestablished every few years with a slightly different membership. When one partner attained what he thought was a sufficient fortune, he would retire and younger family members would be admitted, or, at least, this was the idea of the principals. The difficulty was that neither of the founders produced any family members to take their places.115 Thus what had begun as a Providence concern (Ammidon and Russell and their connections) had become a Boston and New York firm. Also though the first organization had called for Ammidon and Russell to spell one another at Canton, the great press of business during the tea season required more hands. At least two partners in China were required throughout the year. Supplying these partners led to changes in the nature of the firm. In September 1833 young Abiel Abbott Low arrived to become a clerk and continue his family’s claim on the company.116 Heard and Coolidge, like the

Abiel Abbot Low, member of Russell & Co., leading New York merchant, railroad builder, president of the New York Chamber of Commerce, and philanthropist. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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Lows, were from Massachusetts and had very strong connections; John Forbes was from a Boston Concern clan. Only Hunter, of the young men who lasted more than a short while, did not fall into the pattern. He was exceptional in several respects. He was born in Kentucky but came to China via New York; he was the only American trader at Canton who could speak Chinese; and he had begun in Thomas H. Smith’s factory. Then came Green. Over the next few years, Russell & Co. added a number of clerks from New York, Rhode Island, and elsewhere, though most continued to come from the same areas and families that had been represented in the firm since the early days. Green was particularly active in introducing young men who were not connected with the constituent kinship groups. In the reorganization of 1836, A. A. Low was admitted, although he had been with the firm for only three years as a clerk. Hunter, on the other hand, without Low’s family connections, on the surface had a stronger claim on Russell & Co. He had been hired by Samuel Russell himself back in the 1820s. Nevertheless he was admitted only when Green voluntarily relinquished a one-sixteenth share of the firm in his favor.117 Apparently it was Green’s influence that brought in Edward King (son of a Newport, Rhode Island, physician), who had joined the firm as a clerk about 1834. King became a partner on 1 June 1839, when he received a share from Green, who was leaving for home.118 The admission of clerks to partnerships was by no means automatic. Some of the apprentices who were not accepted were at least as interesting as those who subsequently joined the firm. One was Mortimer Irving, a nephew of Washington Irving. He lasted about a year. The general opinion of the partners was not very favorable, but Irving left as a result of a dispute with Coolidge, who liked almost none of the apprentices. As  might be expected they reciprocated his feelings. Another clerk was William W. Wood, son of a famous actor and impresario who founded and ran the “Old Drury” on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. Wood was a very witty and charming person with many talents, but he never made much of a mark as a businessman. He was the author of a book about China, Sketches of China (Philadelphia, 1830), sometime editor of the Canton Register, and owner and editor of the Chinese Courier.119 Clearly the influence of John Green on Russell & Co. was electric. He probably saved the firm by forcing through the rigorous reorganization that the concern needed. The company that met the crises of vastly increased business in 1839–41 was lean, hard, and markedly more efficient than the disorganized, flabby organization Green had taken over in 1834. Finally it was he who made the pledge, on behalf of the firm in 1839, to abstain from the opium trade—a promise that might have been better kept had Green remained in Canton. Although John Green’s leadership resolved the structural difficulties that had nearly destroyed the firm in the early 1830s, new problems soon replaced

William C. Hunter, author, member of Russell & Co. Oil on canvas by George Chinnery. Courtesy of the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

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them. The same year Green assumed leadership, the East India Company lost its monopoly of the British China trade, and a host of new private merchants appeared at Canton. The termination of the East India Company’s franchise to all British trade “between the Capes” meant that the Turkey trade was now open to British private traders, and the American monopoly promptly evaporated. Because the members of the Boston Concern had been the preeminent merchants in the trade, Russell & Co. was the largest dealer in that product on the Chinese market. Thus the firm felt the new competition most sharply. Not only were there many new British traders, but at least two new American firms established themselves at Canton the very spring the Hon. Company made its exit: Russell, Sturgis & Co., which seems to have been formed as a result of the falling out of former partners and friends of Russell & Co.,120 and Wetmore & Co., an alliance of Philadelphia and Connecticut families with connections in Providence, London, New York, and the West Coast of South America. The first of these new firms made its appeal to many of the same commercial interests as Russell & Co. Although it replaced Dunn & Co., the second concern was basically a new alliance, which depended on some very different sources of patronage and was potentially the greater threat to Russell & Co.’s predominance. In the opium trade, on  the other hand, the dangerous factors seem to have been reversed. Wetmore & Co. was never a very vigorous competitor in the drug trade, possibly because of its members’ moral doubts, while Russell & Sturgis had no such compunctions. In any case, Russell & Co. saw itself menaced on two fronts. The strengthened house proved more than equal to the new challenges. Russell & Co. continued to gain constituents, even winning back a number of those who had left the firm during its time of troubles.121 The loss of control of the Turkey trade was more than made up by the expansion of the concern’s British and Indian business,122 and it was now sending ships up the East Coast on a regular basis. Toward the end of the period, it was even commissioning the building of swift, specially designed opium vessels, generally called “clippers.”123 It contracted for teas ahead of the season,124 secured the best chops, and made advances to its constituents on cargoes it handled.125 Money not employed in purchasing return cargoes was put out at the profitable Canton interest rate or used to buy exchange at favorable moments. The company persisted in its policy of avoiding trading ventures on its own account. Alone among the major American Canton houses, Russell & Co. was exclusively a commission house. So common was the mixture of commission with company ventures at Canton that one experienced observer refused to believe that any Canton house abstained: Foreign commercial houses at Canton have very much increased since I was first here in 1815. They not only act as commission merchants, but ship largely on their own account. In this they have great advantages, as they can purchase goods at all seasons, & ship, or hold them on speculation. . . .

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Many of the vessels waiting at Whampoa  .  .  .  for freight are compelled to comply with their terms rather than lay over to the next season, or run the risk of doing worse elsewhere.126

The patronage of such major traders as the Griswolds, Baring Brothers, and (earlier) the Boston Concern was sure to raise suspicions of favoritism, but it was the commerce of Howqua that should have caused the most concern. It was enormous. All of the partners who commented on it were agreed on the critical importance of Howqua’s business. Again and again such remarks as “Houqua is certainly our mainstay at present,”127 occur in the correspondence during the mid-1830s. John M. Forbes, who by this time was very close to the old merchant, wrote of his own position, I am pretty strong  .  .  .  could shear a considerable slice from G’s patrons to say nought of BB & Co. [Baring Brothers] through consignments to them. Ha [Howqua] is staunch as steel to me. We have now over 10 laks [$1 million] of his property afloat and owe him 6 or 7 more, yet he shews no signs of flinching and takes great interest in our success.128

Under such circumstances it would not be surprising if the great favors that the firm owed Howqua at least constituted an interest conflict with smaller accounts in the same markets. American shippers who became uncomfortable with the commission houses’ handling of their business had other alternatives—the old devices of the supercargo and the resident agent. Despite the fact that he was a supercargo himself, Tilden offered the opinion that “the safest plan for the latter [American sedentary merchants] hereafter to adopt, is to have an agent always on the spot, with ample funds to make purchases whenever he sees best, and take his chance for obtaining freight on lower terms than a ship could be chartered for at home.”129 A number of American China trade firms kept agents in Canton, but only the strongest concerns could manage such a large, fixed expense, especially when the commission houses offered such formidable advantages. One such convenience was a close connection with a London banker. Now it was possible to make advances on the cargoes of favored clients. This was an important service. It enabled the shipper to avoid even the inconvenience of taking bills to Canton. The commission merchant handled everything, and Russell & Co. was the largest, oldest, and most prestigious American house in China. Small wonder that at least 50  percent of the American trade found its way to the firm’s address.130 Although the policy of making advances helped attract business, it also added an element of instability. Now the Canton house itself would draw on London, and the shipper would pay the bill and interest from the proceeds of his cargo. If for some reason the client was unable to pay the bill, the Canton house became liable. This is the mechanism that made the Panic of

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1837 such a trial for Russell & Co.131 Yet despite worries about protested bills, failed clients, and doldrums in the trade, the firm weathered the Panic probably better than any other American company at Canton. The unfailing support of Howqua and of Baring Brothers was critical in this crisis.132 Although some of its correspondents lost heavily, Russell & Co.’s profit picture was very encouraging. Under Green’s leadership, the firm had been increasing its net gains yearly. The three-year dividend to be divided among the partners at the end of 1838 was $416,863.39!133 Every passing year had showed improvement. John Green listed the yearly “income” [he meant net profit] of the house as: 1834 1835 1836

$88,000 $132,000 $180,000134

Green added, “The two first years of the present term [1837 and 1838] yields something over $400,000 nett, and I shall not complain if the present year [1839] can be turned to a good account by our new partners.”135 Green’s hopes proved prophetic. According to Paul S. Forbes, the firm made $240,000 in 1839.136 Its competitors were so impressed by Russell’s performance that one of them wrote despairingly to his senior partners: R & Co. have operated very heavily this year through Houqua. They have now a fearful advantage over us, backed as they are by Houqua on the one side and Barings on the other. I look upon [them as] one if not the very first house this Side of the Cape [of Good Hope] except perhaps Forbes of Bombay.137

At the end of the decade, then, Russell & Co.’s competitive position seemed secure, and its profits were higher than ever despite the very palpable fact of the depression and the increasingly precarious economic status of most of the Cohong. It was at this time that the firm still further solidified its hold on the trade by absorbing its only competitor, Russell, Sturgis & Co., which drew business from the same sources as itself.138 For some years Russell & Co. had clearly out-classed the smaller firm, but the Sturgis family’s allegiance was split. The original parties to the dispute that was at the root of the difference between the two firms had long since left China. There were, therefore, no major obstacles to the reunion. Apparently it was Robert Bennet Forbes who resolved the problem. Related to the Sturgises, he was friendly with all parties. When he arrived early in October 1838, armed with the consignment of several vessels and strong letters from Theodore Lyman, Cushing, Russell, J. M. Forbes, and the support of Howqua, he was in an excellent position to secure a partnership in Russell & Co.139 The members present in Canton were unanimously for his admission, though Green had reservations on the size of his share

Robert Bennet Forbes, master mariner, head of Russell & Co. during the opium crisis of 1839. Oil, attributed to Lamqua. Courtesy of the Forbes House Museum.

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(three and one-half sixteenths) especially “when his experience or rather inexperience is considered.”140 One absent partner, Joseph Coolidge, would be so foolish as to object, an action that could only work to his own cost. Forbes was admitted for one year, after which time the firm was to be reorganized. Known as a competent and intrepid mariner, Forbes proved to be more able than one would have expected from a person of his limited commercial background. Possibly his finest qualities were those with which captains were identified—leadership in the face of danger and the ability to make decisions quickly. In addition he proved to be a very competent diplomat. By 12 January 1839, only three months after his arrival, Forbes had persuaded hook-nosed Warren Delano to join the firm, and Russell, Sturgis & Co. closed its doors. No sooner was one wound healed than a more serious one opened up. Forbes was certainly not so well prepared as the partners could have wished, but under the circumstances, Joseph Coolidge was most ill-advised to oppose his entry into the firm. Howqua, who was strongly in favor of Forbes, was reportedly just as firmly opposed to Coolidge’s continued membership in the firm,141 and the other partners unanimously agreed. In the reorganization of 1 January 1840, Green and Low retired, Delano was added, and Coolidge was dropped. Coolidge promptly announced the formation of Augustine Heard & Co. The new firm quickly developed close ties to Jardine, Matheson & Co., which needed an American agent at Canton following the British withdrawal in 1839. The new concern prospered and grew, though it is doubtful that the size of its business ever approached that of the older firm. At the very time these events were taking place, the opium crisis occurred, and then the war began. Only days before Lin’s ultimatum to the foreign community, Russell & Co., at Howqua’s insistence, formally abandoned the drug trade, but the firm still had a large amount of opium aboard ship just outside the river. Despite its recently acquired virtue, Russell & Co. remained the largest single American holder. When the drug was turned over to Lin, Russell’s gave up 1,441–2/3 of the 1,540 piculs (chests) surrendered by the Americans. It held over one hundred times more than its nearest American competitor, Wetmore & Co.142 On the surface it would appear as if the loss of such an amount of opium would have been a severe blow, but all of the confiscated drug was the property of British subjects. Russell & Co. suffered only in the loss of advances it had made on the drug, and it had already begun to readjust its plans before the confinement of the foreigners.143 The crisis occurred when trade was slack, and the Chinese government’s action, together with the British reaction, soon gave all Americans more business than they could handle easily. The British left Canton soon after Lin released them and began a boycott of the port. Sir Charles Elliot approached Forbes, as the leader of the largest

Warren Delano, member of Russell & Co., grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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American firm, to secure his cooperation. Probably Elliot should have known that he could expect only a businessman’s reaction. As Forbes put it years later, Elliot himself personally begged Russell & Co. to follow his countrymen, [out of Canton] saying, “If your house goes, all will go, and we shall soon bring those rascally Chinese to terms.” I replied that I had not come to China for health or pleasure, and that I should remain at my post as long as I could sell a yard of goods or buy a pound of tea; that we Yankees had no Queen to guarantee our losses, &c. He asked if I was willing to do business with a chain about my neck, and said he would soon make Canton too hot for us. I rejoined that the chain was imaginary, the duty to constituents and the commission account were real and that if he made Canton too warm I should go to Whampoa, retreating step by step, buying and selling just as long as I found parties to operate with.144

As good as his word, Forbes and Russell & Co. plunged into the trade with the assurance that prices at home were bound to rise once the news of the Anglo-Chinese difficulties reached America. By the beginning of the tea season, the hunger of British merchants aboard their idle vessels just outside the mouth of the river grew too strong for either national pride or Sir Charles’s warnings, and they began to dicker with the Americans. Soon every American left in Canton, whether or not he was connected with a house, was acting as agent for some British firm. The profits were huge and immediate. Sometimes the Americans merely acted as freight agents, but more often, in the early months at least, they bought British property outright, preferably with bills on London, and shipped it upriver on their own. There were also intermediate methods such as a conditional sale at a nominal price with the provision that the seller guaranteed a profit or a commission to the American go-between. The true owner received any profit over that amount.145 In any case the goods went through the Bogue as American property. Freight rates began to rise directly, and by October the British were paying as much as $7 a bale on Indian cotton.146 Commissions were also sizeable. James Coolidge complained to Matheson that his low rate contrasted with his neighbor’s: “Mr. Morss, declined yesterday to do the business of a leading English House under two per cent, each way.”147 Coolidge and James Ryan acted for Jardine Matheson, and before the great English firm was able to dispense with their services, it had paid commissions on over $3,250,000.148 Gilman (presumably Joseph Taylor Gilman, the younger brother of the ex-storeship captain Daniel Gilman who was running Russell’s Chesapeake up and downriver) worked as Dent’s agent, and other Americans did the business of the rest of the British firms. It was during this hectic period that Russell & Co. was able, at least partly, to repay Howqua for his many favors to the firm. Not only did the members warn him when to evacuate his family, they also helped him avoid losses. Once the war had begun, Chinese property was liable to seizure by the

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British. To protect the millions of dollars’ worth of Howqua’s goods shipped abroad at this time, Russell & Co. simply transferred title to itself, “charging him only the standard commission” for the service.149 Moreover the firm was able to employ his property to great advantage. Although the old Chinese merchant lost heavily as a result of the Chinese government’s assessing the hong merchants for the “ransom” of Canton,150 his profits in the year preceding the arrival of the British fleet helped compensate for the loss. However perilous the situation, Howqua always seemed to land on his feet. Howqua’s wealth was so great that he was able to stand enormous capital levies and still remain the wealthiest merchant of any nationality in the trade. It is impressive to read Kinsman’s awed description of the “heap of treasure” (i.e., $3 million in silver—a part of the Opium War indemnity), which he viewed in Howqua’s packhouse early in 1844.151 Perhaps it was to this use of Howqua’s property in the firm’s name that Joseph Coolidge, looking on enviously, referred when he wrote Heard on 2 May 1841 that Russell & Co. had “changed their style of doing business and now operate on their own account.” He then went on to tell of the purchase of a vessel and a voyage to Mexico with tea.152 The temptation to venture on one’s own or on company account must have been very strong, but there is little to substantiate the rumors of such ventures by Russell & Co. R. B. Forbes took up his post at Hong Kong aboard an English vessel consigned to the firm, while most of the other partners of the firm remained at Canton buying and packing teas as fast as they could.153 Russell & Co.’s trade that year was larger than ever before. Both of the concern’s vessels were immediately put to work. The little opium “clipper” Rose and the old Lintin, which had been used as a storeship for nearly a dozen years, were kept busy running up and down the river. On the trip downriver they were overloaded, carrying bales of merchandise piled high on deck. Once they arrived at the outside anchorages, the goods were speedily transferred to the waiting British ships, and the American vessels hastened back up to Canton loaded with goods from the British merchantmen. Freight rates rose steeply and soon were higher for the river trip than for the long journey home or to Europe. It was said that ships in this trade returned their original cost with each trip.154 The company also pressed into service other vessels, which arrived consigned to the firm and purchased the large British ship Cambridge (nine hundred tons). She was renamed the Chesapeake and, with the paint still fresh on her bows, put into the river trade, where she remained until shortly before the British blockade stopped all commerce. Similarly Forbes bought Jardine’s old storeship Hercules for twenty-five thousand dollars, and Delano purchased Rustomjee’s Mermaid and rechristened her the Lantao.155 Even clerks of the house made substantial sums in the river trade during this extraordinary period. W. H. Low II wrote his sister on 14 February 1841:

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I wrote you in my letter per Alex Baring that Messrs Gilman, Spooner and myself had made one or two shipments of teas to Toon Koo [where the British ships were then anchored] on which we expected to make $400 to $500 each. I am happy to inform you that we made $900 each, purchased $5,500 worth of teas and shipped them per Eben Preble for New York, consigned to father.156

Bennet Forbes wrote Samuel Cabot jubilantly, “We have been doing a very handsome & safe business the last six months & our year’s work will be the best that R & Co. ever made.”157 Trade halted in June 1840, after the bulk of the British forces had arrived from India, and flourished thereafter whenever a truce made it possible. Russell & Co. occupied all four hongs in the Suy (Swedish) factory, and trade was brisk.158 Organizationally the opium crisis and war made little difference in Russell & Co. except to increase its size and to advance the specialization of labor begun by Green in the mid-1820s—a testimony to its effectiveness. There were two offices by 1842, one at Canton run by the chief partner, Warren Delano, and the other at Macao headed by William C. Hunter, who was nursing a grudge against Delano through the last few months before his retirement. Joseph T. Gilman159 served as Hunter’s chief clerk and factotum, and George Perkins160 worked as bookkeeper, for the records had been kept at Macao ever since 1839.161 They were assisted by a Portuguese copyist and perhaps other clerks.162 In Canton, Delano oversaw at least two clerks, Daniel N. Spooner,163 who handled imports, and Edward Delano, Warren’s younger brother, who did outside work, as well as an English tea taster, John  Hallam. The latter, added at Joshua Bates’s suggestion, drew the huge salary of £1,000 a year.164 During the year at least two other clerks were added: Thomas H. Perkins165 and Edward A. Low.166 Jobs changed with the preferences of the partners and the addition, promotion, or release of clerks and principals. By January 1844 when Edward Delano was officially announced as a partner, he was in charge at Macao. His records, especially his letters, and diary, give a pretty complete picture of his duties. He handled insurance, negotiated exchange, forwarded letters, and oversaw the company’s treasury, which was located in the Portuguese colony for security. The latter job was a major concern, for now most of the accounts receivable in China were collected outside the river. Every week or two Delano had to ship silver to Canton to pay for the firm’s exports.167 The structure of authority in Russell & Co. remained almost unchanged, with considerable, but not unlimited, power in the hands of the head of the house. It appears to have been Forbes’s decision to recruit Delano in 1839 (possibly a part of the understanding with Russell, Sturgis & Co.), and Delano was the main influence in recruiting Russell Sturgis from Manila to become the chief partner in Delano’s absence (and ultimately his successor). In June 1841 Delano had privately complained that he could not trust his partners to manage the firm properly by themselves, and he wished to return to America for his first visit in a decade.168 By December he had determined

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to send the opium schooner Ariel to Manila with a proposition for Sturgis, his former partner in Russell, Sturgis & Co. The speedy little ship made the round trip in two weeks, bringing Sturgis’s acceptance.169 Sturgis, a first cousin of the Forbes brothers and a nephew of William Sturgis, was an 1823 graduate of Harvard and a member of the Massachusetts bar. He had been a principal of Jonathan Amory & Sons, Boston, before sailing for China in 1833. When Russell’s absorbed Russell, Sturgis & Co., he had gone to Manila, where he had been working in the parent company, Russell & Sturgis, ever since. Sturgis was well prepared, therefore, when he arrived the following February (1842); he was also a capital choice for other reasons. His courtly manners, his tact, his handsome appearance, and his commanding presence impressed everyone, including Howqua. The firm badly needed someone who could hold it together and overawe the restless younger members, whose petty jealousies plagued the concern. These difficulties would increase as the house added prickly, ambitious, and mutually suspicious new members. Currently the younger Delanos and Kings were at odds,170 and Spooner and Edward Delano had a running feud that periodically bred a confrontation. In this briar-patch Sturgis was a cool, reasonable, judicious influence, respected by all. Even so new articles of co-partnership had to be drawn before Delano could leave, and it was only after much hard bargaining that the partners came to terms on 8 August 1842. Warren Delano and Sturgis each received a one-fourth share; Edward King’s three-sixteenths share was to last only one year, as he wished to go home. R.  B.  Forbes, Joseph T. Gilman, Daniel Spooner, Edward Delano, and William H. King each received one sixteenth. Forbes’s share was to continue only until 1 January 1844, at which time his and Edward King’s share would be distributed to the remaining partners. Edward Delano and William King, the two most junior partners, were not to be announced until Forbes and King retired, though they were to receive their share of the profits in the meantime.171 An interesting clause in the agreement stated: In the event of any political or other changes occurring in China to render the property of the foreigners unsafe the partners resident here may invest the property and funds of the House in such Teas or other merchandise as they may consider safe and desirable and ship the same to the U. States or England as they judge best for the interest of the House.172

In the available documents of Russell & Co., this is the only compromise of the principal of confining itself to commission business during the existence of the old China trade. The new articles placed effective control of the concern in the hands of the former Russell, Sturgis & Co. families, for the two Delanos and Sturgis together held nine sixteenths of the total. Forbes (who was in America) and Edward King would soon retire, and their relinquished shares would add

Russell Sturgis, Jr., member of Russell & Sturgis, later a partner of Russell & Co. After he left Canton, Sturgis become a partner in Baring Brothers & Co., London. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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somewhat to young Delano’s portion. This control proved as salutary as any since John Green had left Canton. In the eighteen months that Warren Delano was away, Sturgis proved to be not only a very popular man but a person of superb business and diplomatic instincts as well. One momentous step taken under Sturgis’s regime was the firm’s reentry into the opium trade. Probably Warren Delano had been planning to take the firm back into the commerce anyway, for he had sent Gilman to India the previous spring, but Sturgis was in command when the decision was made. In January Sturgis found a “New Lintin” in the America, for which he paid five thousand dollars,173 and he placed James B. Endicott aboard her as captain.174 Two months later he bought the swift opium schooner Lark for nearly three times that amount.175 He also appointed G. F. Davidson the company’s agent at the burgeoning new colony of Hong Kong,176 despatched a trading voyage to Hawaii,177 and added a new building to the Macao factory.178 Despite civil disturbances, new regulations, and the general uncertainty following the abolition of the Cohong, Russell & Co. carried on an active and uninterrupted trade and produced a tidy profit. Consequently, shortly after Delano’s return with a new wife in March 1844, partners and employees were sorry to learn that Sturgis had sold out. Why he did so is unclear. He was the head of the strongest American house in the East and fast becoming rich. He had always been a very familycentered man, and he had been widowed twice, most recently in 1837. He had two young children, and family life under the existing circumstances in Canton-Macao must have been difficult once his wife was gone. Perhaps he wished to remarry; in fact he would do so for a third time in 1846. In any case the possibilities are legion. Sturgis’s talents were well known, and some five years later he was selected to replace Joshua Bates as the American partner of Russell’s London ally, Baring Brothers & Co. It was typical of Canton’s character that there should have been a dissenting voice. One of the firm’s newest employees harbored a fierce distrust of both Sturgis and Warren Delano and blamed them for frustrating his own vaulting ambitions.179 Paul Sieman (“Sim”) Forbes was the last of his family to arrive in China during the days of the old China trade. Having twice failed in business at Rio de Janeiro, he badly needed a way to provide for his large family. John P. Cushing and Bennet and John Murray Forbes helped him to obtain the consulship and admission to the firm though not, at first, as a partner. He had arrived on the Paul Jones in May 1843 with strong recommendations and the support of old Howqua, who always favored the Forbeses. Warren Delano wrote Sturgis, “Mr. Forbes goes out without any great expectations and will of course never become a partner unless it is found for the interest of the House to admit him.”180 But Delano was wrong. Forbes had very great expectations and privately wrote bitter and intemperate letters (especially to his wife) about his cousins’ tardiness in recommending him for Russell & Co., about Sturgis’s obstruction of his admission

Edward Delano, diarist, member of Russell & Co. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Paul Sieman Forbes, controversial member of Russell & Co. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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to the firm, and his own bad luck.181 Forbes’s grumbling doubtless centered in his personality. In actuality the obstruction of which Forbes complained was only the less-than-enthusiastic reception by partners, who, with their own fortunes to make, were suddenly confronted with still another Forbes who had been sent out with no advance warning, with the usual Boston Concern power behind him.182 Forbes’s secret feelings must have communicated themselves to his most immediate rivals, for by September, Edward Delano confided to his diary that Forbes was being consulted “more than need be.”183 With Warren Delano’s return in March of the following year, Forbes’s future was assured, for the Forbes family had brought all its guns to bear on Delano at home.184 Russell & Co. apparently was once again making concessions to major shippers,185 and it was attracting new clients and continuing to show large profits.186 It was with triumph that Paul Forbes welcomed the news of his admission to partnership. He wrote his wife, “in a few weeks I shall be announced as a partner in the house of R & Co.—a house which has perhaps enjoyed a degree of success unequalled for 15  years by any house in the world.”187 A month later he wrote: On the 1 June Russell & Co. announces P. S. Forbes as a partner, R. Sturgis retiring and Mr. Delano being at Macao. I take the lead of the house! and this after 18 months of doubt, perplexity and annoyance. [A]ll my plans and hopes have succeeded and I shall probably at the end of ‘45, find myself at the head of one of the most fortunate houses in the world, where business heretofore has been unprecedented for immense profits and rapid fortunes—3 years in that position will insure me a competence, and then I shall return.188

The final reorganization of Russell & Co. before the Cushing Treaty formally began the new era in Sino-American trade did not appear to give Forbes the kind of power he had anticipated. Although R. B. Forbes, Edward  King, and Russell Sturgis were no longer in the house, Warren Delano held seven and one-half sixteenths which, when combined with his brother Edward’s one and one-half sixteenths, gave the Delano family a clear majority. Gilman and Spooner each received two sixteenths and Forbes and William H. King one and one-half sixteenths each. Yet both Delanos wished to go home. Edward sailed for India and home almost immediately, and, by the time he returned to Canton on 30 August 1846, Forbes was in charge, and he rebuffed Delano brusquely. The earlier pique had developed into strong dislike, not to give it a stronger name, and by January of the following year, the Delanos were out of Russell & Co. altogether.189 At the end of the era, Russell & Co. was easily the largest and strongest American house in China. Although smaller firms proliferated, none was able to challenge Russell & Co. effectively, and it would continue to lead the American China trade for years to come and close only in 1891, long after the other early firms had gone out of business.

5 The Other Houses Offshoots of Russell & Co. Russell, Sturgis & Co.

In 1828 a new firm, Russell & Sturgis, announced its existence at Manila, giving among its references Russell & Co., Bryant & Sturgis, Perkins & Co., and Perit & Cabot of Philadelphia.1 Even if he had not seen the names of the principals, a contemporary merchant reading the circular would have recognized that here was yet another link in the Boston Concern’s network, for all four of these firms were involved. One of the partners was Henry Parkman Sturgis, a nephew of James P. Sturgis and a great-nephew of William Sturgis. He had arrived in Manila by way of Canton, where Cushing had given him the necessary encouragement. The other member was George Robert Russell, a nephew of Philip Ammidon of Russell & Co., and son of Jonathan Russell, a nationally known merchant, diplomat, and Democratic politician. Both principals were bookish, especially Russell, who was a graduate of Brown and a member of the Rhode Island bar. He spoke at least three languages, and later in life he became well known as a lecturer and writer on economics. With such leadership and backing, Russell & Sturgis was an immediate success and quickly became the most important American house in Manila. How must the Russell & Sturgis partners have felt, when, two years later, they received the news that Cushing had retired, Perkins & Co. had been absorbed by Russell & Co., and Philip Ammidon had been excluded from the newly enlarged Canton firm? Henry Sturgis could not have been unaware that his uncle, James P. Sturgis, had been replaced on the Lintin station by Robert Bennet Forbes and that William Low and Augustine Heard had still further alienated the unforgiving Sturgis.2 Meanwhile Ammidon was busy. In June of 1831 he wrote John R. Latimer, inviting him to join in the creation of a new house at Canton in cooperation with Russell & Sturgis.3 Ammidon stated that “the partners Mr. [Samuel] Russell leaves behind [in Canton]—though clever fellows—are unknown south of Boston.” Although Latimer did not accept the proposal,4 the Manila house issued a circular on 1 May 1834 announcing 190

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that it was opening a branch house at Canton. The principals were George R. Russell and Henry Parkman Sturgis, both of whom were to remain at Manila, and John W. Perit and Russell Sturgis. It was to be the two latter members, both experienced China merchants, who would operate the Canton house. As it happened Russell Sturgis became the mainstay of the firm at Canton. Shortly after its formation, Russell, Sturgis & Co., Canton, was managing James P. Sturgis’s business in China. The new firm now made a bid for the China trade of New York, Philadelphia, and possibly Baltimore. Russell & Co. objected that the name of the new house was alarmingly similar to its own, but Russell, Sturgis & Co. ignored the complaint. The press of work was clearly too much for one man, so a young man with a New York and New Bedford name, Warren Delano, soon appeared in the list of the new concern’s partners.5 Delano was the first of his numerous and influential family to enter a resident firm at Canton, although a collateral ancestor, Amasa Delano, had sailed as second mate on Samuel Shaw’s vessel, the Massachusetts, in 1790.6 As a businessman Warren Delano was “effective and ha[d] a first rate mercantile education.”7 He had been with Goodhue & Co., one of the foremost China trading concerns in New York. The speed with which he was admitted to Russell, Sturgis & Co. suggests strongly that an arrangement had been made before he left home. He arrived in July of 1834, and by December he was a partner in the firm. By that date the firm had another American employed at Canton, John P. Haven, who, as late as July 1835, was still apparently rather green.8 Despite the impressive early success of the new firm and the talents of its members, its strong connections, and its base in Manila, Russell, Sturgis & Co. was never able to make much headway against Russell & Co. Moreover, with the retirement of the members of Russell & Co., who had been the prime movers in the expulsion of Ammidon and the quarrel with James Sturgis, relations between the two houses improved. On 1 January 1840 Russell & Co. absorbed the younger firm. The combined houses formed easily the strongest American concern in the East, and the business of Russell & Co. outdistanced all rivals except for the great British firm of Jardine, Matheson & Co. Augustine Heard & Co. Ironically disgruntled ex-members of Russell & Co. decided to establish another firm at the very moment Bennet Forbes was eliminating the old rival, Russell, Sturgis & Co. The ill-feeling that had generated this second competitor probably dated from 1834 when Augustine Heard and John Green disagreed over commissions owing to Heard. Ultimately the matter was settled by a referee, but relations between the two men remained strained.9

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The other estranged ex-partner of Russell & Co. was the brilliant but highly controversial Joseph Coolidge. Born the third son in the direct line of distinguished Boston merchants and statesmen, Coolidge seemed to possess all the benefits of his background. He had taken both an AB and an MA at Harvard, married Thomas Jefferson’s favorite granddaughter (at Monticello, 1835), and made some distinguished friendships both in America and Europe, including that of Lord Byron. He had received his commercial training in the countinghouse of Robert Gould Shaw, a leading Boston China merchant (and the nephew of Major Samuel Shaw, pioneer of the trade). Coolidge was a sparkling wit and conversationalist as well as something of a scholar. Despite all these advantages, which at first carried him far, Coolidge’s character flaws ultimately alienated everyone at Canton. Although he came recommended by Russell, Cushing, Robert Gould Shaw, and Francis J. Oliver, Coolidge was a mediocre merchant at best, and he also appears to have been rather lazy, presumptuous, and sometimes tactless. It took John Murray Forbes only a few months to decide that Coolidge had poor judgment and was generally unfit for partnership.10 In the reorganization of Russell & Co. in 1836, Forbes and Green had allowed him a one-fourth interest, but the latter commented that he considered so large a share “an act on the part of Forbes and myself of great liberality, for in strict truth the advantages of the connection are wholly on his side, if it is not positively injurious to the house. But he considers that I have driven a hard bargain with him nevertheless.”11 Heard, who had grown very close to the Coolidge family, was highly indignant.12 Somewhat later while in England, Coolidge made unauthorized investments of some funds of Howqua’s, and the old Chinese merchant joined the ranks of those who wanted Coolidge out of the firm.13 Not content with the damage he had already done, Coolidge then showed portions of the firm’s confidential correspondence to American clients in an attempt at self-justification. John M. Forbes, incensed at such actions, promptly opened the whole file to the same people and largely frustrated Coolidge’s purposes.14 Having alienated so many people, Coolidge would have been wise to have remained quiet in 1839, when Robert Bennet Forbes (with enormously strong backing) was proposed as a partner, but Coolidge proved anything but wise. Because even Heard had urged that Forbes be admitted, Coolidge’s opposition appears the more foolhardy.15 Yet even had he remained silent, Coolidge would have found it difficult to remain in Canton. He had been absent during most of the last establishment, and the work of the other partners had made him a rich man. Now all the other partners were offended at his mishandling of Howqua’s property, as well as his effrontery, and Howqua himself was mightily annoyed. Although he was not the only member to have reservations about Forbes, Coolidge was the only one to object vocally. If this stance had any effect on the other partners, it was to consolidate their opposition to Coolidge’s continued membership in the company.

Joseph Coolidge, controversial member of Russell & Co., founder of Augustine Heard & Co. Courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

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Howqua and the partners unanimously concurred in dropping him.16 Surprisingly Green and Forbes, against whom Coolidge apparently held the greatest resentment, were the two partners who were most willing to compromise with him. Coolidge arrived in Canton late in 1839 to find Russell & Co. united against him. He offered alternative terms, which tell much about his lack of judgment: • • • •

a 2/16 interest for 3 years; Coolidge to act as resident agent in England. a 3/16 interest for 2 years; Coolidge to act as resident agent in England. a 4/16 interest for 1 year; Coolidge to act as resident agent in England. a 3/16 interest for 3 years; Coolidge to reside in Canton or $50,000 outright.

Now speaking as head of the house, Forbes countered with an offer of twosixteenths interest in the new establishment for a single year.17 His pride considerably more damaged than his fortune, Coolidge refused and consequently found himself out of the firm without compensation or consolation. Coolidge and Heard had expected something like this and accordingly had made some tentative plans. Before Coolidge had left for China, Heard had given him virtually a blank check: If you find after your arrival in Canton that you cannot make a satisfactory arrangement with Messrs R. & Co. & it is expedient to form a new establishment & you wish me to join you I am willing to do so & hereby authorize you to use my name in any way to bring about such an object.18

Thus armed Coolidge was hardly defenseless, but his immediate actions were less than calmly rational. At first he threatened to open his own firm in partnership with Nathaniel Kinsman (who apparently had given him a tentative assent) and use the name Russell & Co.19 Such a step must have appeared as mad to most people as it ultimately did to Kinsman, who soon withdrew from the deal and subsequently joined Wetmore & Co.20 It took the intervention of Howqua, emphasizing the folly of setting up such a confusing situation in the trade, to convince Coolidge to abandon the idea of usurping the old firm’s name.21 On 1 January 1840, therefore, he announced the formation of Augustine Heard & Co. An important supportive factor in Coolidge’s undertakings was the good sense of his wife. Ellen Wales Coolidge was a charming woman of great talents, who maintained her own correspondence with Heard. Her masterful letter of 2 and 3 January 1840 must have resolved any doubts that Heard might have entertained about entering into partnership with the mercurial Coolidge.22 One can almost hear Heard sigh as he answered his friend’s appeal:

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I regret that you should not have made an arrangement with the old house & failing there joined some other Establishment, say W[etmore & Co.], already in operation, & again that you should have decided upon the firm that you have announced [i.e., as Augustine Heard & Co.] although the last is not of much consequence. [sic]

Heard then suggested that George Basil Dixwell be taken into the partnership because Dixwell’s brother, a major Boston merchant, would then channel business into the house.23 Augustine Heard & Co. came into existence during that hectic period when the Americans at Canton had all they could do to keep up with the trade between the Chinese at Canton and the British merchants, whose vessels lay anchored in the Gulf. For the first six months, the new company had little to do, but in the summer of 1840 it suddenly was deluged. Russell & Co. was swamped with work, and when Jardine, Matheson & Co., almost the only firm doing a still larger business, offered its Canton agency to Robert Bennet Forbes, he felt compelled to refuse. Forbes states in his Personal Reminiscences that he suggested Coolidge as an alternative.24 Whatever the case, it appears that the bulk of Heard & Co.’s business at first consisted of goods handled on agency for Jardine’s, although no formal agreement was worked out before the spring of 1841. By December 1840 the firm was acting for several British traders outside the river, but its sole American account was that of Robert Gould Shaw, Coolidge’s old patron.25 The British agency business continued until July 1844,26 and, although the commission was “very small,”27 the volume was immense.28 Indeed Coolidge was so busy that he very nearly met disaster. On 22 May 1841, just before the British under General Hugh Gough attacked Canton, the foreign residents evacuated the factories, but Coolidge delayed leaving until too late and was seized by the Chinese mob that proceeded to pillage the factories. Coolidge was thrown into prison, where he remained for about two days until he was recognized and released. In the meantime his belongings, clothes, the books and papers of the firm, a cow, and a dog had disappeared in the looting and subsequent fire. He later submitted a very large bill for damages to which he added an additional charge of 100  percent “for personal inconvenience.” Evidently he did not expect to collect the whole amount of his claim, and therefore he padded the account of his losses. The Chinese authorities ordered the hong merchants to pay in full and the foreign community, always sympathetic toward the Hong in such cases, was shocked. Because Coolidge was already poisonously unpopular, he “was called all the names the language allows, and was particularly abused because he had put down his cow and his dog at extravagant prices, $500 and $100 I believe.” The commentator was quick to add in Coolidge’s defense, “Few, or none, of his detractors would have undergone what he did for $15,000” (the total claim).29 Only a few days after Coolidge’s release, Augustine Heard set sail for

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China on the Appletons’ Mary Ellen, of which vessel Heard was both master and supercargo. With him went two clerks for the new firm, small, neat, red-haired Joseph Roberts and John Heard III, Augustine Heard’s ambitious nephew. It is not clear precisely when George B. Dixwell went to Canton, but he was announced as a partner on 15 November of the same year.30 The partnership was worked out formally the following spring after Dixwell had arrived. On 1 June 1842 Heard, Coolidge, and Dixwell each assumed a one-third interest in the company. John Heard was to be admitted in the next reorganization of the firm, “provided he shall be considered suitable for admission.”31 The house was soon humming with business. The senior Heard bought teas, Coolidge handled imports, and Dixwell “took charge of things generally,”32 although it appears that he increasingly specialized in the opium trade.33 Roberts, a very precise young man, became bookkeeper and had to reconstruct all of the lost books from the ledger, the only record to survive the burning of the factory. A Macao Portuguese named Guiterrez did the copying, and John Heard performed all other clerical duties about the countinghouse.34 The firm made money from the beginning and was soon established as one of the “Big Four” American companies at Canton. By 1843 it was so well respected that Baring Brothers & Co. granted it uncovered credits, something it had not done even for Russell & Co. at that time.35 By the last year of the trade prior to the ratification of the Cushing Treaty, Dixwell wrote Augustine Heard that the firm had cleared about thirty-nine thousand dollars.36 Because of its close connection with Jardine, Matheson & Co., Augustine Heard & Co. was possibly the first American firm to enter the drug trade after the self-denying pledge of 1839. As early as the beginning of 1842, the firm was involved in purchasing a fast opium clipper of the Ariel variety for Jardine Matheson.37 The narcotics traffic soon became the largest source of profit for the new concern, and, on 27 July 1845 Dixwell wrote Heard: “The Indian [opium] business is so much the best we have that it seems as if no effort should be spared to foster and increase it.” The firm owned a small fleet of smuggling vessels, and he expected to sell fifteen hundred chests that year.38 The first years were prosperous, but they were also years of great change both in the trade and in the structure of East-West relations. Violence was an intermittent but continuing feature of the period, and the presence of a senior partner with Heard’s renowned “coolness and fearlessness” in the face of danger proved an invaluable asset. During a mob attack on the factories in December 1842, the company family, led by Heard, defended its property until the ammunition ran low. Then Heard calmly led the coolies and employees safely through the mob to the waterfront and embarked. He

Augustine Heard, master mariner, member of Russell & Co., founder of Augustine Heard & Co., philanthropist. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

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returned later with American sailors to save nearly half of the specie in the firm’s treasury.39 As his sixtieth birthday approached, Augustine Heard was ready to leave China. When the company was formed, Heard was already fifty-five years old. This was an extremely advanced age for an American resident merchant in Canton, and Heard wanted to go home. One of the reasons he had taken Dixwell into the firm was that he did not want to stay in China much longer.40 Coolidge and Dixwell were at odds shortly after the latter’s arrival, and Coolidge was soon exercising his special talent for offending others on young Heard as well. When he left Heard & Co. after only four years of membership, he did so under circumstances that were different only in degree from those which had led to his ejection from Russell & Co. Augustine Heard himself wrote John J. Dixwell on 4 February 1843: I am obliged to acknowledge my own want of penetration for the last few years, which I freely do, yet in extenuation of my blindness or stupidity I may say that our partner C. was never in a position in regard to me before to show openly his disposition or business tact or want of tact & for a short time after my arrival the last time my opinion was very favorable. [T]his however did not continue long & Geo and myself do not differ much in our present estimates of him. We shall go along as we can . . . but there is no chance our renewing the same engagement.41

In the reorganization of 1 June 1844, Augustine Heard and George Dixwell each retained a one-third interest, and Coolidge’s share was divided—two ninths went to John Heard and one ninth to Joseph Roberts.42 In later years John Heard’s three brothers were admitted to the concern,43 and it continued to prosper throughout Augustine Heard’s lifetime. Alone of the “Big Four” American companies of the nineteenth century, Augustine Heard & Co. had been founded after the opium crisis and was very largely dependent upon the opium trade for its business. Like all of the other firms, however, it had begun as a copartnership of members of two families but soon became a single family affair. An important factor in the concern’s success had always been a close connection with Jardine, Matheson & Co., which firm absorbed Augustine Heard & Co. when the latter failed in 1875.44

Olyphant & Co. The record on Olyphant & Co. is much less complete than that of the other significant firms that operated in Canton before the signing of the Cushing Treaty. Not only were its records destroyed in 1841, but only a handful of the later records and a few personal papers have survived. The company was important in the trade, in the Protestant China Mission, and in SinoAmerican relations generally, so the loss is particularly unfortunate.

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Of all the major American firms at Canton, Olyphant & Co. was probably the clearest example of the old family firm. Although Perkins & Co. was also largely a concern centered on a single kinship group, it had left the trade before Olyphant & Co. became very significant, perhaps even before its founding. Also Perkins & Co. admitted at least one nonrelative and ultimately merged with Russell & Co., a concern that included representatives of several families. The various partners of Olyphant & Co. were interrelated largely through their womenfolk. The prime mover of the enterprise had the imposing name of David Washington Cincinnatus Olyphant,45 the only son of Dr. David Olyphant (1720–1805) and Ann Vernon of Newport. Dr. Olyphant was a widower, a Scotch Jacobite émigré who had served in the Revolution and who had come to Newport after living some years in South Carolina. The Vernon family was a large clan that boasted at least one governor, Richard Ward, in its ancestry.46 Dr. Olyphant’s wife’s sister, Amy, had married Samuel King, a noted portraitist, and their son, Samuel Jr. (1772–1831) married Harriet Vernon, Mrs. Olyphant’s niece and his own first cousin, making David W. C. Olyphant a first cousin of both Samuel King, Jr., and his wife. In the very early years of the nineteenth century, Samuel King, Jr., was in partnership with George W. Talbot, another Newporter, in New York City. Their firm, King & Talbot, was engaged principally in the China trade. It  was in this countinghouse that young Olyphant apprenticed after the death of his father in 1805. In 1809 when King became temporarily unbalanced, the firm was reorganized as George W. Talbot & Co., the “& Co.” being Olyphant. The concern opened its doors on 1 January 1810, at which time it dealt in tobacco, yarn, tea, whale oil, gunny bags, and ox hides from Buenos Aires, according to a note in the possession of a Talbot descendant. Around 1812 Olyphant moved to Baltimore and set up his own firm, Bucklin & Olyphant, but the times being unpropitious, the firm soon stopped payments, and Olyphant returned to New York. There he worked for a short time for his old partner, Talbot. In 1817 Olyphant went to work for Thomas H. Smith, who was soon to become the largest tea dealer in New York. For the next two years, Olyphant seems to have remained in America, but in 1820 he sailed for China to replace a “Mr. Scott” as Smith’s representative there. About the same time Charles Nicoll Talbot, George W. Talbot’s eldest son, not yet eighteen years of age, was also sent to China to work as a clerk in Smith’s Canton house. Over the next several years, Olyphant and young Talbot became fast friends, residing in hongs #1 and #2 of the American factory. When the great fire of 1822 destroyed the factories, Olyphant rebuilt the Swedish (Suy) factory and moved his (i.e., Smith’s) operations into the new buildings. The following year he went back to New York, returning once again to replace Jacob Couvert in 1826. These must have been exciting and very busy days for Olyphant because

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Smith had determined upon a most ambitious scheme. With houses at either end of the trade, he had set about what appears to have been an attempt to engross the entire American tea trade. But beginning with the Panic of 1819 and the recovery of the maritime powers of Europe, the China trade, like other branches of commerce that had made so many fortunes in the previous quartercentury, proved to be increasingly difficult business. Besides the China trade was beset by special devils. Not only was the lucrative tea-smuggling trade to Canada ended by a revision of the British law prohibiting direct shipments from Canton to North America, but other China merchants, notably Edward Thomson of Philadelphia, embarked upon a course similar to Smith’s. Thomson and Smith were aided by the lengthy tax credits that had been allowed by the government ever since Elias Hasket Derby found himself in trouble with the customs in 1790. In that year Derby discovered to his horror that, besides the two ships he had sent directly to Canton, two other of his vessels had arrived there with the same object—tea. His supercargoes had sold two of the ships in China, but they estimated that about ten additional China ships would arrive shortly in American ports, with enough tea for at least two years at the current rate of consumption. It was bad enough to glut one’s own market, but, because his vessels had left American shores, the new constitutional government had imposed a tariff on tea that would have forced him to sell immediately to raise the money to pay the impost. Hence Derby, a major supplier of the American forces at Lexington and an owner of several Revolutionary privateers, would be forced into bankruptcy by the very government he had helped to create. Frantically Derby wrote his influential friends in Congress, Fisher Ames and Benjamin Goodhue.47 Both of these representatives were merchants, and both went to work on some kind of equitable solution. Congress responded with a very reasonable measure indeed—it allowed tea merchants an extended period of grace before their tariff bills became due. By Smith’s day, the whole system of international trade at the port of New  York had changed, giving bold tea importers the rare opportunity to finance their entire trade with back customs receipts. Shortly after the War of 1812, New York developed a very efficient public auction system which enabled an importer to dispose of a large cargo very swiftly, without sacrifice, for easily negotiable commercial paper.48 Other cities soon followed New York’s example. This innovation opened a loophole in the law which permitted the kind of operation Smith, Thomson, and others began to conduct. As Joseph Scoville, chronicler of mercantile New York of this period, explains it, American sedentary traders took advantage of the two facts that the duty was twice the Canton cost of the tea and that the first payment was not due for nine months. He writes that the proceeds from the sale of a tea cargo of $200,000, when it had paid duty . . . amounted to $600,000. The profit was at least 50 per cent on the original cost, or $100,000, and would make the cargo worth $700,000.

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The cargo of teas would be sold almost on arrival (say eleven or twelve months after the ship left New York in May) to wholesale grocers, for their notes at 4 and 6 months—say for $700,000. In those years there was credit given by the United States of 9, 12 and 18 months! So that the East India or Canton merchant, after his ship had made one voyage, had the use of Government capital to the extent of $400,000, on the ordinary cargo of a China ship. . . . These notes could be turned into specie very easily, and the owner had only to pay his bonds for $400,000 duty, at 9, 12 and 18 months, giving him time actually to send two more ships with $200,000 each to Canton, and have them back again in New York before the bonds on the first cargo were due.49

He adds that Smith failed, owing the government $3 million. Although this sum is undoubtedly exaggerated, Scoville’s account of the system is reasonably accurate. A surprising number of generally prudent businessmen (reportedly including John Jacob Astor) availed themselves of this unwittingly given federal aid. Smith’s and Thomson’s great error was to extend themselves too far while Astor, Girard, the Griswolds, and/or others were more cautious and luckier. Smith ventured enormous sums in the trade. It was said that he was attempting to establish a tea packet to Canton,50 a very daring enterprise. If successful, such a system would surely have given him the domination of the American trade with the East, displacing such great houses as those of Astor, Girard, Carrington, the Perkins, Brown & Ives, the Griswolds, the Goodhues, and others. In fact a number of these concerns did abandon the China trade at this time—some temporarily and some permanently. These dubious operations flooded the market with tea and prices slid steadily downhill. So deep were they in debt to the federal government that Smith and Thomson could not abandon their system. They needed the new tea cargoes to pay off their bonds. Then late in 1825 Thomson failed ignominiously. Apparently in his extremity, he had removed about fifteen thousand nine hundred chests of tea from a federal bonded warehouse by fraud.51 As might have been expected, Thomson’s collapse put additional strain on the market and led, ultimately, to Smith’s ruin three years later. Smith was the largest single operator in the China trade for several years prior to his own bankruptcy.52 His agency was easily the biggest American house in Canton, with one or two agents and several apprentices, whose salaries were very high even for Canton, and his employees enjoyed numerous perquisites.53 He contracted for teas ahead of the season and in general seems to have patterned his Canton operation on the model of the British East India Company. But his whole enterprise was built on sand, and one fateful day Smith could no longer put off the customs collector. Then he went spectacularly bankrupt, marooning the employees of his Canton house thousands of miles from home. To Olyphant and Talbot, however, being in Canton provided an unexpected opportunity:

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Olyphant took advantage of a clause in his contract which permitted trading on his own account with his personal funds. He loaded the Beaver [one of Smith’s ships] and sailed for New York while young Talbot remained in China. The pair planned to form two partnerships, with Olyphant’s money heavily invested in Canton and the Talbots backing the adventure in New York.54

Precisely when the new firm began business is not clear, for its trade and the winding up of Smith’s affairs went on simultaneously, and it continued in the same hong with no break in occupancy. The hong was the same one that Samuel Snow had begun about 1799. Smith had gotten hold of it by the 1820s, and after his bankruptcy it passed to G. W. Bruen of New York, Smith’s receiver. Bruen eventually sold it to Olyphant about 1836. Even the personnel were largely the same—Olyphant, Talbot, and Charles W. King,55 the son of Samuel King, Olyphant’s cousin and former employer. Young King had left Brown University and come out to China as Olyphant’s clerk in 1826. He was a very devout Christian and something of a scholar whose humorless piety and outspoken opposition to the opium trade made him intensely disliked, especially among drug traders at Canton. His success as a businessman only added to his unpopularity. By at least 1830 letters addressed to the concern at Canton bore the title “Olyphant & Co.” Earlier references to “Olyphant & Talbot” may indicate that no articles of copartnership had yet been made public.56 Possibly the difficulties surrounding the settling of Smith’s affairs made the delay necessary, but, in any case Olyphant organized Talbot, Olyphant & Co. in New York; purchased the famous Roman, 492 tons; and sent her to China in 1829, carrying both cargo and the first American missionaries.57 By this time Charles W. King was a competent and trusted employee, although still only twenty or twenty-one years of age.58 He spent some time in Manila, as the firm’s business expanded, and, in the reorganization necessitated by Talbot’s imminent departure for home in 1832, King became a full partner.59 Although a very young man for such a responsible position, King was now head of the Canton house. He was ably assisted by Oliver H. Gordon, another former Smith employee, who occupied a rather anomalous role for years. Although he was never a member of the house, he was intimately connected with the firm and hung on for years.60 Thereafter Olyphant & Co. was the name of the Canton firm while the New York branch was Talbot, Olyphant & Co. The two were separate concerns operating together, but at least in the establishment, which began 10  September 1832, partnership was identical. Olyphant distinguished between them in his letters by referring to the Canton company as “the firm” and to the New York branch as “the association,” denominations that indicate his degree of control. The articles of copartnership evidently set down the functions of the partners with greater clarity than before, although no copy of any such documents prior to 1846 has yet appeared. Certainly Talbot henceforth was not expected to spend any time in China and remained instead as

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head of the New York house that bore his name first in its title. In China, Olyphant and King spelled each other, and the clerks, all family members without exception, were put on a similar regime. King wrote Talbot on 22 June 1836: My wish is to have Talbot [George Talbot Olyphant] go out this fall and allow David [Olyphant Jr., then in Canton] to come home via England. David can then return to China & allow Howard [William Howard Morss, a cousin] to return & H. can be in Canton in time for me to take passage on the Roman in 1839.61

By this time, presumably, the younger men would be able to take their places as partners. Profits were divided equally although Olyphant supplied the bulk of the capital. King as yet had little other than his services to contribute to the firm. The China firm had prospered mightily under Talbot’s capable leadership, to the grudging admiration of some of the most vigorous letter writers in the Canton American community. John Latimer gives a glowing description of the “splendid fortune” the partners had made by a particularly intelligent use of timely information from Olyphant, especially “a very correct estimate of the teas on hand” in New York.62 The profit from this kind of transaction was particularly dramatic because the firm was acting on its own account. Its commission business became progressively less important until, in 1836, Olyphant decided to abandon it altogether. To others such a decision looked dangerous. Although the returns to the firm were greater when Talbot brought off a coup like that of 1831, commissions involved the company in no risk of capital. Using other people’s money was a far safer business. Moreover the senior partners’ employment in the Smith concern, which became the classic, horrible example of mercantile gambling for China traders in the 1830s, helped give Olyphant a reputation for “unsoundness.” The envious Latimer, watching Talbot leave in 1832, conjectured that he was returning to New York because he was “perhaps anxious to keep what he has made; knowing Olyphant’s besetting sin, he is determined to go home to look after him.”63 The author of the standard work on the Baring Brothers remarks that the London bankers refused the account of Olyphant & Sons, which succeeded Olyphant & Co., because “the senior habitually attempted to expand his business beyond the limits considered safe by [Thomas Wren] Ward and the Barings.”64 Whether or not he deserved his reputation with the opium traders and their friends, Olyphant’s success never matched that of his competition, especially Russell & Co. and Wetmore & Co. The resolution to concentrate exclusively on shipping in its own name or selling freight occasioned considerable anxiety among the junior partners over the next several years. One result of the new policy was the appearance of a new firm, not quite a satellite but closely related to Olyphant & Co., Gordon & Talbot (q.v.).65 A more serious consequence was a sharp drop in profits and a disproportionate

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increase in the firm’s risks. As Charles King noted upon his return to this country in 1836, the cancellation of the East India Company’s charter two years earlier had greatly altered the nature of the trade.66 Not only was it much more crowded, but price fluctuations at either end of the commerce increased, and prediction baffled the American merchants accustomed to the old system with its artificial limitations and stabilizers. The East India Company had given the system a degree of balance and security that the private traders could hardly be expected to provide. The hong merchants, most of whom had been extensively supported by the Hon. Company, grew increasingly shaky. Hingtai’s collapse in 1836 was a major blow to the trade, and some feared that it was a portent of worse things to come. Another source of uncertainty was the spectacular growth both in smuggling and in the imperial government’s concern about this illegal trade. Lintin’s commerce was increasing far faster than Canton’s, effectively destroying what stability the Chinese monopoly had provided. The rank growth of the opium traffic exceeded that of all other commodities, but when Teng T’ing-chen, the new governor general, launched his very effective campaign to enforce imperial law,67 even the brisk narcotics trade was badly damaged. In such a situation only a commission merchant could hope to escape loss. It certainly is no coincidence that Russell & Co. and Wetmore & Co., both commission merchants, reported a more optimistic earnings picture than did Charles King. The latter wrote: O. seems quite persuaded that we must have an Agent in England, nor do I demur. I only see that we cannot get on, with specie, & that Bills are not to be depended on. We must cut our trade down to $1 or 200,000 in the former case, & in the latter do much worse than with goods. A fair proportion of goods we can always manage to advantage by distributing them among our friends.68 Should I order in Mr. O.’s absence, it will be in small lots, sending our own bills along with them . . .  I do not despair of the Eastern trade. We must however attend more to freight, send our vessels more to Java, Singapore &c., & not venture too far in Teas.69

This was a far cry from the palmy days of Talbot’s “splendid fortune,” yet it was only the second week in February 1837. By May, King’s mood was still gloomier, as he dashed off a warning to Talbot, I hope times will come round, & if not we must leave off, or turn Commission Merct. . . . I do not think Mr. O. will be willing to quit the trade, but you will both be amiss to ask much on it.  .  .  .  Trade seems to me almost hopeless  .  .  . I hope it will not be necessary to abandon China.70

The worst news of the mushrooming panic would not reach China before the early ships in the fall. Then King’s disappointments increased, although

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his bleak anticipations undoubtedly had the salutary result of cutting down some of the firm’s risks in the months before the crash, thus preventing utter ruin. There were rumors of bankruptcy. That same year George Templeton Strong recorded in his diary that Talbot, Olyphant & Co. had stopped payments.71 The stoppage may well have happened, but if it did, both the New York and the Canton houses recovered, for they were doing business in 1839 when ownership of the two houses was divided. Although they continued to operate closely together, after 31 August 1839 the New York house (Talbot, Olyphant & Co.) was composed of Talbot, Olyphant and Olyphant’s son, David; none of these partners was a member of Olyphant & Co., Canton.72 From 1839 until 1846 the China firm appears to have been the property of King and another cousin, William Howard Morss, who had been a clerk in the firm for several years previously. Morss was a very pleasant, young New Yorker who showed great courage and devotion to the firm during the first British attack. He remained at Canton during the crisis of 1840, supervising the removal of company property long after most foreigners had fled, thus exposing himself to great danger. He was on one of the last two boats, both belonging to Olyphant’s ship Morrison, to leave the factory area before a Chinese mob sacked it. Although Morss’s boat reached Whampoa in safety, the other was fired upon by confused Chinese troops and one sailor, named Sherry, reportedly the son of the harbormaster of New York, apparently was killed, though his body was never found. It was at this time that Olyphant & Co.’s books were lost.73 During the war years especially, the complex dependence of the Canton foreign community upon opium became clear in the anomalous business conducted by Olyphant & Co. The head of the house was the rigid King, who roundly denounced the drug traffic in a number of articles, making himself decidedly unpopular with many of his less virtuous compatriots. In contrast Morss (now a junior partner), with his mild personality and winning ways, was a community favorite.74 Although King thundered away in the pages of the Repository, Morss developed a remarkably close working business arrangement with Jardine, Matheson & Co. The great British firm discounted quantities of Olyphant & Co.’s notes and sold the American concern large amounts of cotton for transportation upriver. The first kind of transaction was made possible only by the stream of silver bullion that the opium trade poured into Jardine’s treasury, and the second was forbidden by the Chinese government. Consequently, although King inveighed against the evils of the commerce in the narcotic, his firm could not have done business without it,75 and Morss and Matheson frequently traded favors and accommodations. Moreover in its disregard of Chinese law, Olyphant’s was little different from other firms. Trade, personality, and community living had made even Olyphant & Co. rather less exceptional than it pretended to be. At the end of the period, Olyphant & Co., though still in the family, was

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in the hands of collateral relations who did not bear the name. Olyphant senior continued to go to China and to do some business there but he was no longer a member of the China firm. The center of his interests was shifting elsewhere. It was not business but religion that drew Olyphant eastward in these later years. In June 1850 on his last voyage to China, he wrote his sons a letter of advice from the steamer Pacific. The letter breathes the spirit of Olyphant and his partners: I need not reexhort you to strive to build up a character for sound discretion in business. Expel all frivolity from the counting room. Curb all feverish excitement of mind in your affairs. Do what you do with the fear of God and with His approbation and leave the rest to Him. Nothing is more pernicious than the craving to get a sufficiency quickly with a view to retirement. Be rather content with such things as you have and look upon life as a time of service. I have a desire that you should continue a commercial intercourse with China. I go there again scarcely knowing what I am to do there, but under the impression that such is the course our Heavenly Father has marked for me, and therefore willing to go and see what He has for me to do, and I desire to keep a mind prepared to hear a Voice say “this is the Way walk ye in it,” whether it be to stay or return. But above all I entreat you so to order your earthly concerns as that the Kingdom of God should not only not be second in your esteem, but first of all.76

The firm continued another twenty-eight years, presumably with the same character and peculiarities. Its members, if not motivated as strongly as Olyphant and King, were, nonetheless, committed Christians, and they seem to have followed the founder’s principles and continued his business practices. As with any organization, a firm develops an individual style and character. Little information has survived except for the extra-commercial tone of Olyphant & Co. It is best known for its sponsorship of the American China Mission, and its part in the China trade is forgotten. Olyphant was certainly the most important single influence in the creation of the Mission, and he was its greatest benefactor as long as he was alive. A sincere, believing Christian, he seems to have bridged the gap between the mercantile and spiritual worlds most effectively. C. N. Talbot and, more important, C. W. King were also very active in the missionary movement and in the attack on the opium trade. The firm’s well-known religiosity made it a butt for the sharpest wits at Canton. The factory was called “Zion’s Corner” and the firm “Holy Joe’s Concern,” “The Holy Family,” “Humbug & Co.,” etc. Even the clerks for Olyphant were subjected to this niggling disparagement. George  R. Sampson, a former protégé of Israel Thorndike, had been hired away from Russell & Co. much to the annoyance of the hard-pressed W. H. Low and Augustine Heard. Because of the ship on which he arrived, the Israel, and perhaps because of his former benefactor, or the biblical sound of his last name, Sampson was dubbed “The Young King of Israel.”77 John Murray

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Forbes, in an interoffice memorandum from Macao to Heard at Canton, wrote: This goes by Gordon—tomorrow morning—he is a d[amned] malicious old s. of a bitch & hates you all most profoundly.  .  .  .  You are already on your guard,  .  .  .  about him & that concern.  .  .  .  Ye gods great & small, protect me from the all hallowing influence of holy Joe—his ships are all commanded by J-C—officered by Angels & manned by Saints—. . . . Happy thrice happy is the ship even consigned to them. She becomes invested with omnipotence—carries twice her former cargo—flies instead of sails, makes good markets & in a word becomes . . . regenerated.78

In 1828 Benjamin Wilcocks, who was never known for his piety, commenting on the recent failure of Smith, gloated: I suspect Holy Joe’s [Olyphant’s] time has really come, and the best thing he can do next is to take up old [Robert] Morrison’s79 trade, one is as great a rogue in religion as the other is in Commerce.80

Whatever the opinion of other merchants and despite its refusal to take part in the safe and lucrative opium trade,81 Olyphant & Co. was successful enough to enrich its partners as well as underwrite the American Protestant China Mission for years. Although all the firms at Canton were based on the family, Olyphant’s was the most old-fashioned in this regard. The very nature of the partners’ piety was traditional; it was strongly Calvinist with a liberal dollop of nineteenth-century evangelism.82 But it was neither piety nor missionary activity that offended other traders at Canton. Everyone was nominally Christian, and support of the Mission was highly respectable. The other merchants resented both the business practices and the righteousness of Olyphant and his partners. The firm was notorious for notifying other traders of the departure of a vessel only at the last moment. Moreover its members withheld letters considerably longer than others did (to permit them to take full advantage of their privy information).83 Another Olyphant & Co. trait which complicated its relations with other firms was its very vocal opposition to the opium traffic. Both King and Olyphant wrote extensively against the trade and apparently employed every opportunity to try to convert their erring mercantile brethren. In 1837 Olyphant even offered a one hundred dollar prize for the best essay against the traffic, an act of generosity appreciated more by modern readers than by contemporary opium traders. If Olyphant & Co. showed its strong traditionalism in its religious commitment, it was equally conservative in its family orientation. Except for the inclusion of Charles Talbot as a charter member, no nonrelative was ever admitted to partnership.84 Even the separation of the Canton and New York houses in 1839 did not move either firm out of family control, for both Olyphant and his son David were partners in the New York company. Both

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King and Morss, the two partners of the Canton house, were cousins and very close to Olyphant. More probably as the family authority suggests, Olyphant gave the Kings the China business as a patrimony.85 Gordon & Talbot, the new firm that resulted from Olyphant & Co.’s relinquishing of its commission business, bore much the same relationship to Olyphant & Co. as the early Russell & Co. to Perkins & Co. Two sometime employees of Olyphant, Oliver H. Gordon and William R. Talbot, founded their own house expressly for the commissions that the older firm had renounced. Gordon, the senior of the two men, seems to have been a New Yorker, though he also had connections with Hallowell, Maine. Talbot was a younger brother of Charles N. Talbot. The new concern did not limit itself to the commission business; it also shipped goods in its own name, thus setting up a conflict of interest with its own correspondents. Although most other Canton firms mixed their business in this manner, members of Olyphant & Co. thought Gordon & Talbot should confine itself to commissions.86 The company employed both Charles N. Talbot (Talbot, Olyphant & Co.) and Talbot & Lothrop as its New York correspondents. Gordon & Talbot apparently was formed while Gordon was visiting (and getting married) in the United States in 1835. Talbot wrote his correspondents in that year that the firm would be set up in Canton and that he was closing his New York business and sailing for China.87 Both partners arrived in Canton on Olyphant & Co.’s famous ship Roman on 26 January 1836 and immediately announced the opening of the new firm.88 Gordon, who did not want to remain, returned home the following year, leaving Talbot to manage the Canton firm,89 but it was soon beset with the great problems of the Panic of 1837 as well as its own internal contradictions. Gordon clearly planned on returning to America early, but Talbot thought he should share the burden of China duty. Also the firm was very probably undercapitalized, a circumstance that could have caused the conflict of interest noted above. Finally the economic difficulties of the late thirties may have driven Gordon, who had had some connection with the drug earlier,90 into investigating the possibilities of the opium trade, a course that would surely have alienated Olyphant & Co.’s principals.91 There was a remarkable amount of friction between members of the two houses despite the many ties, their sharing of facilities, clerks, data, and some correspondents. Gordon & Talbot was decidedly independent. Members of the two companies suspected each other of being less than fair, of resenting each other’s prosperity, of ingratitude, and of holding back information.92 But the ill-feeling did not last long, for in Canton, Gordon & Talbot was very short-lived. “Gordon & Talbot have also dissolved, old Gordon never having done anything since he formed the House, Talbot at length became tired of having to work for him,” noted Joseph Coolidge in a letter to Augustine Heard early in 1840.93 This sour comment may shed some light on the concern’s

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relatively brief existence in China, but it leaves unanswered the question of why it survived for so many years longer in New York. Also if Talbot believed Gordon should spend more time in Canton, one might well ask what he thought Gordon was getting out of the partnership. Presumably it was Gordon who put up most of the capital. He was a rich man by 1832, so much so that he almost tempted Harriet Low, but she was put off by his ugliness.94

Wetmore & Co. The only major resident Philadelphia firm at Canton during the later years of the old China trade was the Quaker concern, Nathan Dunn & Company.95 Organized by Dunn the company had three principals: Dunn, Jabez Jenkins, and Joseph Archer.96 All three had apparently been deep in the imaginative and daring trade in British textiles. In his letterbook now at Mystic Seaport, Dunn informed Samuel T. Jones on 29 December 1829 that the proposed house would be devoted to commission business exclusively, especially in the trade in English cloth. Samuel Archer, Joseph’s father, was probably the largest single American dealer in this commerce.97 He had major connections with William and Joseph Brown of Liverpool. The Browns were key members of an interlocking partnership of worldwide significance. They had allied firms in most important American ports, London, Liverpool, and elsewhere. They also had family connections in the textile producing areas.98 James Brown & Co. of Leeds had made woolens for Archer and shipped them to Dunn & Co. After Dunn & Co. was merged into Wetmore & Co., young Archer wrote John Cryder in London urging him to endeavor to secure an exclusive outlet for Brown’s goods in China for Wetmore & Co., because it was the “successor to ND & Co.”99 Archer’s interest is understandable, because while it lasted the textile trade had been very profitable, but by that time (1833) the British houses at Canton were about to enter the commerce with important advantages. Dunn returned home from China in 1831100 with a fortune estimated at “at least $200,000.”101 Archer and Jenkins carried on for another year when the firm was reorganized and Dunn withdrew.102 Jenkins then sailed for London and home, and Archer remained at Canton in charge of the house. Meanwhile Samuel Archer had concluded an agreement to establish a new company in Canton with William Shepherd Wetmore, a former Carrington apprentice, who had established houses in Lima and Valparaiso and who by 1830 had made a fortune. Archer seems to have signed papers committing his son to become a member without consulting or even informing him ahead of time. Moreover Jenkins was excluded, and Joseph Archer had to write a letter of apology, in which he explained: My father is a man of sanguine temperament and hasty in his decisions, he overlooks obstacles which would be stumbling blocks in the path of many . . . [He]

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overlooked the compact between thee and myself, so far as our original partnership was involved. Since the arrangement with Mr. Wetmore came to my knowledge I have regretted thy absence here more than I can express—We have now only to make the best of an unpleasant business. Let my arrangement with Wetmore result as it may I am quite certain thee and myself could not have arranged to continue a com[mission] business in Canton—That is the Patronage we should receive coming into competition with Russell & Co. and Wetmore would not have made it an object to continue the house.103

Plainly Archer was rationalizing, but he was certainly correct in his estimate of the relative commercial power of the other firms. Russell & Co. commanded about half of the entire American trade. On 11 January 1834 Archer stated in a letter to John Cryder, a Philadelphian to whom he was distantly related, that of the thirty-nine American vessels that had arrived so far that season, eighteen had come consigned to Russell & Co. Wetmore also would have been a formidable rival, particularly with his Philadelphia connections. Wetmore, a red-headed, sixfooter, whose pudgy face belied his organizational ability and shrewd business sense, had important connections in London, South America, New York, and New England, besides those in Philadelphia. His uncle, Samuel Wetmore, was a partner in Edward Carrington & Co. He was related by marriage to both principals of the important Providence firm of B. & T. H. Hoppin. Moreover he had maintained a close relationship with his former partners in Valparaiso and Lima. Richard Alsop, who was a member of an important Connecticut and New York merchant family, was the senior partner in the South American firms. Wetmore’s other ex-partner, John Cryder, was on the eve of forming Morrison, Cryder & Co., which immediately became one of the busier merchant banking houses in London.104 Wetmore also had a sizeable fortune of his own, and the addition of Joseph Archer to the firm brought Wetmore & Co. the business of Samuel Archer with his links to the Browns and other Dunn correspondents.105 Finally Archer brought an unexpected accession of business when John R. Latimer, on the eve of his departure for home, bequeathed him what American trade he had left.106 The new concern had superb connections, but to establish a firm at Canton with any reasonable expectation of success in this period required large capital resources. John P. Cushing wrote doubtfully to Samuel Russell of Wetmore’s undertaking, remarking that it was rare to find someone with one hundred fifty thousand dollars to two hundred thousand dollars, and “the courage to exile himself for a dozen years or more.”107 However Nathan Dunn advanced the new firm fifty thousand dollars and very possibly some of the other wealthy friends of the concern helped it in a similar manner.108

William Shepherd Wetmore, ca. 1850. Founder of several firms in Latin America, New York, London, and of Wetmore & Co., Canton. From an ambrotype by J. Gurney. Private collection.

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Consequently when Wetmore & Co. opened its doors on 1 February 1834,109 it was admirably circumstanced. Although it had but two partners, Wetmore and Archer, both brought considerable strength to the firm, and their clerk, Samuel Wetmore, Jr., son of Carrington’s partner, had apprenticed in Edward Carrington & Co. and was well acquainted with the tea trade in the United States. Wetmore’s Canton countinghouse was continually busy, and the staff soon increased to include a tea taster and two more American clerks, William Real Lejee (also known as Legee) and William Couper (also known as Cooper). Lejee was the son of a French immigrant who had served as an officer under Napoleon. He had settled in Philadelphia after Waterloo and young Lejee had grown up as an American. In the reorganization of 1 February 1837, Samuel Wetmore was taken in as a partner,110 and two years later, both Lejee and Couper were admitted. The first year of Wetmore & Co.’s existence was also the first year the East India Company did not dominate the trade. The opportunity for British free traders afforded by the cancellation of the Hon. Company’s monopoly was largely nullified by the train of difficulties that followed in its wake. Lord Napier arrived and played out his brief, tragic part, disturbing commerce for over a month at the very beginning of the season.111 Both British and American traders poured into Canton. The Company’s “Finance Office,” which had remained in China, began offering advances to shippers of tea to London. The resultant speculative boom in tea exports greatly complicated things for the Americans in at least two ways. It not only drove up the price of tea in China, but the large sums (reportedly £600,000) advanced by the Company’s treasury were not available to purchase American bills. Because the new shippers had brought out bills of their own, the market was flooded. Jardine, who formerly could be counted on to absorb large amounts of bills and had so advertised in America, was now employing his own funds and was selling bills. Wetmore noted gloomily: Every House here English & American have Bills & we doubt if any sum could now be negotiated upon any terms. . . . It is said 2,000,000 £ of Bills are here on sale. The English Houses here have received orders for Teas. Some have remitted Bills on Bengal, others credits from London, none money.112

It was an entirely unprecedented and very dangerous situation, and at this very time Wetmore & Co.’s friends in America and London had obligated the Canton firm to cash a large number of bills at a specified discount, promised that it would fill partially loaded ships with cargoes of its own, and made other concessions in order to secure trade for the new concern in its first year.113 When these consignments arrived in Canton, Wetmore was beside himself with apprehension. Such huge obligations were made in a year when the trade appeared certain to be larger than the Western markets could take. He wrote Richard Alsop frantically:

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I object to all such arrangements & beg you never to make the same again, or in fact lay us any obligation—We are too far off to permit of it & might be ruined. Here we are without the ability to sell a single Bill & you have compromised us to the extent of $85,000. . . .  If we escape without losing our whole Capital I shall be thankful.114

He wrote John Cryder in London in the same vein, and Joseph Archer, who was already badly frightened, literally became ill and tried to pull out of the firm altogether.115 But Wetmore was always a lucky man, and an unexpected upturn in prices late in the year saved him. John Murray Forbes of Russell & Co. noted with sardonic amusement, Of the American houses here—Wetmore gets a larger share than usual, for a part of which he has paid dearly by his advances in England, the late rise in English goods will help him out a little—but 2 months since he would have been glad to get out of the Scrape with a whole skin.116

Having survived the strains of the first year, Wetmore & Co. never permitted itself to become so deeply involved in its correspondents’ business again. And it prospered. When the books were closed on 30 July 1837, Joseph Archer estimated the gross profit of the firm for the year at nearly nine hundred thousand dollars. Allowing for a “pretty heavy discount . . . arising from losses in shipments now out,” Archer noted “I much doubt if there is any house in the place [that] could wind up their business with as heavy a capital as we can.” His assessment of the coming year was characteristically pessimistic “unless we take hazards which I deem unjustifiable.” He noted further that, as much as possible, the firm was avoiding giving the hongs any credit. He was sure they would all go bankrupt before long and stated flatly, “the opium trade is the branch of business which we should most encourage, it is by far the safest and most profitable.”117 Samuel Wetmore, Jr. also advocated expanding the concern’s drug trade to provide “relief from the magnitude [of risk?] of the other branches of our business.”118 Opium and very little else produced the cash they so badly needed. The following year Archer sent William Lejee to Calcutta with ninetythree thousand dollars in silver with instructions either to buy on house account or to make advances to others shipping opium to Wetmore & Co.’s consignment.119 In anticipation of new drug business, Archer bought a onehalf interest in the barque, Ternate, from D. & M. Rustomjee, a Parsee opium concern. The ship was to be used as an opium vessel in the smuggling trade up the coast. Economic rationality had overcome the heritage of Quaker religious scruples in Wetmore & Co.,120 but the firm’s illegal trade was to end with the arrival of Commissioner Lin in the spring of 1839. During the Panic of 1837, Wetmore & Company’s London affiliate, Morrison & Cryder, fell into difficulties, forcing the Canton firm to curtail its

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business sharply. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the skittish Archer was the resident partner at Canton in 1837 and much of 1838. He called in outstanding loans and prepared to meet the bills he feared would be protested in England and America. He even deposited funds with third parties against the anticipated demands. So overcautious was he that by February 1838 he was able to write Wetmore that the firm had over five hundred ninety thousand dollars in the vault!121 Morrison & Cryder managed to right itself,122 and the specie drain was far less serious than Archer had expected. Although such a conservative policy left the company in a highly liquid position, the money in the treasury brought no return. The concern had lost an entire year’s business and several of its most important correspondents as a result.123 Meanwhile Archer had worried himself into a very nervous state, so  much so that he had endangered his health again. He had already notified Wetmore, “I am heartily sick of trade and shall be glad to quit even if I  have but $20,000 clear.  .  .  .  Nothing under Heaven can compensate for the mental anxiety I have felt for the past three or four Months, and I dread the remotest possibility of its repetition.”124 Archer had talked of quitting as early as 1834, but in 1837 and 1838 he was determined to go home. He formally declined Wetmore’s proposition for a new partnership on 8  June125 and sailed about 20 October, never to return. John C. Green noted in a letter to Russell that Wetmore had bought Archer out.126 The proposed new articles are very interesting to the business historian. Wetmore and Archer were to be “special” partners, contributing all of the capital but limited in their liability to the amount of their investment. On this money they received 12 percent interest over and above profits. They also enjoyed several very important powers over the junior (“general”) partners, whose liability was unlimited, and who were to perform the work of the house at Canton. The document reads: In consideration of the great interest which the said Wm. S. Wetmore and Joseph Archer have at stake in the house they shall have and hereby do reserve to themselves the right and power to expel and dismiss any one or more members of the house should they at any time believe the safety or interest of the Concern would be jeopardised in any way by the longer continuance of such members.

They also were empowered to appoint new partners if one died, and this authority required the approval of only one of the Canton “general” partners. At any time either of the “special” partners might limit the annual speculation in China on the house’s account. Finally Archer and Wetmore were to conduct the trade of the firm in America or Europe if they so desired. The “general” or “acting” partners, on the other hand, were expressly forbidden to speculate on their own account, a provision that evidently did not apply to the “special” partners. Even the income accruing to the “general” partners from public or private appointments was to be

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counted in the firm’s profit and loss statement.127 Clearly the junior partners were expected to devote all their efforts to the firm, while the senior partners, in consideration of their investment, received extraordinary powers. They enjoyed both the control of senior members of a partnership and some of the security of major stockholders in a modern corporation. Because Archer retired before the commencement of the new concern, these articles gave William Wetmore such a determining voice in the firm that Wetmore & Co. had a decidedly different organization from the other companies at Canton in the pretreaty era. Moreover Wetmore would use his awesome power so brutally that he shocked the rest of the American community. Wetmore had returned to China in time for the beginning of the 1838–39 season, intending to leave China early the following year, after the firm had been reorganized. Though delayed several months by the opium crisis, which occurred in the spring of 1839, he sailed on the Robert Fulton late that summer.128 He left the general partners somewhat more flexibility than the articles required, probably because Archer was no longer in the firm and because of his growing trust in his cousin, and now partner, Samuel Jr. He  doubled the younger man’s portion on 29 August but even after this act of generosity, William Wetmore still owned a majority share and remained in absolute control of the company.129 Just before his departure, W. S. Wetmore authorized the Canton partners to ship up to three hundred thousand dollars on house account in the coming year.130 Given its organizational structure, Wetmore & Co. was fortunate to have William S. Wetmore in Canton at the time of the opium crisis. He was able to approve the inactive “official” community policy toward the Chinese while taking the decisive action necessary for the firm to capitalize on the unusual situation that existed between the end of the foreigners’ detention and the beginning of the British blockade. Like R. B. Forbes of Russell & Co., Wetmore was strongly opposed to leaving Canton with the British.131 Coincidentally Wetmore was chairman of the Canton General Chamber of Commerce at this moment. A knowledge of his stance as head of his firm makes his actions as leader of the Chamber quite logical at this time. The Chamber’s response to Lin’s forceful policy was simply to dissolve itself.132 Wetmore’s advice to Commodore Read, whose squadron arrived in the Gulf during the “captivity,” was to avoid visiting Canton and more generally to exercise forbearance with respect to the Chinese authorities.133 Wetmore’s advice and actions were entirely consistent with standard (private) American policy, and his actions as head of the firm made all the partners rich. The opportunity presented by the anomalous situation in the Canton River required unusual activity on behalf of the house during that frenetic period when American merchants took British goods upriver and Chinese products downstream at greatly inflated rates. Wetmore & Co. purchased the British ship Triumph and kept at least two vessels in the trade at all times. The

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concern was also busy shipping China goods to American and European markets not only for its correspondents but also for Chinese merchants and itself. Wetmore left at the beginning of the next season, but en route home, he was able to take advantage of private information from his Canton house to effect a dramatic coup in London. He sold off the house’s entire stock of China goods during a temporary rise in the market, just before the news arrived that China was to open several ports to Western trade.134 Clearly, Wetmore’s remarkable power in the firm had its advantages, although the other partners were sometimes limited in their ability to respond quickly to transient market conditions. Wetmore’s great experience was also evident in the notably tight organization and staffing of the factory, although employees were well paid. The Macao office was skeletal, consisting of a single partner (William Lejee), a bookkeeper,135 and Portuguese clerks and copyists who lived at home. This organization dated back to March 1841, when the rest of the countinghouse moved back to Canton following the British attack. Subsequently Lejee handled both the books and the foreign correspondence—the two functions most likely to be disturbed by the disorders that increasingly afflicted the factory area.136 When the office was particularly rushed, Mrs. Kinsman, wife of a new partner, helped out, though the Wetmores generally frowned on such feminist practices.137 In Canton there were three resident members,138 the tea taster,139 and at least four Western clerks,140 as well as Chinese servants.141 By the end of the war, Wetmore & Co. had been so successful that a competitor wrote his brother with some envy that Wetmore & Co. was second only to Russell & Co. among the American concerns at Canton.142 Reflecting his larger share of the firm, Samuel Wetmore, Jr. enjoyed a rather privileged status. His membership continued over several reorganizations, and he was permitted to leave China on occasion without losing his portion of the concern, but it was the older Wetmore who retained effective control of the company so long as he remained a partner. Although no balance sheet or other primary financial document has yet turned up, the Wetmore Papers contain a balance sheet of William Wetmore’s personal account with the company dated 30  June 1841. Because he held the largest share of the business by far, some idea of the firm’s magnitude at that time may be gained from the total, which was $958,469.60. The following year, while William Wetmore was still out of the country, the articles of copartnership expired again. Lejee and Couper, who had been admitted on 1 February 1839, retired,143 and three new members were admitted: Nathaniel Kinsman, a respected Salem captain who had been in the East India trade for years; William Moore, a young Philadelphian who had been a clerk in the countinghouse since about 1841;144 and William A. Lawrence, the only New Yorker to become a partner of Wetmore & Co. in the pretreaty era. Lawrence was exceedingly well prepared. A graduate of Columbia (1823), he had apprenticed with P. & S. Crary, New York, and

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later established his own firm, Lawrence & Munsell, dealing largely in silks. He arrived in China as the agent of the large New York firm, Howland & Aspinwall, in which capacity he had continued until he joined Wetmore & Co. He showed much promise, and it was no slight blow to the firm when on 11 September 1844, he fell from a launch into the Pearl River and drowned.145 The tragedy left the firm short-handed. The remaining general partners therefore took in Samuel Rawle.146 However his long and checkered career in commerce had been marked by misfortune and by the time he was admitted to partnership in Wetmore & Co., Rawle was fifty-seven years of age, fourteen years older than William Wetmore himself. When the latter arrived in Canton later in the fall, he brusquely rejected Rawle. Although the Canton partners had all agreed to his admission, Wetmore’s power in the firm was decisive. He dictated policy whenever he really wished to do so. Kinsman explained to his wife sometime after the fact: “Mr. Rawle is an excellent, but almost superannuated, old man, willing to do all he can, but totally unfitted for the situation he was engaged to fill, that of correspondent, and this fact, Wetmore soon found out. Still, he is useful; he has a pretty good knowledge of Goods, and is a tolerable judge of Teas.”147 While still in America, Wetmore and his now unemployed brother-in-law, John Cryder, had organized Wetmore & Cryder, New York.148 Cryder had previously withdrawn from his London house. At the next reorganization of the Canton firm in 1847, William Wetmore retired to continue the trade from the new house in New York, and Samuel Wetmore, Jr. became head of the firm in China, a post he retained until he, too, retired to America to become a member of Wetmore & Cryder. Three years later Wetmore & Co. stopped payments and was reorganized as Wetmore, Williams & Co.

Company Style Wetmore & Co. had a much different style from any of the other Canton firms. At first, as Nathan Dunn & Company, it was an all-Quaker, Philadelphia concern. It stayed out of the drug trade, probably for moral reasons,149 except for the period 1838–39. Absent that aberration the company never made strenuous attempts to increase this line of business in the manner of Perkins & Co., Wilcocks, Latimer, Russell & Co., Russell, Sturgis & Co., etc. The concern’s Quaker flavor remained noticeable even after most of the Friends had left the firm. When Mrs. Kinsman arrived at the Macao office late in 1843, she was surprised to find Quaker literature about the building.150 This religious influence may also have affected the partners after their retirement, for the richest of them, the Wetmores and Nathan Dunn, were renowned for their open-handed philanthropy. Mrs. Kinsman was a Quaker but her husband seems to have been a

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Congregationalist with a strongly Yankee concept of economy. This thriftiness clashed rather strikingly with the generally luxurious lifestyle of Canton. Kinsman wrote from the Canton factory to his wife at Macao in frugal horror: You can form no idea of the enormous extravagance of this house, the consumption of the article of Beer alone would suffice to maintain one family comfortable in Salem. Our young men finish an entire bottle each at dinner, a  dozen bottles are drunk at table on ordinary occasions & frequently 1–1/2  dozen bottles. W[etmore] is in the habit of calling for beer 5 or 6 times during the day and evening, and a fresh bottle is always opened, from which he takes one glass, the residue is thrown away or drunk by the servants! I mention this as an example in the article of Beer. Every thing else is pretty much in the same ratio.151

Both Dunn and Jenkins had been known for their generous table and hospitality, and this reputation had been earned in a community famous for lavish living. Whatever their religious convictions, most of the partners of Wetmore & Co. were hardly an abstemious lot. If they survived, they lived well, and went home with fortunes. Each firm at Canton had its own peculiar flavor—it may also not be too much to say that each had its own subculture. The tone of life and business at Wetmore & Co. was far different from that of Russell & Co., and of course Olyphant & Co. stood in dramatic contrast to any other firm. The differences are traceable to many factors, including conscience, trade specialization, function, and the area of origin of the partners. However it would take a far more intensive study than this to search out even these adequately. The matter of conscience alone is likely to occupy scholars for some time in the future as it has in the past. Olyphant, as the sponsor and guardian of the China Mission, was a very peculiar merchant, and his influence permeated the house. Whatever happened in face-to-face encounters, the religious convictions of the firm’s principals were so much stronger than those in other firms that they produced some of the sharpest rhetorical hostility in pretreaty Canton. Wetmore & Co., while it was not a rigidly moralist concern, still bore something of a Quaker stamp, and the partners’ doubts about the opium trade apparently were crystallized by Lin’s vigorous action of 1839. Russell & Co. and its offshoots were more clearly in the pattern of economic rationality made famous by the classical economists. Lin’s actions at first convinced the firm’s principals that opium trading was “disreputable.” Once the danger of Chinese retribution was removed, however, Russell & Co. again returned to the profitable drug traffic. Placing the Canton companies in the broader perspective of the development of business organization is a complex task. All of them were family firms, at least formally, but some were more advanced adaptations of that ancient form than others. It was only the smaller, more ephemeral concerns that were individual proprietorships or partnerships without involvement

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of the principals’ collateral relations. For all of those which became well established, however, the principle of continuity was invariably kinship. Without exception each firm began with a partnership of two men, one of whom either died, sold out, or was expelled within a few years. Names like Bumstead, Archer, Ammidon, Talbot, and Coolidge disappear from the list of Canton partners after the first generation. By that time the firm had generally become identified with a stem family or families and its (their) dynastic alliances. Wetmore & Co. might be called a “presidential partnership,” because William S. Wetmore kept effective control in his own hands even to the point of exercising a veto over all important changes in the firm’s policy. Nevertheless he did not confine membership to his own family. Though he rejected Samuel Rawle and Isaac M. Bull,152 he took in several apprentices with whom he had no clear blood, social, or business connection. Although the Wetmores remained the core of the firm, they admitted a number of young men, invariably Philadelphians, who had served time as clerks in the Canton house. The firm also occasionally admitted a gifted, experienced, and well-connected non-Philadelphian mature merchant directly. There were two of these: Lawrence from New York and Kinsman of Salem. The sheer size of its business, together with historical accident, made Russell & Co. unique. Russell sold out in the 1830s. Thereafter a series of loosely allied families continued the organization, which regularly cranked out fortunes for younger members of the allied clans.153 After Green’s reorganization the form of the company was set. It consisted of representatives of several important American commercial families, concentrating in one unit the credit, talent, and connections of a far wider aggregation than any single kinship group could provide regardless of its genius, wealth, or fertility. The leading partner of Russell & Co. was generally able to select his successor, but he was never the powerful executive that Wetmore was. The other partners, the constituent families, and Howqua all had important voices in the firm’s direction, at least prior to 1846. Thus Russell chose Heard and Heard picked Green. Green’s successor, R. B. Forbes, was a general favorite and arrived with powerful backing. The Forbeses were not to be denied anyway. In turn Forbes determined on Warren Delano, who selected Russell Sturgis to act in his absence. Thereafter the Forbes influence intervened again to place control in the hands of Paul S. Forbes. In later years both Warren Delano and R. B. Forbes would return to Canton as chiefs of the firm to recoup the fortunes they had lost in America (incidentally demonstrating their continuing influence in the firm). Generally Russell & Co. remained in the firm control of the Forbes family, led by the astute John Murray Forbes but represented in China by Paul Forbes.154 In the matter of specialization and diversification, the situation was complex. Firms not only specialized as to product but also as to function. Some were primarily opium traders while others concentrated on bills, ginseng,

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fur, English goods, and other imports. There was less variety in exports. Everyone sold teas, but silk tended to be a specialty business. Some firms confined themselves to the market in one city or in America to the exclusion of Europe and Latin America. Some, like Perkins & Co. in its later years, engaged only in commerce on behalf of its constituent families, while others, most notably Russell & Co., were exclusively commission houses. Most, however, combined these functions to some degree. It has been remarked that general partnerships tended to enter whatever line of business seemed likely to pay. This was only partly true at Canton. Most Canton firms diversified. They sold insurance; performed banking and often hotel services; bought and sold silk privileges, freight space, ordered chinaware, draperies, and chow chow products for their constituents; and engaged in related businesses. Briefly they functioned much like eighteenth-century factors, but they were factors in transition. Only the early residents, and sometimes the smaller firms in the later period, permitted themselves to become involved in nonmercantile activities like ship-building, chandling, and contracting. Similarly generalizations about the geographic affiliations of the firms must be qualified. All of the resident companies at the end of the period were Yankee, but none was exclusively so. Wetmore & Co. had a strong Philadelphia influence although the Wetmores were from Providence and central Connecticut. Olyphant & Co., despite its founders’ Rhode Island origins, was predominantly a New York firm. Yankees made up the majority of Russell & Co.’s principals but many, like the Lows and the Delanos, had been transplanted into New York soil from New England. Finally the concern admitted a few people, like John Green and William Hunter, with no discernible ties north of the Hudson. If the larger firms enjoyed a big organization’s advantages, they also suffered from its problems. The diffusion of responsibility that is characteristic of modern corporations began with the expanded partnership, especially with the extended family alliance. Decision making then, as now, required the “establishment of working compromises among the interests of . . . groups of persons within and outside the business unit.”155 This consensus was necessary as soon as the business became at all substantial. After the absorption of Perkins & Co., Russell & Co. could afford to ignore the interest of the Boston Concern only at its peril. Of course this rule also held for Howqua and the firm’s major correspondents like the Barings, the Griswolds, Brown & Ives, etc. The Griswolds, at a later date, even managed to place a family member among the partners of Russell & Co.156 Because Russell & Co. and Wetmore & Co. were structurally and functionally among the most advanced firms at Canton, it is of particular interest to note that their members retained so many traditional business customs and loyalties. Clearly this was still the era of family capitalism. It was probably not until industrialism had altered the basic needs of business organizations

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that more radical ideas made much headway against the habits of centuries. It is more than likely that the continuing work of scholars in the field will uncover many such pragmatic adaptations as the “presidential” partnership and the extended family alliance. Surely what Peter Laslett says of industrialization was also true of the contemporary commercial world. Gradually, a series of modifications  .  .  .  took place in the lives of very large numbers of individual communities, a different process in every particular case, different in content, in the succession of events, in the time taken up.

And different, we might add, in the reception of new ideas and the shucking off of old ones. “Now this,” he continues, “is not a single process at all.”157

6 The China Trader Social Origins

If there is one quality that strikes a modern reader of the correspondence of Canton residents, it is the very commercial nature of the community. Hong merchants, British private traders, especially the restless Scots and Americans, all displayed the same motivation. Yet somehow the Americans seem to have been the least complicated, the most typical businessmen. The hong merchants were the most sensitive to status and security pressures, especially because they were responsible to the imperial government and very vulnerable. They also held to Chinese values and hoped to rise in the social system, but “their primary loyalty was to their own businesses” and that fact meant close association with foreign traders, a number of whom smuggled opium. It was this inescapable fact that moved Commissioner Lin to denounce them as “chien-shang.”1 Similarly the supercargoes of the British East India Company occupied a semiofficial status and were at least as concerned about keeping order and observing protocol as were the Chinese traders. Moreover they were all servants of the Hon. Company—not merchants operating at their own risk for their profit. Next in order of noneconomic motivation came most of the private British. Perhaps they would have been as economically “rational” as the Americans, but their government had representatives on the spot, and, besides, “national honor” really meant something to British subjects in the day of Palmerstonian imperialism. They were not accustomed to the restraints the Chinese were demanding by 1839. The test came when Lin released the foreign community. Jardine’s was “ready to work either side of the street. War or peace, opium banned or opium legal, it was all the same to them.” The great British firm would survive and prosper because it was large and shrewd, but, like most of the private British, Jardine’s was ready for war.2 Immediate economic interest could wait until the rascally Chinese were humbled. Her Majesty’s chief superintendent of trade, Sir Charles Elliot, was very trade conscious, so much so that a modern scholar has remarked that commerce “was something he valued above his reputation with the 222

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officers of the [military] expedition, above his standing with Palmerston even.”3 To be sure Elliot was very concerned with the trade of the Empire, but Sir Charles was an aristocrat and Her Majesty’s appointee into the bargain—he was not a businessman. With the Americans, however, trade was absolutely primary. No other interest whatever intervened. The difference was dramatically illustrated in the well-known confrontation between Elliot and Robert Bennet Forbes after Lin lifted his blockade in the spring of 1839. When the American insisted that Russell & Co. would continue to do business until armed conflict prevented it, Elliot could only deplore and threaten. Thousands of miles from any kind of official protection, American merchants sent home letters that reflected this primary concern with their commerce throughout the entire six decades of the trade. Invariably once a merchant had set down the news, he began to assess its possible effect on trade. In writing of the war in Europe, the Peace of Amiens, Jefferson’s hated Embargo, or the War of 1812, traders speculated about the opportunities for American China cargoes in America, in the ports of Napoleonic Europe, and elsewhere. In  watching the attempts of the Chinese government to enforce its antiopium decrees, they wondered which of the drug smugglers would be aided and which eliminated. As vehement as most residents were about the election of Jackson, they spent more time musing on how that event would affect the availability of credit than in denouncing “Old Hickory.” Finally in following the progress of the British forces during the Opium War, they also followed the price of opium and had second thoughts about their pledge to remain out of the drug traffic. Getting to China had required a major decision, the cutting of ties, leaving loved ones, and risking health, fortune and even life itself, in the hope of bringing home a “competency.” Their backgrounds typically had prepared them for this sacrifice, and they were impatient with any obstacle. In some ways, their backgrounds also made them rather atypical of the American populace as a whole. Family and Social Class China traders, both successful and unsuccessful, tended to come from families of British origin. There were three or four New York Dutchmen, a couple of Huguenots, two or three Jews, and at least one of apparently German extraction. Most, however, were clearly of lines that had come from the British Isles and had resided in the United States for at least a generation. If the fathers had been at all successful as merchants, the sons rarely went to Canton. It was the more peripheral relations rather than scions of important trading families who made the long voyage to China. This rule held even for China trade families. The outstanding achiever in a two-generation China trade dynasty was very often a nephew, son-in-law or

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cousin—in fact nearly any male relative except the son in the direct line. Moreover those sons of China traders who turned up in Canton invariably failed to stay long enough to make a fortune in their own names. There are several obvious examples of the workings of this principle in the Perkins family. Thomas Handasyd Perkins had several well-known merchants perched in his family tree, but his father had made almost no mark by the time he died in 1773, aged forty, leaving a wife and eight children. Young Thomas was nine years old at the time. His mother and maternal grandfather, however, were both successful traders. The pattern was repeated in the next generation. James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins were spectacularly successful businessmen. Their trade in China was carried on brilliantly by their nephew, John Perkins Cushing, and in Europe by James’s nephew, Frederic W. Paine. After James Perkins died, the colonel’s son-inlaw, Samuel Cabot, ran the Boston office, and it was Cabot and another son-in-law, Thomas C. Cary, who ultimately continued the firm. Three other Perkins nephews, the Forbes brothers, all served apprenticeships in the Boston firm and became partners in the Canton house. One of these, John Murray Forbes, was later to become especially famous as an entrepreneur in the United States. This record contrasts glaringly with the lackluster performance of the sons. Neither Thomas Perkins’s son, Thomas H. Jr., nor James’s son, James Jr., was of much use in business. Thomas Jr. was more inclined toward yachting, fast horses, dandyism, and leisure activity generally, while James Jr. was an alcoholic. The typical China trader, especially the typical successful China trader, was from a respectable but “comparatively deprived” background. John C. Green, whose father has been described as “an intelligent farmer,” nevertheless attended the Lawrenceville Academy.4 The founder of Green’s China firm, Samuel Russell, lost his father when he was only twelve. He apprenticed with relatives in Middletown, Connecticut, and later went to China under the auspices of a group of prominent Providence merchants. He was related to at least some of them, that is, Samuel and Willard Wetmore. The third of these partners, Edward Carrington, was the son of a respectable but hardly wealthy Connecticut Valley doctor. He had spent nine years in Canton just after the turn of the century and returned home to become the largest shipowner in Rhode Island. Carrington’s son, in turn, was never the success his father had been. In fact after a number of reverses in the late 1850s, he abandoned business altogether and become something of a recluse. On the other hand Carrington’s nephew, Isaac M. Bull, became wealthy in China and returned home, purchased his uncle’s cotton mill, and greatly increased its production and profitability before he died. Again William S. Wetmore was the son of a Vermont farmer, but his uncle Samuel was a partner in Carrington’s firm. After apprenticing there, Wetmore went to sea as a supercargo for the firm. He later went on to establish three partnerships overseas, in Lima, Valparaiso, and Canton, and another

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in New York City. He became one of the richest American merchants of his time. His uncle’s son, Samuel Jr., may be an exception to the rule. He was not unsuccessful, but he was far less so than his masterful cousin William. Samuel Jr. made his fortune following in William’s footsteps, from the Carrington countinghouse to his cousin’s Canton firm, and then to New York. There he again joined a firm of his cousin William’s. Samuel Jr. took few chances. It was probably just as well for his fortunes that he was so prudent and so well connected. Rich men’s sons apparently carried the same heavy burden in the early nineteenth century that they do today, particularly those whose fathers were self-made men.5 They seem to have been overwhelmed by the example of the father. This handicap may well be the means by which the proverb “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” is realized in practice. Most sons in the direct line who appeared at Canton had reputations as wastrels.6 Yet relative deprivation, as opposed either to deep poverty or the favored position of a son, appears to have been a powerful stimulus. The nephew of a great merchant, taken into his uncle’s countinghouse to oblige his widowed mother, was under the greatest pressure to do well. He had to compete with the heir-apparent and, by his greater exertions, prove that he was entitled to the regard of his uncle.7 In a sense it was impossible to survive at Canton without being dedicated. The very act of coming to China was, in itself, evidence of serious purpose, yet truly single-minded merchants would have been comfortable only at the height of the tea season. At that time it was necessary for a merchant to do enormous amounts of work in a very short space of time. The press of business was terrific, and many a man broke under the strain. Yet this period of driving industry was followed by long months of leisure and even boredom, which was alleviated by luxury, by the limited recreational opportunities at Canton and by plenty of both at Macao. For the truly committed, that is, a single-minded merchant, a prolonged stay at Canton must have been very frustrating. For a gifted, well-circumstanced young man who was willing to sacrifice several years of intermittent labor and leisure, however, Canton offered a very comfortable shortcut to a fortune. But usually he had to be well circumstanced. Even if one considers only the father’s occupation, a Canton trader came off pretty well. Middle-class citizens predominated. Most of the parents whose vocations have been identified were merchants and/or ship captains.8 Twelve were lawyers, judges, or politicians, ten were physicians, two were farmers, and three others were the sole representatives of their professions in this group. One was a minister, another a printer and publisher, and the third was an actor and impresario. Only three seem to have held positions that could have classified them as “mechanicks” or laborers. W. F. Megee’s father was a baker, Ebenezer Dorr’s was reportedly a tanner, and the Tiers brothers’ father was a blockmaker and later a ship chandler. Each of these elders, however, was in

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business for himself at least part of his life. Thus, if we count them as businessmen,9 only the farmers could possibly have been anything but merchants or professional men10—for example, relatively privileged citizens. To clinch the matter almost all of those on whom information is readily available had merchants and/or professional people close to the immediate family, if not a part of it. Thus, the China trade nabob was not really an arriviste. He had not come from the lower orders but rather from the lower levels of a privileged class, most strikingly the comparatively poor relations of important merchants. That China traders were a privileged group should come as no surprise. Members of the lower classes rarely travel far, either geographically (except as common sailors) or socially, in one generation.11 Moreover to go to a spot as remote as Canton took some planning, some connections, or really extraordinary luck. Perhaps a sailor might get to China occasionally during a lifetime of blue water labor, but the restrictions on common seamen at Canton were oppressive indeed and certainly could not have encouraged a young man to return unassisted to remain for a number of years. An obvious consideration in the explanation of the preponderance of privileged young men at Canton is that mercantile skills are easier to acquire in more privileged classes than among the poor. Education has almost always been one of the advantages of the wellborn. Among the most important demands on a China merchant was the call for funds. The trade required probably the greatest and most prolonged capital investment of any commerce anywhere in the world at the time.12 A single China cargo was often worth a quarter of a million dollars and more, and China was almost antipodal to the commercial centers of our eastern seaboard. Hence access to capital was a critical requirement for a China trader. The easiest and cheapest way to become a Canton merchant was to establish a “commission and agency business.” Most residents did some commission business from the time of Shaw & Randall, but until Russell & Co. announced its formation on 1 January 1824 no firm had dedicated itself exclusively to acting on behalf of its clients. In order to attract business, a commission merchant had to inspire a modicum of confidence in those trading to China. He had to have important “commercial friends,” otherwise he was forced either to finance his own trade or find employment in another’s countinghouse. The latter course was very common after the early 1820s, when several American firms became established in Canton. A young man who managed to become a clerk for one of the larger companies was very lucky. If his work was satisfactory and his health held up, he was often admitted to the firm after a few years. Once he became a partner, his future was assured, but for young men without connections, this ladder of success lacked too many of the lower rungs. The very qualities that made it possible to become

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an independent China merchant made a man attractive as a partner. Because clerks frequently became partners, firms were careful about who became clerks. Clerks were also apprentices, and businessmen felt special responsibilities toward apprentices, particularly at Canton.13 A man’s obligations to his kinfolks extended far beyond the nuclear family in those days. Sons in the direct line found places in home-based firms, especially when the family name was attached to the concern.14 Canton firms, on the other hand, being generally less central to the family interest, were staffed by cousins, nephews, former apprentices, and friends. In this fashion a great American merchant was able to provide a career ladder for his peripheral relations and to strengthen his hold on the Canton company. Paul S. Forbes, in what appears today as an appallingly childish pique, complained to his wife of his cousins’ failure to bring him into Russell & Co. at an earlier date.15 In his irritation Forbes merely reflected a common contemporary view of family obligation. Similarly Philip Ammidon could write John Latimer proposing a new firm to compete with Russell & Co. with the most complete assurance that his nephew, George R. Russell of Russell & Sturgis, Manila, would support him. Yet Ammidon had not seen his nephew for years; he knew that blood ties were close ties. Economic historians have agreed that the origins of entrepreneurship were associated “with the growth of the conception of a ‘firm’ as something distinct from an individual or his family.”16 This distinction was very fuzzy at Canton in pretreaty days. One obvious reason for this condition was the fact that the concept of “the firm has acquired a range of further meanings”17 in the past century or two, and it is easy to read these meanings back into earlier times. At Canton the firm still meant the family, or more precisely, the family was more important than the concern. The predominance of a few family names in almost any firm must strike the most casual observer, and a little study reveals the strength of the dominant clans. The prevalence of nepotism at Canton is strange to those accustomed to the standards of twentieth-century business. Today the organization is the center of concern, and such favoritism is correctly regarded as subversive of the best interests of the firm, even when the favored employee is the boss’s son. In the era of the family firm, the case was reversed. Nepotism was obviously in the best interests of the family; even the admission of a nonrelative could be something of a family matter. Dynastic marriage and the admission of sonsin-law were common, as was the promotion of bright apprentices, who for several years had been in the company “family” (the usage was contemporary). Up until 1844 only nine of the nineteen members of Russell & Co. had not been members of one of the families represented in the reunion of 1840.18 The exceptions were not so freakish as they might appear. Two, Russell and Ammidon, were the founders of the firm. Two more, Green and Heard, were taken in early and only because the firm was desperate for qualified leadership. Four had been clerks in the firm for years before their

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admission, viz. Hunter, Spooner, George Perkins, and Gilman.19 The other oddity was Joseph Coolidge, who, although not related to any of the partners, was one of the best-connected young men ever to arrive in old Canton. It is instructive that John Murray Forbes, a stickler for business ethics, continued to favor and even to defend something like nepotism years after he became a railroad promoter,20 and among Forbes’s most outstanding protégés were members of the old New England mercantile families.21 In the era of family capitalism, then, nepotism was a fact of life or even a duty, and presumably the proportion of “inherited” positions was higher than it has been since. William Miller, studying business leaders of the first decade of the twentieth century, states that 27 percent of his subjects “may be said to have inherited their high positions.” Even the others, those who “climbed the bureaucratic ladder,” were frequently helped to “get the proper start” by their “family status, education, and other social endowments.”22 It  may be argued that this statement is subject to such broad interpretation as to be very dilute. It is certainly true of the merchants who resided in China prior to the Cushing Treaty. “Family status, education, and other social endowments” pretty well cover the advantages of young men in American society in the early nineteenth century. Samuel Russell, a half-orphan, apprenticed to a firm in Middletown, Connecticut, and having only an “ordinary schooling,” was nevertheless a privileged young man. Both of the firms in which he worked as a boy were owned by relatives. In the second of these, he worked under Samuel Wetmore. He was able to follow his uncle up the ladder, as it were. Wetmore moved from Middletown in 1815 to become a partner in Edward Carrington & Co., and he was undoubtedly instrumental in bringing young Russell to Providence. Russell very shortly became a member of Carrington’s brothers-in-law’s firm, B. & T. C. Hoppin & Co., of the same city. Wetmore was also connected with the Hoppins because he and Benjamin Hoppin had married sisters.23 Finally Augustus Russell, Samuel’s younger brother, became a clerk under Wetmore in the Carrington firm. Carrington and the Hoppins had long worked together very closely in the China trade. The Wetmore-Russell link was still another bond between them. It follows that in 1818, when Edward Carrington & Co., B. & T. C. Hoppin & Co., and Cyrus Butler decided to send an agent to Canton, Samuel Russell was an obvious choice. Yet Russell is usually considered a self-made man and, for the times, so he was. No one’s heir apparent, like John P. Cushing, he achieved his own success in his own firm, but only after “family status, education and other social endowments helped . . . [him] get the proper start.” Direct evidence affords the best source of information on “inherited positions,” though it is difficult to quantify and compare. Nearly all of the resident traders at Canton, as opposed to the transients, came to China in one of two ways:

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1. They were sent by powerful stateside merchants, often relatives, or  they were imported by firms already established at Canton. This is to say that they came as agents of important American sedentary merchants or carried letters of recommendation from such persons (which was often the same thing). A variation of this method was the recruitment of a partner or an apprentice in America by a partner who was home on a visit. 2. They were sea captains, who had been in the Eastern trade for years before being invited to join a Canton firm or settling there independently. A number of these men, perhaps one quarter, later founded their own companies, but most were content to ascend the short ladder of success put there by others. Both the ex-apprentices and the former mariners came from similar families; wealthier and better educated than most American families of the time, they were generally in business or the professions, and the extended family operated as a unit. At least among Boston families, there was a tendency to cluster. They often built houses on the same city block or in the same small town, spent much of each day together, took trips and vacations jointly, joined the same political parties and social clubs, and attended the same schools and churches. In the Perkins-Forbes clan, holidays were celebrated together with the patriarch, Thomas H. Perkins, typically presiding. The various family businesses were interwoven, and the young men tended to assume expected life roles within those firms. Marriage within their own local social set was more common than alliances outside of it, and there was no ban on the marriage of cousins.24 Most of the missionaries who answered the call to China had backgrounds only slightly different from the merchants’. They were invariably young and freshly ordained at the time of their arrival. They averaged twenty-six or twenty-seven years of age; they came from much the same area and the same kinds of families, but their personalities varied within the framework of their religious commitment. They were “gentlemen” and “ladies,” both in the sense that they came from a privileged section of the American population and also that they were almost distressingly genteel. Their education was, on the whole, better than that of the merchants, but none was wealthy and most were financially dependent upon their home boards and the generosity of the Canton community. Although most of the missionaries had grown up in the northeastern section of the country, they tended to come from smaller towns than the merchants, and some were farm boys.25 The South was much better represented, especially among the Baptists and Presbyterians.26 Both of the two missionaries who came out without sponsorship by a home board, Issachar J. Roberts and Dr. W. H. Cumming, were Southerners. The New Englanders,

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although still numerous, yielded first place to the middle staters— New Yorkers, New Jerseyites, and Pennsylvanians. The missionaries were far more likely than the merchants to be men of a single purpose. In a personal letter to his merchant friend, Charles N. Talbot, the American Board’s first representative, Rev. Elijah C. Bridgman, sighed: Some of my very good friends have recommended me to marry: This I would do were it not for the peculiar situation in which we are placed in this country: but as things are, it is doubtful whether I shall ever know more of the pleasures of domestic life, or ever again see my native land. But I am bound to no course, except to that of labouring in China all the days of my life; and this (D.v.) I will do.27

The other missionaries shared Bridgman’s lifetime dedication. Even when personal tragedy or ill health drove them home, they tended to return to the field.28 They also shared his need for a wife. Missionaries were far more likely than merchants to be married, and they brought their wives to China, something merchants rarely did in the days of the old China trade. The missionary wives, committed as their husbands, ran schools for girls, homes for orphans, and other charitable enterprises. This dedication had begun back in America. Very commonly the early missionaries came from pious families, had undergone “conversion” in adolescence or early manhood, and thereafter had consecrated their lives to the cause. The Congregational Church, chief sponsor of the American Board, was the most active denomination in the China Mission in the years before the Opium War, but the Presbyterians quickly caught up after the opening of China. The Dutch Reformed, the Baptists, and the Episcopalians were also represented and in about that order. Virtually all missionaries but those of the last denomination were what we can broadly call Calvinist, if not in origin, at least in conviction. All in all the theology of the Mission was pretty bleak by today’s standards.29 In fundamentalist and Puritan-stem churches, repeated reminders of man’s innate sinfulness and of the frailty of the flesh were standard fare. After all, Jonathan Edwards had been dead only twenty-six years when Samuel Shaw landed at Canton. In the other direction, the Unitarian movement had drained off much of the broad, latitudinarian element from the Congregational churches. The Puritan habit of religious introspection was still very much alive and must have contributed to the sober, old-fashioned tone of the Mission. This seriousness also served a practical end. Personal tragedy was more common in that day, and religion served the purpose of avoiding romantic notions about life and death while helping one keep his/her emotional balance. The need for more or less constant consolation was one of the factors that kept the clergyman an important figure in every community—including Canton. The mortality rate in the Mission was high. Although only one American Protestant missionary, Edwin Stevens, succumbed in the period

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before the Cushing Treaty, some five missionary wives were lost.30 Children were particularly susceptible to the various diseases that frequented the China coast. Some of these maladies attacked without warning and carried their victims off swiftly, sometimes in a matter of hours. Death was a grim, daily possibility. Concern with the ultimate fate of every man was an important part of a clergyman’s calling. That the missionaries were a serious lot may be more a tribute to their realism than evidence of their morbid dispositions. They certainly were not all dismal killjoys, although there were some somber personalities among them. Peter Parker, for example, always felt that his “natural sedateness” was a handicap in his relations with others. He wrote in his journal, “I have often felt the want of that natural sociability and amiableness which renders a person agreeable to his associates.”31 Whether this quality was attributable to his theology is at least open to conjecture. Education and Experience Experience and education were often the same thing under mercantile capitalism, and it is not so easy to distinguish between them as it is today. In  the very nature of things, a merchant, like a missionary, had to be reasonably well trained. A trader had to be able to read, write, calculate, and keep books. If he was in international trade, he had to know the market, merchandising channels, and credit facilities in a number of areas, not only in this country, but in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. Languages were useful, and ignorance of political and economic events could be ruinous. Therefore a merchant had to be not only well prepared, he had to be continuously well informed, particularly if he traded to China, where distances were great, voyages long, and investments heavy. Finally, given the communications facilities available at the time, he had to be an habitual reader of newspapers, journals, books, and letters. To some degree, these are characteristics that describe every businessman who did anything but a strictly local trade. Other studies have shown that later business elites have been well above average in education. Therefore one would expect to find the educational level among China traders to be high. At least seven of the merchants had done what would be called graduate work today. Three MAs and one MD have been identified; two others had been admitted to state bar associations, and one had “studied law.” Fifteen had BAs, six had attended college but apparently had not graduated, and nineteen had at least some higher education. Among the schools represented were some of the best in the country, including Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Pennsylvania. The missionaries had attended the same schools and others, such as Rutgers and Princeton. One was a graduate of West Point. The missionary physicians had attended Yale or Pennsylvania, although the most common divinity schools were Andover, Union, Princeton,

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New Haven, and New Brunswick, all eminent seminaries, but noted less for their breadth than for their orthodoxy. The Baptists and Episcopalians tended to be from Southern schools and seminaries,32 but the theological result was similar. Considering that only a very small percentage of the American population at the time attended any secondary school, let alone a college or professional institution, both merchants and missionaries were extraordinarily well educated. The secondary school education of Canton residents is equally significant. A substantial number, especially of the traders, had attended good preparatory schools, including Milton Academy, Lawrenceville, Boston Latin School, Phillips Andover and Exeter, Fairhaven, and the famous but shortlived Round Hill School run by Nathaniel Green Cogswell and George Bancroft. Others had had private tutors and some were educated abroad. However the educational institution that seems to have been most important for China traders was apprenticeship in an important countinghouse. Except for a few who came to Canton direct from college, almost all China traders had served for a time as clerks in well-known American mercantile firms. Once the big four companies became established at Canton, they began to turn out their own apprentices, and often admitted them to partnership after a few years. The pattern in America was more complicated. There each firm that managed to survive for a period of years became a training school for young merchants who thereafter had the same affectionate regard for the firm in which they were “brought up”33 as alumni today feel toward the school from which they graduate. This loyalty served as a commercial cement that held together whole groups of widely separated firms not otherwise linked. The institution of apprenticeship requires further explanation. It is only in comparatively recent times that apprenticeship has been relegated to the blue collar trades. Time was when the apprenticeship system bore the chief responsibility for the education of all classes. At one time even young nobles often served for a time in another aristocrat’s household. Public schools were widely regarded as schools for paupers.34 Apprenticeship was considerably more than a form of labor or vocational training. Clerks were at the same time employees and surrogate sons, members of the commercial “family.” In the early nineteenth century, the institution was in flux. In commercial houses it was developing away from its traditional role toward something between in-service executive training and a private school, though the comparison is lame in some respects. Still Gemeinschaft was very close to Gesellschaft. The division between the two relationship principles was blurred,35 but Peter Laslett’s description of the late medieval apprentice still largely held: Apprentices  .  .  .  therefore were workers who were also children, extra sons or extra daughters . . . clothed and educated as well as fed, obliged to obedience and forbidden to marry, often unpaid and dependent until the age of twenty-one.36

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Certainly the apprentice of the early nineteenth century had evolved somewhat from this pattern. He was not so “bound to obedience” as his seventeenth-century counterpart. He was generally paid a small salary, and office boys were by no means absolutely dependent. They usually remained in a countinghouse only a few years, but more than a little of the patriarchal relationship remained. Employees of houses in international trade, at least, tended to serve in every capacity required by the firm (copyist, bookkeeper, letter-writer, supervisor of “outside work,” etc.) until they had mastered the various skills they would need when they struck out on their own.37 Then, typically, a clerk became a supercargo, serving something very analogous to a journeymanship for several years, before becoming a sedentary merchant and engaging apprentices of his own. In doing business over great distances in the era before electric communication and steam transport, a sedentary merchant had to place great reliance on his agents. He needed someone whose loyalty and familiarity with the needs and procedures of the home concern was beyond doubt. Commercial bonds were heavily dependent first on kinship, then on friendship, and only thirdly on reference and reputation. A young man trained in the home office’s business methods, having a firsthand knowledge of the partners’ views and preferences, correspondents, and other variables, could represent the firm better than could a stranger. Moreover the members of the older firm knew their man, his weaknesses and strengths, his backing, his way of operating, and they could be reasonably sure of his work. Sometimes the connection was reinforced by marriage. As might be expected, close association over a period of years sometimes meant that successful former apprentices married into the family of the master, even in democratic America, where girls reputedly enjoyed great freedom in selecting their mates. To be apprenticed to a major merchant was a prize greatly to be coveted. It even included some academic work38 and conferred status on the trainee. Because a young merchant learned his social role and acquired his first business and credit connections from such an office, the place in which he apprenticed was a matter of great importance. For New Englanders and Philadelphians, transplanted or not, this role included a bookish quality that was noticeably absent in most late century business roles. Merchants sometimes tended to be scholars, and several of the leading China traders included in this survey lectured, published books, and otherwise demonstrated their learning. At least three were deeply interested in the arts and, in later life, a number showed their cultural inclinations in their philanthropy. The captains usually were not exceptions to the rule that Canton residents tended to be well educated. Captains held a social position of some substance. The title of captain was an honorable one, and a man was proud of it. He invariably used it though he may have commanded only one vessel in his life. A captain was a “master,” a giver of orders, an authority figure.

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Often the merchant mariner combined the two roles of captain and businessman. Captains were supposed to have many of the same traits as businessmen—good judgment, coolness in a crisis, reliability, honesty, “steadiness,” and a strong concern for the welfare of the shipowner’s property. As time went by, the role acquired other characteristics: a captain was supposed to be colorful, salty, and a spinner of yarns. Clearly the mariner was being romanticized, a sure sign that the role was dying. Many a captain had begun his career in a countinghouse. A particularly restless young apprentice might elect to sail before the mast rather than wait until he was ready to serve as a supercargo. A bright deckhand could pick up commercial skills from observing and perhaps helping the supercargo with the business of the ship. Business roles were less distinct in premodern times. A ship’s officer was in an excellent position to acquire, informally, considerable business knowledge on his own. He had to use his “privilege” wisely if he was to make any money.39 Salaries were generally low,40 and, if a captain was ever to acquire a “competency,” he had to think and act like a merchant. Hence gifted captains made attractive partners for sedentary traders. They knew the trade, the ports, the merchants, the ships, the goods, and the weather. They could always do outside work better than persons with little blue water experience. They weighed and measured cargoes, supervised loading, hired crews and officers, inspected ships and goods, registered marine protests, and, in general, performed all kinds of work which required leaving the countinghouse for the wharf—precisely where a captain’s experience was most likely to help him. Finally it was less likely that an experienced captain could be bamboozled by the assorted maritime characters with whom the outside man had to deal. The captain’s route to fortune was, thus, probably more open to a poor boy of ability who lacked connections than was the route of the countinghouse apprentice. A young man sailing before the mast could work his way up to master and thence into a countinghouse if he could acquire a business education somewhere en route. A “ship’s cousin,” a seaman related to the captain or shipowner, invariably received preferential treatment, but there seems to have been stronger sanctions among seamen against nepotism than in the more bourgeois atmosphere of the office.41 Among those captains who became resident merchants at Canton were Augustine Heard, Nathaniel Kinsman, A. A. Ritchie, and R. B. Forbes. Other impressive captains who came rather frequently were James Warren Sever, William Sturgis, John Whetten, Philip Dumaresq, Stewart Dean, and Frederick Augustus DePeyster. All of these men had the advantage of family and often of education, and all did well or even handsomely at Canton.42 Geographical Origins and Religious Persuasion Examining biographical material on the two hundred-odd American merchants who resided in Canton during the days of the old China trade, one

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is struck with the disproportionate number of Northeasterners. Of a total of one hundred seventy-odd whose origins have been established, 154 came from the area east of the Alleghenies and north of the Mason-Dixon line.43 Of the eleven exceptions, three were foreigners. The others had strong ties to Northeastern cities, usually Philadelphia, though a few were associated with Baltimore. New England was more overrepresented than the Northeast as a whole. Of the group eighty-two, about half, were New England natives, and even among the New Yorkers, Yankee transplants were common.44 The Olyphants, the Griswolds, the Lows, the Delanos, possibly even a majority of those who came to Canton from New York, traced their family origins back to New England. In Philadelphia one Yankee firm, Perit & Cabot, was composed of one partner from Connecticut and the other from Massachusetts.45 Indeed, of the big four companies at Canton at the end of the era, all were of New England origin,46 and all but one were overwhelmingly staffed with New Englanders. The Middle Atlantic states produced the second greatest number of merchants resident in China before 1844. At least fifty-five came from New  York, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania. If Delaware and Maryland are counted in this group, virtually all the China residents are accounted for. Aside from these two last states, only one trader, Charles Manigault, came from the South.47 It was the same with the West. The sole trans-Appalachian merchant was W. C. Hunter, who, although born in Kentucky, moved to New York and was apprenticed to Thomas H. Smith very early. He was only twelve years old when he first arrived in Canton. Although New York traders were a mixed lot, carrying a strong admixture of New Englanders, the Philadelphia area sent a number of high quality natives to China. Often they were of Quaker stock, and sometimes came from very distinguished families. Nathan Dunn and his partners, Jabez Jenkins and Joseph Archer, were all of Quaker background and from Philadelphia or its environs. Wetmore & Co., which succeeded Dunn & Co., exhibited the earlier firm’s predilection for Quakers and Philadelphians, though its leaders were Yankees. The firm also included at least one New Yorker.48 Although it was common for China traders to complain about the sacrifices they made by residing in Canton and to vow that, as soon as they made their “competency,” they would leave China forever, the Philadelphians seem to have meant it more sincerely than others. Typically once they had left, they failed to maintain their Canton connections. They were apparently both less committed to the trade and less well organized than their more northerly compatriots. Except for such small concerns as Blight & Co. and Sword & Trott, such structure as the Philadelphians (qua Philadelphians) had was given them by Wetmore & Co.49 Almost all of the families that engaged in the China trade for more than one generation were Yankee, whether they operated from New England or

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New York, and if one selected only the more successful families, the Yankee predominance would be still more pronounced. One customary explanation for the achievements of New Englanders has been the Puritan heritage. Testing Canton residents for religious background is more difficult than for education or geographic origins, but the relatively scanty evidence indicates that many American residents were affiliated with Puritan-stem churches,50 and among the most successful, the proportion was still higher. There were also nearly a dozen Quakers, a handful of Episcopalians, three or four Jews,51 and a single Roman Catholic family. Taking the American population as a whole, except for the Episcopalians and Catholics, each of these denominations was substantially overrepresented at Canton. Given the religious persuasions common in the commercial areas of the country, however, the numbers do not appear quite so unrepresentative, except perhaps for the Jews. Among the missionaries, for whom religion was more clearly of central importance, both church affiliation and geographical distribution were more even.

The Uses of a “Competency”: The Later Lives of Canton Residents What in the name of Max Weber was a young Yankee home from China with a “competency” to do for the rest of his life? “Praise the Lord and continue working at his calling” was the obvious and very traditional answer. Whatever their spiritual inclinations, many returned Canton residents did, in fact, just that. Virtually all the merchants became stateside sedentary traders for at least as long as it took to get their fortunes home in the form of saleable China goods. Many continued trading for a few years more. Before the War of 1812, the majority of those who did not retire from business altogether probably took this course of action. Samuel Snow, Edward Carrington, William Megee, Sullivan Dorr, William Sturgis, and the others wasted little time in establishing themselves as important merchants—generally in their home ports. In the nearly three decades after the war, many more Canton graduates became sedentary traders in America, some on a grand scale. In New York alone there were Talbot & Olyphant, Gordon & Talbot, A. A. Low & Brother, Wetmore & Cryder, and N. L. & G.  Griswold. These concerns filled up with Canton nabobs, and some became better known as the owners of some of the most renowned clipper ships in the remaining years of the American commercial sailing fleet. The Second Careerist As the opportunities for enterprise expanded after the War of 1812, the great economic changes of the period complicated the definition of one’s

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vocation. Although these transformations would ultimately destroy the old, familiar, commercial world, wealthy merchants realized that textiles, transportation, banking, insurance, mining, and land speculation could be profitable investments—often more profitable and less risky than the China trade. Accordingly even prewar retirees like Edward Carrington became more and more interested in canal building, land, the U.S. Bank, and cloth manufacturing. Ironically it was this very diversification that ultimately helped to bring him down. He simply could not devote the attention required by his trade and still keep up his many other interests. His chief competitor in Providence, Brown & Ives, was better organized and made the transition more successfully, establishing for the Browns the great American fortune that eluded Carrington. William Sturgis, beginning in the 1820s, gradually shifted over from foreign trade to private (generally domestic) investment brokering, as did Charles Nicoll Talbot a decade or so later. A shrewd investor, Sturgis found himself entrusted with the nest-egg fortunes of Cushing and other favored returnees.52 Colonel Perkins’s investments sound like an agenda for the early American Industrial Revolution. They included an iron manufactory in Vermont during the War of 1812, a bridge and land development scheme, a turnpike, a cotton mill, and one of the country’s first railroads—to carry granite from a Quincy quarry to the Bunker Hill monument. These and other domestic projects kept him so busy that in 1827 one of his nephews wrote Cushing that Perkins was no longer much concerned with “commercial Enterprises and feels disposed to withdraw from an active participation in them—[He] goes rarely to his Compting house.”53 In this way even dedicated merchants, who had established their trade prior to the War of 1812, shifted into other activities. Despite other involvements these early ex-Canton residents, who continued working, tended to remain primarily merchants most of their lives. The far greater number who returned in the period after the war present a more complex picture. Young, capable, highly motivated men with capital are always in great demand in developing countries like the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. It would seem reasonable to expect such people to become the agents of the American economic revolution, and, with some of them, such was the case. One group of ex-Canton merchants, Bostonians and New Yorkers, became particularly active in railroad building. Led most notably by the charming and forceful John Murray Forbes, this combination built and dominated several Western railroads for many years. Forbes had returned from China nearly bald, though he was only twenty-three.54 In Canton he had been Howqua’s amanuensis and overseas business manager, so his connections were very respectable and worldwide. In America Forbes and his associates were able to employ the methods and connections developed in China to construct and manage the Michigan Central and the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroads. The typical member of this group was an “influential capitalist who owned a considerable share in many ventures

John Murray Forbes, 1830s, member of Russell & Co. After leaving Canton, Forbes became the leader of a group of railroad builders and a vehicle for international investment in America. Oil on canvas, attributed to Lamqua’s studio. Courtesy of the Robert Bennet Forbes House.

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and spent his time largely in supervising his investments. Although he was able to control the major policies of several enterprises, he differed from both the typical owner-manager and the professional in not being a full-time executive in any one company, and, therefore, he will be called the general entrepreneur.”55 The model for this description was Forbes, but a number of other Canton nabobs could be similarly characterized with varying degrees of precision. These China trade graduates were highly ethical railroadmen, who refused to tolerate the slightest suggestion of stock watering. They led in the elimination of interest-conflicts. They were ethically so conservative that Fritz Redlich has called Forbes uncreative in contrast to other, more adventurous railroad leaders. Yet in their youthful days at Canton, these paragons of railroad virtue had, to the man, been opium traders.56 There were several obvious reasons for the prominence of returned China traders in railroading. First they were rich, and they were searching for good domestic investments over which they could exercise a degree of prudent control. Second they had connections with both American and foreign capitalists (especially in Britain) and could draw upon resources not available to others. Third they were experienced in doing business at long distances and in delegating authority. These financiers had, in one sense, always been transportation men. Lines to St. Louis and Chicago required little stretch of the imagination for those used to thinking in terms of trade routes to Hong Kong, Canton, Alexandria and Constantinople.57

Finally they were accustomed to relying on “knowledge, supervision, planning and directing” to conduct their business. In a word they possessed the administrative skills that large-scale enterprise of any kind requires. Of course these skills were badly needed in the new manufacturing, insurance, and banking enterprises (not to mention the government), as well as in trade and transportation. In fact Canton graduates, like other rich merchants, went into all of these fields, becoming the seed corn of the economic revolution in America. “When mercantile capitalism burst asunder, the parts flew in many directions.”58 The process by which China traders and their capital went into textiles, particularly cotton manufacturing, has been explored.59 Like the railroad men, these textile manufacturers did not, as a rule, begin their second careers as managers. Instead they entered an unfamiliar field as financiers, absentee owners, and members of boards of directors—as general entrepreneurs. As such they channeled funds, made only the larger policy decisions, and appointed competent administrators to do everything else. These latter people—salaried professional administrators—were probably the first business bureaucrats in the United States. They seem to have come from the same sources as their mercantile superiors: small business and professional families and the less fortunate members of important merchant clans. Thus

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they, too, were relatively deprived. They had superior educations, useful connections, and strong achievement drives. General entrepreneurs are primarily interested in profit, an attitude that the ex-China traders’ residence in Canton can only have reinforced. But in China they had not been at home where supposedly the heart (and perhaps the conscience) is. Having returned home they were now the soul of propriety. They bore not the slightest resemblance to the caricatures of the grasping pirates of the Gilded Age. Their business caution is legendary, as should be the case in capital-intensive business like railroads, new cotton factories, or the China trade. In China they had paid great attention to detail, informed themselves as thoroughly as possible, and then acted with the greatest discretion, using other people’s capital whenever possible. They were forever giving lip-service to such Aesopian clichés as “slow but sure,” and they showed a high-liquidity preference and were very careful to protect themselves where money or the law was involved. They cultivated reputations for sound business character and conservatism. In America the ex-China traders’ concern for paying debts and for general probity reflected the Canton commission merchant’s fiduciary relationship with his correspondents. It was also probably necessary in financiers of innovative enterprises of the period. But time moved on, and, in the next generation, even this motive of economic trustworthiness became a mechanism for liberating business managers from social responsibility. Just as a Canton merchant rationalized his illegal dealings or his acquiescence in Chinese “oppression” by his duty to his constituents, the railroad barons and textile leaders justified their behavior in the light of the good of the firm, which they identified with the stockholders’ interests. In each case the reasoning was the same: in the name of duty—a larger responsibility—otherwise inadmissable behavior was permitted. Charles Perkins and George H. Watrous, philosophically among the most articulate of the younger railroad leaders, would have felt comfortable with Robert Bennet Forbes’s reply to Captain Elliot in 1839 that his obligations to his owners took precedence over other considerations, whether of honor, patriotism, or the long-run benefit of the community.60 Bankers, brokers, insurance executives, and other financiers made up another group of general entrepreneurs not entirely divorced from the railroaders and textile men. This was a broad class that should probably include Russell Sturgis, William Sturgis, and Charles N. Talbot. Talbot operated for the members of the King-Olyphant-Talbot and Gordon families much in the same manner as William Sturgis did for Cushing and John Murray Forbes for Robert Bennet and Paul Sieman Forbes. Talbot’s investments, especially in the Delaware & Hudson, a canal that became a railroad and mining company, later was to lead young Olyphants and Talbots into that concern and others in the field.61 Probably the missionaries also should be counted as second careerists,

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although most of them never really retired. Many simply stayed on in China or at least in East Asia. Some returned home to become teachers and/or academic administrators, to practice medicine or take an American pastorate, but they rarely remained in the United States. More frequently they returned to the field and especially to the East. Japan attracted a number of ex-China missionaries. Some became better known for their work there than for their China labors.62 A few led very comfortable lives in their later years, although none was rich. Needless to say what money they had was not the result of their missionary labors unless, like Samuel Wells Williams, they were fortunate enough to have their books become standard works that sold widely. Their direct influence on the State Department began with the Cushing mission and continued throughout the century as missionaries were asked to serve in consular and diplomatic capacities. Finally missionaries were in great demand as lecturers. It was expected that a member of the China Mission home on leave should speak to churches and other organizations. To say that these visits were “to many a church the beginning of a new interest in Christian missions”63 is only to suggest their importance on public opinion. No merchant or politician spoke so widely or had such immediate effect as these missionaries who covered the face of the nation with their appeals for funds and recruits. Retirees As well known as their achievements are, the second careerists apparently did not constitute a majority of the returned China merchants. Many simply retired from all active business whatsoever. There were several good reasons for this course of action as the pattern of behavior was very traditional. They now had the money for which they had forsaken their homes and loved ones, and like other temporary expatriates in other times, they discovered that they had missed a lot while they were away. Readjustment to life in the United States was difficult enough without the additional problems involved in relearning a trade. The differences between business methods in China and America were large, and some merchants found themselves unable or unwilling to change. Benjamin Wilcocks noted within a few months of his return, “the more I see of the manner of doing business in the [this?] Country the more I am disgusted with it, and like Cushing, from whom I had a letter two days ago, I am constantly wishing myself back in China.”64 Cushing wrote Howqua something remarkably similar six months later.65 Retirement presented some of the same difficult problems in the first half of the nineteenth century that it does today. In 1825 when Cushing was thinking of returning home, Colonel Perkins wrote urging him to take a share in J. & T. H. Perkins & Sons, because “it will occupy your mind and fill up a vacuum which is produced in the minds of most men, who retire from active life to retirement.” Perkins also noted, “Property I trust we

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have eno’ of, it is therefore not necessary that there should be any more sacrifice to business than you may deem necessary.” Later he added, “After a busy life of 20 years uninterrupted labor [it was nearer 25], we doubt if you will be content to remain quiet.”66 Perkins’s assumptions are recognizable even in the last decade of the twentieth century: 1) retirement from business meant a “vacuum” or “quiet,” and a merchant’s personality, geared to nervous commercial activity, could not stand the unaccustomed idleness; 2)  semiretirement was preferable because it kept one busy, although 3) money ceased to be an end in itself, once one had “eno’.” However true these generalizations may have been for others, Perkins plainly did not know his man. Cushing retired completely after a brief fling at stateside trade and rarely even handled money thereafter.67 Although at home physically, returned China traders in a real sense were marginal men, caught between cultures and unsure of the direction of home. Long absence from the rapidly changing United States, together with the ease of adaptation to the luxurious life of old Canton, made many men unfit for the lives they would have to lead in America. A few of these retirees, like Gideon Nye and James P. Sturgis (and, for a while, William C. Hunter), seized the common missionary expedient of settling in China. Others moved to Europe or England, where cosmopolitan tastes acquired in Canton were more easily indulged. Most, however, returned to the country and even to the locality of their origins. Unmarried merchants like Cushing, who landed in America in what they conceived to be early middle age, often found themselves overwhelmed by the problems of building a new life. The changes in America seemed the most formidable difficulty at first: Mr. Cushing after twenty years residence returned home—his only sister did not know him, nor did he recognize her; . . . I often talked with him about America— it was no home to him—his habits had become so fixed, that China was to him a home—he most feelingly recommended to all of his acquaintances, never to be absent for more than ten years at a time, or they would like him, lose all relish for home—here is a man of princely fortune—liberal of his money—always doing the most charitable acts . . . and with all this he could not feel at home there— his native town was so changed that he lost himself in its streets.68

Nathan Dunn, about to return home with a large fortune in 1831, noted apprehensively, “I am about returning to Philadelphia—so changed in appearance that none will remember me, and certainly I shall know but few—when I land, I shall not have where to lay my head—a stranger in my native land.”69 Still more pathetic was the case of Benjamin C. Wilcocks, who returned to Philadelphia in 1827, fifty-one years of age, rich, single, with a taste for luxury and sensual enjoyments not entirely suitable to his stateside life situation. To make matters worse, he suffered from various physical difficulties

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and the nagging feeling that he had too little to do, too few friends of his own age, and no one in whom he could confide: I am unhinged, unsettled, idle and of course irritable, I have lost my taste for the enjoyments that this Country afforded to me seventeen years ago, and everything here loses in comparison with what I once knew it.70

Nor was this the end of the matter for Wilcocks. A considerable correspondence of later date indicates that he developed still other medical and psychological ailments before his problems were ultimately worked out. Even minor discomforts loomed as important matters to disgruntled retirees. Luxuries had become necessities—they had adjusted their habits to many comforts, just as later generations have come to demand central heating, plumbing, automobiles, and other amenities. Transportation and service were common causes for complaint. Bruises and jarred teeth brought an interest in paved roads and improved methods of transportation generally. As all transportation at Canton was by water except around the immediate factory area, badly maintained roads were an immediately unpleasant American reality. As irritating as the bad roads were, the clumsy servants in America—generally either of immigrant peasant stock or independent native farm folk—were even more irritating. “The servants are worse than I can possibly describe . . . and at last everything is but imperfectly executed in that department,” complained Wilcocks,71 voicing a sentiment familiar to many twentieth-century Americans returning home after long tours of duty abroad. Eventually this complaint brought about the importation of Chinese servants to many nabob households, giving the east coast of the United States its first resident Chinese minority. But despite their grumbling, the returnees eventually became used to their surroundings. They had every advantage, and probably the least painful way to make such adjustments is to do everything at once, especially if one can pay for it. Retired China traders not only brought servants home with them, they imported furniture, built magnificent new homes, and got married as soon as was decently possible. Their wealth erased many difficulties even here, for rich bachelors were always attractive to ambitious single women. A. A. Low, who knew John Green’s thorny personality well, noted in a letter to Edward King of 13 November 1841, “Mr. Green has been committing matrimony—the victim Miss Griswold, a young lady of 18 [Green was then forty-one]—so you see Canton bachelors do well yet.”72 Isaac M. Bull confirmed Low’s observation by what he took for granted in a letter to his Providence friend, T. P. Bucklin: “Should Mr. [Oliver H.] Gordon call on you, I beg you will be a little attentive to him he has been 17 years in Canton, is worth 100 to 150,000 $, & is a fair speck [speculation] for you[r] young Virgins to shoot at.”73 Twenty-eight years earlier Benjamin Hoppin had commented on the betrothal of Sullivan Dorr, who had returned from China the

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previous year, “Mr. Dorr—a China nabob—is ab[out] taking Miss Lydia Allen to wife—it is said (but aside) rather ag[ainst] her inclination. You will from this discover that money has not lost its influence.”74 Evidently money was a considerable advantage in a China merchant’s reorientation to American life. It opened many opportunities: he could travel, indulge his tastes splendidly, engage in expensive sports or philanthropies, enter politics, or he could follow Colonel Perkins’s suggestions to Cushing and take only such positions as suited his pleasure and his leisure. Various returnees adopted all of these courses. Money meant social position, and politicians paid them elaborate attention. Thus Canton graduates exercised strong influence in Washington as well as in their state and local governments. Once he had decided to abandon business for elegant retirement, Cushing adjusted nicely. Shortly after returning he married, “erected a handsome mansion in Summer St.,” Boston, and a country seat in Watertown. Both became showplaces. He became known for his exquisite taste, his bookish habits, his yachts, and his generosity. At his death, during the second year of the Civil War, he left a large family, a fortune about ten times the size of the sum he had accumulated in China, and a reputation as the richest man in New England.75 Latimer adapted in much the same manner as Cushing. He wrote Wetmore & Co. on 30 May 1835, “notwithstanding the predictions of your Mr. W. I have not become disgusted with America, [however] there is no telling what might have happened, had I not married so soon after arrival,” and he proceeded to order some china.76 Most returned China residents elected some course in between the styles of Cushing and Forbes. They commonly took honorific but undemanding jobs like the presidency or membership on the board of an insurance company, the directorship of a bank, or membership on rarely active boards of canal companies and the like. Although others were still more clearly retired, adopting the older role of the eighteenth-century gentleman of leisure, often spending money lavishly, they also tended to be good managers. They were careful either to invest their money wisely or to put it into the hands of trusted friends more familiar with the American economy. The alacrity with which a substantial number of traders abandoned business altogether upon their return to America raises the suspicion that they never regarded trade as an end in itself but rather a means to “wealth, fashion and gentility” or some other end. The commercial correspondence confirms this suspicion. Reportedly Cushing had become a merchant rather against his will. There is a family tradition that he had wanted to be an artist. There are strong indications that Charles W. King would have preferred the life of a missionary. In any case the existence of a sizeable group of successful young merchants, who simply opted out of economic life as soon as they believed they could afford it, raises the possibility that two traditional views

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of life were in conflict. The most perceptive study of John Murray Forbes suggests that the matter took the form of a struggle between the work ethic and the view that work can only be justified morally by the necessity of providing for one’s family. Here is a fascinating subject for a historically minded theologian.77 The Good Life A feature of the returned China merchants’ life that deserves especial mention is the splendor of their personal establishments. Sometimes they created little Cantons in the United States.78 The magnificent buildings they constructed as private homes are still locally famous for size, appointments, and architecture. To be sure the rich always build big houses. The craving is “almost a matter of the genes,”79 according to a writer on successful businessmen of the later nineteenth century. And so it was with the retired Canton trader. Upon his return home, he usually acquired a country seat of at least fifty acres and began to build. Besides the great house with its several stories and many rooms, there were greenhouses, summer houses, carriage houses, sometimes billiard houses, as well as stables, barns, and other utilitarian structures when the estate contained a working farm. The gardens were frequently famous, for horticulture was a very popular hobby among Canton nabobs. Both Colonel Perkins and John P. Cushing opened their gardens and conservatories to the public at appropriate blooming periods. Frederick W. Paine’s head gardener80 was not alone in his experiments in developing new varieties of flowers and fruits. Cushing built a double house—one house inside another—for perfect insulation in his greenhouse, while Perkins installed an early steam-heating device in his Brookline conservatory. Brothers James and especially Samuel G. Perkins, who owned estates nearby, competed with the colonel, often putting him to shame with the beauty and size of their gifts of fruit. On his two hundred-acre Watertown estate, “Belmont,” Cushing also set about outdoing his uncle. This was no mean task. “For fifty years, Colonel Perkins’s was kept in the best manner by experienced foreign gardeners, and at an expense of more than ten thousand dollars annually.” Because Perkins’s conservatory was sixty feet long, Cushing built his sixty feet wide. He also put up a number of grape, fruit, and plant houses and “with lavish expenditures improved this estate in the highest sense of the word.”81 Shortly after his return, Cushing wrote instructions for John Murray Forbes, who was still in Canton, Get Mr. Beal[e] to collect for me an assortment of the handsomest and rarest Japonicas and Peonies that are to be had in China together with any other rare and handsome flowers, plants or shrubs, and an assortment of flower Seed; As I am not much acquainted with plants I cannot point out the most desirable kinds, but . . . he will of course know those that are considered handsomest and most desirable for a Conservatory and Greenhouse, and if he will undertake it I have

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John Perkins Cushing’s country seat, “Bellmont,” in Watertown, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Historic New England. no doubt from his knowledge of the subject I shall get a better collection than has heretofore been received in this Country from China.82

Cushing also developed a well-stocked deer park and, south of the house, laid out twenty acres of lawn. Years later an observer recorded Cushing’s success in this rivalry: “Until the establishment of the magnificent conservatories and fruit-houses of his nephew, John Perkins Cushing, at Watertown, his [Colonel Perkins’s] place was considered the most advanced in horticultural science of any in New England.”83 The competition extended also to the town houses. Perkins’s four-story house on Temple Place, Boston, contained twenty-six fireplaces with Italian marble mantles, a fine view from three sides of the house, and an iron balustrade on the roof. Even the stables were elegant.84 Not to be outdone, Cushing bought a house on Summer Street together with an entire city block, surrounded it with a wall of porcelain imported from Canton, and staffed the mansion with Chinese servants.85 One of the leading architects of the day, Andrew Jackson Downing, included a picture and description of Belmont in the 1857 and 1859 editions of his standard work on landscape gardening.86 Included in earlier editions was Nathan Dunn’s mansion in Mount Holly, New Jersey, which the old Quaker, with incredible understatement, called “the cottage,”87 although it was more generally known as “The Chinese Cottage.” Some years later, the

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Warren Delano’s “Algonac” in Newburgh, New York. Courtesy of Frederic Grant, Jr.

same architect designed “Algonac,” the mansion of Warren Delano, who finally retired from Russell & Co. in 1866. He purchased sixty acres containing an older house on a hill overlooking Newburgh Bay, the Hudson Highlands, and the “Storm King.” Downing remodeled it, making the house much larger, turning its face from east to south, adding verandas in the Eastern style, and “heavy, overhanging eaves.” Downing’s “well-graded approach curving up the hill to the house” set the structure off beautifully, and the many “unusual and even exotic trees, [brought]  .  .  .  back to their owners their days in China  .  .  .”88 The plantings and Delano’s greenhouse showed the same fascination with horticulture found in other China traders’ estates. At his fifty-acre seat in North Cranston, Rhode Island, Samuel Snow had laid out rather more formal gardens a half century earlier. Circular, square, and octagonal flowerbeds were interspersed with summer houses, as a woman who had visited the place as a girl nostalgically recalled some years later. The magnificence inside dazzled her: “The great height of the rooms, the broad piazzas, with pillars rising to the roof, gave it an air of . . . grandeur.” The rich Oriental wallpaper and hangings were “gorgeous with tropical birds and flowers. Many relics of the original owners were scattered here and there about the house, tall vases and urns of rare china, gilded tea-caddies and gilded cabinets, and card-boxes with their mother-of-pearl counters, the delight of my childhood, exhaling the rare and indefinable perfume of Indian woods.” It may be recalled, Snow was a man with some

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Samuel Snow’s country house, Cranston Road, Providence. Private collection. Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society.

architectural experience in Canton, for he had built the first American factory. It might be expected that the home he constructed for himself would be both “the crowning effort of his architectural ambition” and with an Oriental flavor.89 Even more pronouncedly Chinese in its atmosphere was Van Braam’s famous “China’s Retreat” (also known as “Chinese Retreat”). The house itself was called “China Hall,” located in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, about twelve miles from Philadelphia. The mansion had a copper roof with a “pagoda-like cupola,” small bells (wind chimes?) hanging from the upward-curving eaves and windows which slid open noiselessly, vanishing into the thick walls. The interior of the house was markedly Chinese in its decor, furnishings, and serving staff. Van Braam was a man of educated tastes, and he had amassed an exquisite lot of personal possessions while in Canton. His priceless “Oriental collections” acquired wide renown, and periodically he allowed the public to view them. The splendor of his lifestyle was at least as famous as his private museum, and he frequently entertained distinguished visitors to Philadelphia. One of the more notable was the long-toothed Talleyrand, ex-bishop of Autun. This future foreign minister of France, currently out of favor in revolutionary Paris, was visiting the United States accompanied by his current mistress.90 Other China trade nabobs built their own big houses: Samuel Russell in Middletown, Connecticut; Latimer (“Latimeria”) outside Wilmington,

“Kingscote,” Newport, Rhode Island, home of William Henry King. The interior retains a more strongly Chinese flavor than some of the greater houses. Courtesy of the Preservation Society of Newport County.

Home of Samuel Russell, now on the Wesleyan University campus, Middletown Connecticut. From a contemporary lithograph. Courtesy of Wesleyan University.

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“Château-sur-Mer,” 1850–52. Home of William S. Wetmore in Newport, Rhode Island. Contemporary lithograph by Nagel & Weingartner. Private collection.

Delaware;91 the Blights on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia; Carrington and Dorr in Providence; and William Henry King (“Kingscote”) and William Wetmore (“Château-sur-Mer”) who built their Victorian piles in Newport, Rhode Island. Whatever the period or architectural style, these confections exhibited at least two common characteristics: they were large and expensive, frequently palatial (they have been called “visible bank accounts”), and they exuded a strong Oriental flavor. A variation on this typical pattern of the new-rich nabob who began construction on a magnificent estate soon after his return home was John Murray Forbes. A family man with almost patriarchal or tribal propensities, Forbes began buying land in Milton and moving all of his family whom he could persuade to join him into relatively modest but substantial houses in the neighborhood. He seems very consciously to have been trying to construct a family community. Although he acquired considerable property, he did not have the desire for display or grandeur that characterized others of his family, at least not until he was older and much richer, when he began to indulge himself with a large house in Milton and a summer place on Naushon Island off the southern coast of Massachusetts.92 It has been more common to look to the late-century parvenus with more money than taste for grandiose and costly indulgence, but retired China traders contributed much to the luxury and display of the lifestyle of the American rich. Certainly magnificent houses and lavish appointments had existed earlier, yet returned Canton merchants added a new element. Their mode of life was something more than an attempt to recreate the baronial splendor of a medieval merchant-prince or the comfort of the eighteenth-

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Robert Bennet Forbes House, Milton, Massachusetts. Photo taken about 1935. Courtesy of the Forbes House Museum.

century British squirearchy. In important respects a China nabob’s surroundings were closer to the styles he had observed in China, both that of the hong merchants and that of the foreign community at Canton and Macao. In the first few years after the China trader’s return, Chinese servants tended to predominate in nabobs’ establishments. Oriental cooks outlasted most of the other help, a tribute to the excellence of Chinese cuisine and the ease of acculturation. His common blue-and-white china, as well as the formal sets, were of Chinese make. These sometimes contained his monogram, a coat of arms, a ship under sail, or some other device indicating that he had had it made to order. His walls were covered with Chinese painted paper, grass-cloth, or even silk. They were hung with scrolls or landscapes by Chinese artists and decorated with shelves displaying his porcelain, bronzes, jades, woodcarvings, or other valuable Oriental objects. His furniture, if not ordered from Europe, was often a mixture of late Chippendale, Hepplewhite, or Sheraton with Chinese teak, wicker, mahogany, sometimes inlaid with marble and even porcelain. His draperies, screens, and hangings of all sorts tended to be of silk made to order in China when he built the house.93 It is hardly an accident that the best collections of Chinese art in America are to be found in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York (and, latterly, Washington, DC).

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Just as the quality of a Canton nabob’s house, his tastes, his habits, his servants, and his table all were redolent of China, so his recreations frequently savored of his years on the China coast. Virtually the only physical recreation at the factories other than juvenile revelry such as hopscotch, leapfrog, and the like, had been walking in the Square. At Macao, on the other hand, the Canton exiles commonly rode, and some became absorbed in the largely British and Portuguese horse races. Hunter’s strong desire to own blooded Arabians appeared in other retired taipans. Latimer and John Murray Forbes became known in later years for their horsemanship. Edward Delano and Captain James Endicott were enthusiastic riders, and all owned fine teams for their carriages. Boating was another common form of recreation, especially competitive rowing and sailing. With some residents it became almost an obsession. In the later days of the old China trade, when enforcement of the “Eight Regulations” had become lax, the sport became organized and even helped support a resident shipwright at Macao. It is possible that retired China traders were a central influence on the growing popularity of yachting in America. In 1832 John Cushing’s famous yacht Sylph, a sixty-foot schooner, won “the first yacht race on record.”94 Recreational reading was another common pastime. Being well educated, far from home, unoccupied for long periods, and restricted in their movements, many Canton residents became bookish. They relied on reading for commercial, political, and personal information and got into the habit of reading voluminously. Letters, periodicals, and books from home were exchanged and reread. It scarcely requires explanation that returned China merchants often were known for their personal libraries, their literary habits, and their benefactions to public libraries. Because China traders were not, as a group, noted for their philanthropy, at least no more so than other merchants, their interest in libraries is more noticeable. Thomas H. Perkins, Samuel Russell’s widow, Edward Carrington, through his agent in Woonsocket, and, most magnificent of all, John C. Green, made handsome gifts to found libraries. Augustine Heard contributed forty thousand dollars to the Ipswich Public Library, selected the plans for the building, determined library policy, and chose the original trustees. Other merchants gave books, endowed mercantile libraries, and otherwise aided such institutions. In the sixty-year period with which this study is concerned, the social duties felt to be the obligation of a successful businessman were beginning to change. A prominent merchant was a leader of society in the era of mercantile capitalism. He had social duties quite apart from his economic function. He was expected to be a pillar of the church and a generous patron of charities, the arts, and learning. He would have understood Carnegie’s “stewardship” doctrine, although having dynastic ambitions, he would undoubtedly have had reservations on distributing most of his wealth. In the

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early nineteenth century, mercantile capitalism was in its terminal stages, but the association of social obligation with rank in the socioeconomic system still existed. Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine, which began publication in 1830, frequently carried articles on the social position, duties, and role of wealthy merchants. Thereafter a new view became increasingly widespread, and the social contributions of wealthy men were seen more and more as the outcome of their economic activity. They were valued because they created jobs, stimulated industry, developed the country, and otherwise produced wealth. In practice this change frequently meant that rich men probably operated under fewer sanctions in the enjoyment of employment of their wealth than ever before or since in American history.95 More traditional merchants were often very active and very generous as has been noted. Less traditional China merchants also occasionally became noted for philanthropy, although their claim to such a reputation seems weaker than that of their more religious fellow-traders. Thomas H. Perkins was certainly generous at times, but, like many another businessman, he  could not always resist the temptation to combine business with his philanthropy. He was unquestionably a major influence in the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument, but, if he was president of the Bunker Hill Association and chairman of its Building Committee, he  was also president of the Granite Railway Co., which supplied the stone and experimented with the new form of transportation. The magnanimity of his famous gift of the home on Pearl Street to the Perkins Institute for the Blind was somewhat qualified, as his son-in-law noted in his eulogy to Perkins, by the fact that the old house “although spacious in extent, was becoming from its position [location], better suited for purposes of trade than residence,” and the entire family was already building new houses on Temple Place. Perkins also had difficulty with his own sight.96 However, Perkins contributed to many worthy causes: schools, hospitals, asylums, libraries, historical societies, art galleries, the completion of the Washington Monument, and a few exotic charities like that for which Joseph Langdon collected eight hundred dollars from the colonel—Langdon, a Smyrna commission merchant, wished to buy a Christian child out of Turkish slavery. Perkins’s benefactions had an unusual character. Beginning with his mother’s bequest to the Boston Female Asylum, the family adopted a practice that was taken up years later by Andrew Carnegie and ultimately, by  the federal government. In order to stimulate action and the flow of money from other sources, the colonel, like his mother and his brother James, gave money to worthy organizations on the condition that matching sums be raised elsewhere. The general run of China traders was probably little different from other merchants in public spiritedness. With the exception of Olyphant & Company’s

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open-handed underwriting of the China Mission and John C. Green’s liberal endowments to Princeton and to the Lawrenceville School, few China merchants approached the magnificence of Peter Cooper, George Peabody, Astor, or Girard, 97 but then few had such princely fortunes. In the matter of public (i.e., unrequited) service, however, the picture is somewhat different. Most, if not all of those who retired from the China trade, served in some unpaid capacity either in the local, state, or federal government. They appeared on boards of trade, chambers of commerce, school boards, library associations, boards of trustees of art museums, universities, organizations for promoting industry, patriotism, abolition, etc. Several were aboard the Jamestown, on its famous mercy cruise to Ireland during the potato famine. Indeed two former Lintin masters commanded the ship: R. B. Forbes was captain and F. W. Macondray was first mate.98 Many advised the State Department during the opium crisis of 183999 and again in 1843 when Secretary Webster was composing his instructions for Caleb Cushing.100 During the Civil War, especially, there was an outpouring of services for the Union League, civilian defense groups, presidential (especially Republican) campaigns, and other worthy causes. The Forbes brothers were exemplary. Robert Bennet helped organize transports to speed Massachusetts troops to Washington, supervised the construction of a number of Navy gunboats, built warships on his own responsibility, and organized a volunteer “Coast Guard.” John Murray’s work was even more significant. He wrote Union propaganda for broadsides and articles for the Atlantic Monthly and for English periodicals. He reorganized the Army’s medical department, helped establish and promote the U.S. Sanitary Commission, and pressed the investigation and suppression of graft in Navy contracts. He was also active in the redemption of hostages, the recruitment of foreign volunteers for the Union Army, and in the reassignment of the gamy Simon Cameron, secretary of the Treasury, to the legation at St. Petersburg, where the opportunities for peculation were presumably fewer than in the Treasury Department. He helped found the Union Club in Boston and the New England Loyal Publication Society, and he agitated ceaselessly for a more vigorous prosecution of the war. Even more important to the war effort was his mission to England with William H. Aspinwall to block the launching of the Laird rams, designed specifically for the destruction of the Union Navy. Forbes worked through his Quaker wife’s London connections to propagandize Friends’ meetings “urging Quakers to restrain the headstrong ministry.” After the war he remained a Radical Republican. He helped to found the New York Nation, promoted the Reconstruction Association to support the congressional reconstruction program, and attempted to revive the prewar New England Emigrant Aid Society to encourage Yankees to settle in the South, especially in Florida. To be sure the Forbeses were more active than most, but they were not

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alone, and they probably represented the prevailing sentiment among surviving ex-China traders. They warmly supported the cause of the Union; some did so very vigorously. Many had joined the Republican Party, seeing in this new organization a more suitable vehicle for the realization of their principles than either the old Whigs or the Democrats.

Part Three Cushing’s Treaty

7 The Creation of an Official Policy The Unofficial Origins of a China Policy

The mercantile residents of Canton had come for a single purpose; so had the missionaries. Neither was primarily interested in politics or diplomacy. They understood Ch’ing bureaucracy and its policy very imperfectly, but they chafed at the restrictions on their lives. In their letters and China coast publications, they objected impotently, but, for the most part, quietly. Except for the hong merchants, the Chinese, of course, heard none of their complaints, and certainly they intended to make no changes. Because the American consul held no diplomatic commission and was not recognized by the Chinese authorities except as a taipan (i.e., a chieftain of his own countrymen), he held little power. The office had never been anything but mercantile, so that whenever a crisis occurred, the consul faced the dismal choice of doing nothing and further eroding his own position or of assuming powers he did not have. Most of the early consuls, to  their credit, chose the latter course, introducing thereby a number of artifices and methods of responding to Chinese actions, customary measures that, for most practical purposes, can be called American policy.1 Yet this was the policy of the Americans residing at Canton, not that of Washington. Moreover it was encouraged by Chinese official behavior. Among the elements of this policy were peace and the assiduous pursuit of trade, acquiescence in China’s power to just about anything she wished within her own territory, acceptance of most-favored-nation treatment for American nationals, and toleration of a large illegal trade, particularly in the forbidden article of opium. In addition there was a growing list of grievances that this community was too weak to press upon the Chinese. Most important of these was the demand for greater security for Americans and their property in China. In the various newspapers and other journals published by foreigners in the area, several solutions to this problem were aired, but by far the most common was some form of extraterritoriality. Americans also nourished a vigorous resentment of the manner in which Chinese officialdom treated them. Increasingly this animus moved them to view themselves as part of the larger foreign community at Canton, which

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harbored many of the same dissatisfactions. Finally the resident Americans had a number of very specific complaints about their situation in China. They wanted more ports open to the trade, a uniform, published tariff, and an end to official extortion, standard weights and measures, and the abolition of the “Eight Regulations.” The missionaries were equally as powerless and contributed several more demands: the right to preach; to maintain their churches, hospitals, cemeteries, and schools on Chinese territory; the right to purchase Chinese books; to hire Chinese teachers; and, in general, to proceed about their calling without interference. Missionary demands generally either reinforced or were irrelevant to those of the resident merchants. On only one issue did they contradict each other—the opium trade. Here, of course, the missionaries and a few merchants condemned the traffic, while the drug traders themselves either called for legalization or were content with the old system under which they had prospered so splendidly. After Commissioner Lin’s vigorous suppression of the trade, most American traders probably would have settled for a ban on opium, so long as it was enforced equally on everyone, including the British. However it must have been clear that such a prohibition would have doomed the China trade as they knew it. Plainly, this was a policy and the outline of a program well worth the despatching of a diplomatic mission, once the British had negotiated the Treaty of Nanking at gunpoint.

American Response to the Opium War Although they differed in their reaction to the British employment of force, the American residents at Canton generally welcomed the opportunity presented by British victory to improve the conditions under which they lived and worked. If anything further was needed to unite community opinion, it was the “captivity” imposed on the foreign factory dwellers by Commissioner Lin during the opium crisis in the spring of 1839. No sooner did Lin release the foreign community than Americans began petitioning various branches of their government to take action. The Navy was far swifter to respond than was the State Department, because less was asked, because the requested action was traditional, and because no one objected to it either in China or America. In regard to political action, on the other hand, official reaction was much slower, and there were some differences in the Canton community, though they were more in emphasis than in nature. Although China merchants unquestionably constituted the largest single body of Americans with any knowledge or interest in China, the missionaries may well have carried more weight with most Americans who expressed themselves on the subject. Even business magazines assumed an anti-British, antiopium stance. Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine took a line very

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similar to that of the ministers of the gospel. It upheld the emperor’s right to ban opium as well as the essential morality of his edict excluding the drug. The British military effort in China, Hunt’s thought, was thoroughly disgraceful: The whole enlightened and Christian world ought solemnly to protest against it, as an unwarranted act of arbitrary power, committed in violation of the broad principles of eternal justice.

The editor added: The question at issue is, whether China shall be allowed the right of admitting into her ports the articles which she requires for home consumption and of rejecting such as she may think injurious.2

And he proceeded to denounce the Indian Empire as iniquitous, oppressive, and fundamentally un-Christian.3 Because many Canton traders regarded the British expedition as well justified, it is interesting to note how little support it attracted in America. The fact that opium was the causa belli was enough to damn the British,4 even for those who were disposed to forget Britain’s traditional role as the national enemy. Caleb Cushing, congressman from mercantile Massachusetts, whose constituents were among those most directly affected by the news from China, illustrated this truth by his attack of 16 March 1840 on Britain’s “base cupidity, and the violence and highhanded infraction of all law, human and divine . . . in the seas of China.”5 In recognition of the malodorous reputation of the opium trade, the merchants who signed the Canton residents’ memorial to Congress of 25 May 1839 welcomed the end of the commerce for both “moral and philanthropic” reasons. This gesture must have seemed necessary to them in view of the fact that they were asking for American cooperation with Great Britain in its attempts to bring the Chinese to terms. Isolated as they were, the Canton residents could hardly have realized the strength of public feeling on the subject of the opium trade, especially because a war over the noxious commerce seemed imminent. Overt cooperation with the British was simply out of the question, as Cushing’s reaction in Congress demonstrated. He had risen, he told the House, to correct the misconception of the English government that his earlier motion calling for more information on Sino-American relations from the State Department implied anything like approval of joint action with the British in China. He went on to note the “honorable contrast” provided by the “upright deportment of the Americans” in Canton, who “almost . . . alone, have manifested a proper respect for the laws and public rights of the Chinese Empire,” thus inaccurately making virtue of American necessity in East Asia. Most of the Canton memorialists needed this kind of disinfecting, because most were opium traders. Their language, in this connection, is interesting:

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We have no wish to see a revival of the opium trade: on the contrary, before the adoption of the violent measures that have given occasion for the present memorial, we had, most of us, signed a voluntary pledge that, believing in the sincerity of the [Chinese] Government in their efforts to destroy the trade, we would in future abstain from dealing in the drug.6

Having located themselves on the side of the angels, the petitioners stated that they objected to the imperial government’s seizure of property because “measures  .  .  .  should have been directed first against its own officers.”7 They then touched on a real grievance. They deplored Lin’s detention of the innocent with the guilty, something that went to the heart of the conflicting interpretations of justice in China and the West. The memorialists expressed the opinion that Britain and China would soon be at war and that China would quickly be defeated. Here, they felt, was an opportunity to secure a number of advantages. They listed six: 1. Permission for foreign envoys to reside near the court . . . 2. The promulgation of a fixed tariff . . . 3. A system of bonding warehouses . . . permitting the transshipment of goods . . . 4. The liberty of trading at other ports . . . 5. Compensation for the losses caused by the stoppage of the . . .  legal trade . . . with a guaranty against . . . recurrence . . . of similar arbitrary acts . . . 6. .  .  .  the punishment for wrongs committed by foreigners upon the Chinese or others shall not be greater than is applicable to the like offence by the laws of the United States or England; nor shall any punishment be inflicted by the Chinese authorities upon any foreigners, until the guilt of the party shall have been fairly and clearly proved. These were maximal objectives, however, and the dismal history of such petitions must have been what led the petitioners to append a minimal alternative. They voiced the hope that if the government should not see fit to embark on so ambitious a policy, it should at least establish an agent in China “with sufficient naval force to protect our commerce and our persons from being held responsible for the acts of lawless traders and the hostile operations of a British or other fleet.”8 On 9 April 1840 another memorial reached Congress. In it Boston and Salem China traders, led by Thomas H. Perkins and John Murray Forbes, added their opinions to those of the Canton residents. Although a number of the signatories of this petition were members of the same firms and families as the men who signed the first document, some of their views were significantly different. Although they justified the sending of a naval squadron on several grounds, they wrote that

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they would most earnestly deprecate the delegation to its commander, or to any other person at this time of any powers to interfere in the contest between England and China or to enter into any diplomatic arrangement whatever.9

Here was a direct contradiction of the advice received from the merchants at Canton. It also was to contrast with later advice from other Canton sources. In fact the only person whose counsel was at all similar to that of the Canton residents was old John Quincy Adams. It may have been this coincidence that induced Tyler Dennett to say that this document, “signed as it was by many who had already spent years in China, expressed the wisdom of age as compared with the wisdom of youth.”10 Be that observation as it may, the wisdom of both age and youth called for the despatch of a naval squadron. The Asiatic Squadron had existed officially for four years, though it had rarely been seen at Canton. Secretary of State Daniel Webster admitted to Peter Parker early the following year that “the subject had been neglected and that a strong force would be sent to those areas.”11

The Policy of Commodore Lawrence Kearny In fact, Secretary of the Navy James Kirk Paulding had written the orders for the new East India Squadron the previous November. The commander, Commodore Lawrence Kearny,12 a fifty-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and of antipiratical campaigns in both South American and Mediterranean waters, was a shrewd and self-sufficient blue water sailor. Veteran China trader Augustine Heard’s young nephew, John, commented after a visit to Kearny’s flagship, the Constellation, that he found Kearny, “a ‘rough stick’, certainly, but withal very affable & obliging, a genuine Yankee, as ever peddled wooden clocks, & nutmegs, but, I have no doubt, a brave man, and a good sailor.”13 This was a fair appraisal. Kearny took his orders very seriously, as befitted one of his character and training,14 and although an important part of the American community was to detest him for this integrity, Kearny was hardly a man to be deterred by unpopularity. Kearny’s orders instructed him to take two vessels to the Pacific, China, and Southeast Asia. The instructions Paulding wrote echoed significant parts of the advice the government had received and also reflected both the tone and the vagueness of public opinion on the subject of the opium trade. Absent was any suggestion that he cooperate with the British in negotiating better trading conditions or relief for Americans from the Chinese homicide laws. So far the Boston-Salem merchants, reinforced by traditional American caution, had won their point. In the matter of opium, on the other hand, the orders registered the moral influence of missionary and public opinion: You will take all occasions to impress upon the Chinese and their authorities that one great object of your visit is to prevent and punish the smuggling of opium in

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China either by Americans, or by other nations under cover of the American flag, should it be attempted.15

Kearney put these instructions into effect when he seized the Ariel, a one hundred-ton schooner sailing under the American flag.16 The Ariel had been (and probably still was) the property of the British firm Jardine, Matheson & Co. She had been built the previous year in Massachusetts by Robert Bennet Forbes of Russell & Co. expressly for the drug traffic and sent to China for sale.17 Kearny seized her on the strength of a bill of sale to one George W. Frazer, an American, probably in Jardine’s employ. The commodore forced the vessel’s owners to land her cargo of one hundred thirty thousand dollars to one hundred fifty thousand dollars in silver bullion destined for “English opium traders at Macao” (Jardine, Matheson & Co.) and sent her to Vice Consul James P. Sturgis at Macao. Sturgis, earlier (and perhaps still) involved in the opium trade himself, released the ship as soon as she arrived.18 Kearny’s vigorous action against the opium traffic caused an uproar among British traders in the drug, particularly because the American flag was being used as a cover for British opium-smuggling firms. The latter were moving cautiously because it was not yet clear what course the British authorities would take respecting the trade under the Union Jack.19 Kearny’s action, taken two years before the State Department’s emissary arrived, alienated an important section of the American community. Indeed it may well have convinced the Department of State of the impracticability and undesirability of undertaking to suppress the American opium trade in China. Of at least equal importance for the later Cushing mission were Kearny’s diplomatic actions. No sooner had he arrived in the river than he began to receive letters from Americans requesting him to press their claims for damages against the Chinese government.20 In order to present the American claims more effectively, Kearny adopted a British device. He informed the secretary of the Navy that he was taking the Constellation up the river to Whampoa. For the first time an American warship was to enter the Bogue. Among those on board was the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, the missionary whom Kearny had engaged as his interpreter.21 From Whampoa Reach, Kearny sent a note to Vice Consul Warren Delano at Canton announcing that he had arrived to submit the claims to the authorities. Kearny also instructed Delano not to receive messages from the Chinese governor, Ch’i Kung, through any but an authorized representative. The hong merchants would no longer be the channel for official communications as they had been for over a century.22 On 16 May, Ch’i Kung granted all that Kearny had asked for.23 In this, as in all of the commodore’s dealings, both he and the governor maintained a remarkable degree of flexibility. Each readily admitted the other’s valid

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claims and gave way where it seemed to be necessary for harmonious relations.24 While the Constellation lay at Whampoa, Kearny received a precedentmaking visit from the Chinese Admiral Wu. The latter was much impressed by his inspection of the two vessels, and, later, forwarded to the court a recommendation that China build a Western-type navy.25 Having completed his business at Whampoa successfully, the commodore returned to Macao Roads in mid-June. There, in September, he received the news of the Treaty of Nanking, concluding the Opium War. With characteristic despatch, Kearny sent a copy of the terms home with Delano, who was returning to the United States. In the same report Commodore Kearny noted that he had suggested the previous May the appointment of an agent on this coast for the interests of the United States—one who is not connected with commerce; and that also some of our large class ships would be advantageous here to impress the Chinese with a sense of respect for the United States.26

In the absence of such an agent, Kearny stated that he intended to “obtain some information of the disposition of the Chinese government towards the United States in this new state of affairs, their interests not being provided for in the treaty.” Fifteen days later Kearny wrote Ch’i Kung, beginning his letter, “The address of Commodore Kearny, commander-in-chief of a squadron of United States ships,” as if to impress the governor with the power at his command. Noting that the treaty had been concluded, he then called attention to “the commercial interests of the United States,” which he hoped would “be placed upon the same footing as the merchants of the nation most favored.” However, Kearny wrote, he would not “press the matter at present . . . trusting to the good and friendly understanding which exists.”27 A week later, Ch’i Kung replied: Decidedly it shall not be permitted that the American merchants shall come to have merely a dry stick [that is, their interests shall be attended to]. I, the Governor, will not be otherwise disposed than to look up to the heart of the great Emperor in his compassionate regard towards men from afar.28

In short he promised his own friendliness. Ch’i Kung, it should be emphasized, was not empowered to grant the Americans anything on behalf of the emperor and therefore did not grant the United States most-favored-nation status, despite the claims of Kearny’s descendants.29 The governor simply dodged the issue. Thereafter Kearny took the Constellation on a short cruise to Manila, possibly to exercise his men, who were getting rusty after eight months of inaction in Chinese waters.30 When he returned on 1 January 1843, he discovered

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that in his absence a mob had assaulted the factories, burning and pillaging several of them, including the hong of Augustine Heard & Co. The injured firm petitioned Kearny to return to Whampoa in order to give especial force to its claim, which had been given to the hong merchants some time previously.31 Accordingly the commodore moved his flagship back upriver and again settled the matter at issue. The governor ordered the hong merchants, rather inequitably to be sure, to pay the damages.32 The American merchants, a number of whom increasingly were thinking like British colonials, did not all approve of Kearny. John Heard, in particular, found much to criticize. When the commodore finally left on 2 May 1843, Heard accused him of “sneaking off” and damned his note to the governor on behalf of his firm as “lukewarm” and lacking in that “firm and manly tone,” which young Heard presumably would have adopted if he had been a commodore instead of an opium smuggler.33 With better cause his firm, Augustine Heard & Co., complained to the commodore that the hong merchants were mostly insolvent and not guilty of the offense anyhow.34 Kearny’s achievement has been hotly debated, but it seems safe to say at least that he had set several precedents: he had acted against the American opium trade; he had employed naval power to reinforce American demands; he had insisted on the use of dignified, official channels of communication; and he had informed the Chinese government that most-favored-nation treatment was a policy goal of the United States. Like many American representatives before him, Commodore Kearny, despite his orders, had been forced into a diplomatic role. Although he did not enter into negotiations, his stay and, more importantly, his correspondence with the governor were certainly useful for the United States. It was not strange, therefore, that Ch’i Kung should mistake him for a plenipotentiary in one communication,35 an error of which Kearny immediately disabused him.36

The Chinese Extend Most-Favored-Nation Privileges It was months after Kearny’s departure on 31 July that a message of great importance came from the governor and Imperial Commissioner Ch’i-ying.37 The latter announced that they had received an imperial order extending the privileges granted the British in the Treaty of Nanking to all foreigners. Moreover the commissioner declared that he was “to deliberate upon and settle the regulations for each of the foreign nations, only permitting them to trade at the five ports.  .  .  .  In relation to the four ports of Fuhchowfoo, Amoy, Ningpo and Shanghai, one and the same law will apply to them as to Canton.” He also wanted to know if the United States would appoint consular officers at the newly opened ports.38

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This was the news the Americans had been waiting for, and to the extent that it was the chief goal of the residents, it rendered the later Cushing mission an anticlimax. However to maintain as some historians have done that the embassy was therefore unnecessary39 is to take a much oversimplified view indeed. Many issues remained to be decided, most obviously the problem of personal security. Now that they owned Hong Kong, the British could adopt the course of the Portuguese at Macao. Any national accused of a crime in China could now be turned over to the colonial authorities for trial, but this was a road the anticolonial United States could not travel. The problem of coastal trade, missionary rights, the insurance of equal treatment in the future, of intergovernmental communication, and consular responsibility for smugglers—all remained to be addressed along with a number of minor problems. As the British treaty was put into effect, many changes were found to be necessary—so many that Sir Henry Pottinger and Ch’i-ying, the British and Chinese commissioners, drew up the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, to which they put their signatures on 8 October 1843. This document and its attached General Regulations were at least as important for Americans as was the Treaty of Nanking. Among the new provisions was the acknowledgment that the emperor had extended equal treatment to all foreigners and a most-favored-nation clause. According to diplomatic canons of the era, the United States would have been most unwise to have accepted equal treatment as the free gift of the Chinese government when Britain was writing it into a treaty. What is given may be taken away, as had happened so often in pretreaty days. It was far sounder diplomacy to have such a right grounded in a duly ratified treaty to which merchants might appeal.40 In any case now that Britain had extracted a treaty, it could hardly be expected that other nations would be satisfied with anything less, least of all the United States with a major commerce and a growing national vanity.

Launching the Mission Crosscurrents in American Opinion While Kearny was doing his best to implement his inadequate orders, in  Washington the memorials on the China question lay almost unnoticed among the various petitions and letters of advice to the secretary of state, the president, and sundry members of Congress. Many other matters seemed far more important. President Van Buren went down to defeat in the election of 1840, and the new Whig administration had been installed only one month when President-elect Harrison died. Vice President Tyler then assumed the office with fateful results for the party. Tyler, a Virginia planter, was no more in favor of the pro-business, northern Whig program

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than was John C. Calhoun, whom he had followed out of the Democratic Party.41 Not long after the death of Harrison, Tyler clashed with Clay, and in September, after two presidential vetoes of Whig bills creating a new national bank, a caucus of Whig congressmen formally broke with the president. The entire cabinet resigned except for Secretary of State Webster, who was engrossed in negotiating the highly important Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Britain. Finally the depression that had plagued the country since the Panic of 1837 was still the most salient economic fact of the day. With their attention diverted by these pressing domestic events, only a few members of Congress seemed to be doing any thinking about China policy. One of those was a Massachusetts representative who had been rather closely connected to the trade with China since his childhood—Caleb Cushing. Despite his background and connections, Cushing was an administration Democrat—a very peculiar breed in the twenty-sixth Congress. As early as 7 February 1839, in reaction to the Canton merchants’ memorial, Cushing moved that the House call on the administration for its records concerning American citizens in China. In his motion Cushing was careful to keep his constituents on the side of the angels: God forbid that I should entertain the idea of . . . upholding the base cupidity, and violence and high-handed infraction of all law, human and divine, which have characterized the operations of the British, individually and collectively, in the seas of China.42

All told Congress elicited three reports on Sino-American relations, two from the State Department, dated 24 February 184043 and 25 February 1841,44 and one from the Treasury dated 1 July 1840.45 This sufficed for most members of Congress and the administration, but it was not enough for ex-President (and currently Representative) John Quincy Adams. One of the finest diplomatic minds America ever produced, Adams was a man of great prestige in his native Massachusetts. His firm grasp of American-Chinese relations was in part the result of his connections with many of the largest China traders in the country and with several missionaries as well. Adams had also been the secretary of state who had received the consular reports on the Terranova affair back in 1821.46 Adams went over the American record with great care. It was he who found the reports from the executive inadequate and called (on 16 December 1840) for the supplementary report that was filed 25 February 1841. In addition Adams scrutinized the relevant British parliamentary papers before committing himself on China. Prior to delivering an address on the subject to the Massachusetts Historical Society on 21 November 1841, he confided to his diary that his opinion on the Opium War was “so adverse to the prevailing prejudices of the time and place that I expect to bring down a storm upon my head.” And so he did. The paper, substantially shortened by Adams himself before delivery, took

John Quincy Adams, ca. 1844. Oil on canvas by George Caleb Bingham. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

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an hour and twenty minutes. In the course of his talk, Adams stated his conviction that the cause of the war is the Kotow!—the arrogant and insupportable pretensions of China, that she will hold commercial intercourse with the rest of mankind, not upon terms of equal reciprocity, but upon the insulting and degrading forms of relation between lord and vassal.47

Adams reports that Francis Parkman, Abbott Lawrence, and several other members discussed the talk amicably with him after the lecture, but the following week the predicted storm broke. Despite Adams’s reputation for accuracy and scholarship, the editor John G. Palfrey rejected his paper as an article for the prestigious North American Review, although he had previously accepted it eagerly.48 In America, clearly, the Opium War was a hot issue, even in Boston, where—if anywhere—one might have expected to find a sympathetic hearing for the British cause. Although many remembered the War of 1812, Boston and Massachusetts generally had not been distinguished by their patriotism in that conflict. New England, in fact, had been the most proBritish section of the Union for many years. Opium was unquestionably the chief reason for the unpopularity of the British cause in China. John Quincy Adams might just as well have saved his breath as to have tried to convince his audience that the tribute system, not opium, was the fundamental question. Earlier Peter Parker had suggested that Adams should become American minister to China. Parker had left Canton at the end of the summer of 1840, and in the time since then had engaged in some very vigorous lobbying.49 He had made personal calls on Secretary John Forsyth and President Van  Buren, but as they were lame ducks at the time, he had also paid his respects to Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Adams, President Harrison, and after the latter’s death, President Tyler. With Webster, Parker had at least three separate interviews and shortly became quite intimate with the Webster family. On 29 March 1841 he had married Harriet Colby Webster, a cousin of the secretary.50 During all these conversations, Parker avowedly “let no opportunity slip by for keeping the administration aroused as to American needs in the Far East.”51 He also spoke with other people of considerable political influence, including Justice Story, Chancellor Frelinghuysen, Rufus Choate, and others. In addition he preached to a joint session of Congress and traveled the length of the Eastern Seaboard raising money for his hospital at Canton. Given the times and the facilities, it would be difficult to imagine a more effective propagandist than Peter Parker. Parker’s activities, as well as the continuing personal and literary influence of other missionaries and their allies, were probably as insistent a pressure as the administration (particularly Daniel Webster) was to feel on the matter. Nevertheless it did not override the administration’s good judgment.

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During his first interview with Parker, Webster asked the young minister to submit his views in writing. Parker readily acceded to the request. His opinions, dated 30 January 1841, included as the most important single recommendation that the United States send “a Minister Plenipotentiary, direct, and without delay, to the court of Taou Kwang,” because the war would destroy the old order, and an American minister should be on the scene to help work out a new system for trade and international relations generally. He also urged the secretary to attempt to mediate the conflict. Webster and Adams were the two statesmen who impressed Parker the most, and both promptly and wisely rejected the mediation suggestion. Neither were they of the opinion that the time was ripe for the sending of a minister. In fact most of Parker’s suggestions were contained in the merchants’ petitions received a year earlier. It was certainly not news that the Chinese government was sincerely trying to end the opium trade, that the Chinese might cut off trade altogether, that mandarins were often corrupt, or that American participation in the drug commerce was “limited,” and some merchants had taken strong stands against the traffic. It may even have struck Webster before that the fact that the United States was not a colonial power might give her an advantage in negotiating with China. However more unusual was Parker’s suggestion that Adams be selected commissioner. But Adams was not interested, and he did not believe the United States should be sending commissioners while the war was still raging. Diplomatic efforts would have to await the outcome of the war. The Boston-Salem merchants’ more cautious advice had prevailed. This is not to imply that the differences of opinion in regard to American policy among merchants and missionaries were very strong. The differences centered largely on the opium trade and on the actions of the British expeditionary force. Opium traders and many of the other residents who did not speak out against the traffic generally felt the British to be justified. Even some of those who condemned the British for the war and the drug traders for their immoral commerce were glad to see the proud mandarins humbled. On the other hand, as Adams had discovered, American public opinion agreed with most missionaries and their mercantile allies who viewed the war as a scandalous attempt to force a noxious product on an unwilling people.52 Once the war was over, divisions at Canton blurred still further. Everyone, regardless of his opinion of the British and the drug trade, was eager to grasp the opportunities that the humiliation of China opened up. And the removal of the danger provided even opium traders with the luxury of nostalgia for the old days. Augustine Heard and Paul S. Forbes, for example, each expressed great sympathy for the Chinese and disgust with the British, who had made it possible for both merchants to return to the discreditable commerce that was to make their fortunes.53

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On American policy, as on other matters, the community drew together when hostilities ended. The sole exception remained the attitude to be adopted by the US government toward the opium trade. Even here a kind of unity came about largely because of the confusion that surrounded the issue. In an 1838 article in the Chinese Repository, Charles W. King, a  bitterly antiopium partner in Olyphant & Co., had called for something like the withdrawal of consular protection from opium dealers.54 Such a course would have been appropriate supportive action in the midst of the Chinese antiopium campaign then going on. However, with the defeat of the Chinese, an entirely new situation existed. The General Regulations attached to the Treaty of Nanking stated, “Regarding the punishment of English criminals, the English Government will enact the laws necessary to attain that end, and the Consul will be empowered to put them in force.”55 Vague as it is this passage conveys extraterritorial authority, and this meaning was not lost on Canton residents. If consuls were to enforce the Chinese law, opium smugglers stood to lose their livelihood if not something more precious. Thus King’s argument for American official neutrality began to look more persuasive to them. Besides, the memory of Commodore Kearny was still fresh. The American government, they argued, should remain aloof from the opium trade, offering neither approval nor suppression. Enforcement of Chinese law, they would argue, was the business of the Chinese alone. Consular jurisdiction offered the best of both worlds. American merchants would receive protection without the obligation to observe the laws of China. Meanwhile the missionaries were occupied with the wealth of new opportunities to establish themselves on the formerly forbidden mainland. They seem not to have understood the problem of changed power relationships on American opium policy. Thus their influence on the American government tended to take much the same direction as the drug traders on this critical issue. The Administration Acts Webster was not to be moved by the opinions of merchants and missionaries alone. He seems to have done nothing until after he had studied the terms of the Treaty of Nanking. Suggestions that a commissioner be sent to China prior to that agreement must have seemed rash to anyone in Webster’s position. Informed persons were aware of China’s eremitic policy, and the failure of all attempts to establish relations with Peking was hardly encouraging. Hence there is little mystery about Webster’s reluctance to despatch a mission. As late as 16 September 1841, President Tyler admitted to Parker that nothing had been done about sending a mission to China for fear it would be rejected.56 The news of the British treaty quickly dispelled the administration’s doubts and stimulated interest in a China mission even among the formerly

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dubious stateside China merchants. If China was to be open, America should secure at least equal treatment with her chief competitors. Two days after Christmas of 1842, Representative Cushing sent the president a letter calling for “dispatching an authorized agent of the United States to China with instruction to make commercial arrangements in behalf of the United States.” From the letter it is clear that he was familiar with the terms of the Treaty of Nanking and understood the reasons for negotiating a binding, bilateral agreement.57 Three days later President Tyler asked Congress to appropriate money for a “commissioner to reside in China, to exercise a watchful care over the concerns of American citizens, and for the protection of their persons and property, empowered to hold intercourse with the legal authorities.”58 Now Webster had written this message,59 and both his hesitation and ignorance are visible in his wording. He apparently realized that he could not name a minister, because the Chinese still did not accept such officials. A resident commissioner seems to have been something of a compromise, but even that was ambitious. The Chinese had never accepted anything more than taipans. Sir Henry Pottinger himself was only the British Plenipotentiary, a title that did not imply residence in the empire. Thanks to the acquisition of Hong Kong,60 the question of Pottinger’s status could be ignored. An American commissioner could not evade the issue so easily. The House Foreign Affairs Committee reported favorably on the president’s request in the last week in January of the new year.61 It was amended and passed by the House on 3 March.62 Partly because of the unpopularity of President Tyler among the members of his own party in Congress, the bill had been handled roughly. Had it not been for Webster’s and Cushing’s connections with powerful Northeastern Whigs, the mission to China might well have waited until the next administration—that of the expansionist James K. Polk. The bill finally cleared the Senate at midnight on the last day of the session. One of the major opponents was Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, who was neither a Whig nor an admirer of Secretary Webster. The mission, he stated, was “unnecessary for any public purpose.” He charged that it was “a studied fraud” and accused Webster of attempting to create a place for himself as US minister to Britain.63 As we now know, Benton’s accusation was entirely correct, though poisonously phrased. Webster knew that he could not long remain in an administration whose principles were so far removed from his own. The current minister to the Court of St. James was Edward Everett, who received the offer of the China mission. Everett himself frustrated the plan, for he refused, forcing Webster to retire briefly from public life. The mission thereupon went to one of the best informed men in the country on the China question, Caleb Cushing.64 It is ironic that Cushing and Everett were very close friends and correspondents.

Daniel Webster, 1846. Oil on canvas by George Peter Alexander Healy. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

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The Composition of the Embassy Cushing, a native of Essex County, Massachusetts, had grown up as the son of a prominent merchant of Newburyport, John Newmarch Cushing. His father’s East India business had familiarized him with the China trade from childhood. He entered Harvard at the tender age of thirteen and received an MA at age twenty. Most importantly, he was personally acquainted with many China merchants and missionaries.65 In terms of the American tradition, he was a classic New England type— an ascetic, Puritan scholar-statesman, not unlike John Quincy Adams in his bookishness, interests, habits, integrity, and defiance of popular opinion. Cushing was almost stereotypically Yankee. He was reserved, compulsively frugal, with intense personal discipline, precisely punctual, meticulously well organized, and he possessed a very considerable talent for business, though his eye was not on the main chance.66 In the light of Max Weber’s connection between Calvinism and capitalism, he is easily recognizable as the union of both traditions—the secularized Protestant. He was a religious conservative in the day of Unitarianism, a practitioner of Weber’s “worldly asceticism,”67 and a very successful attorney driven into politics by a combination of conscience, ambition, and enormous energy. More religious than Franklin but more worldly than Edwards, splendidly educated, widely read, and a very prolific author, Caleb Cushing was probably the best representative the United States could have found to conduct its first formal dealings with China. On the negative side, candor compels attention to Cushing’s expansionism—an aspect of American policy that has fascinated many historians to the point of obsession. He would be a supporter of the imperialist policy of Polk and still later favored the acquisition of Cuba. He would serve as a general in the Mexican War, and he championed Democratic administrations’ domestic policy. Moreover he was what his opponents would call a “doughface”—a Northerner with Southern views. Although no friend of slavery,68 he defended the property right of Southerners to their slaves and was in general agreement with Roger Taney in his Dred Scott decision. His opposition to the antislavery movement was based on his support of the Union and on his conservative legalism. Like many other midcentury moderates, he ultimately would have to make the agonizing choice between the poles of Southern reaction and Northern radicalism.69 For the purposes of the China mission, it is important to note that Cushing’s personal qualities exemplified certain American characteristics that were to prove very important, instrumentally. In all three fields in which Cushing distinguished himself—law, journalism, and politics—the American ethos emphasized competition, striving to gain a triumph against an opponent. Cushing approached the China mission as he approached every other task in his career—as an adversary in a competitive contest.70 Even when

Caleb Cushing, first United States commissioner to China, ca. 1845. Negotiator of the Treaty of Wanghia. Upon his return from China, Cushing apparently shaved. This picture was made shortly afterwards, but Cushing’s imperial is gone. He seems to be growing a more traditional New England captain’s beard. Engraving by T. Doney, New York. Courtesy of the Historical Society of Old Newbury.

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writing despatches aboard ship en route to China, Cushing took the opportunity to develop a defense of the United States against European charges of racial injustice, citing European treatment of colonial races as evidence of the necessity for racial subordination in any case of coexistence.71 In sum Cushing arrived in China as an advocate,72 believing it his duty to seize every advantage over his Chinese counterpart. This was a role with which he was completely familiar. He saw no reason for justification and knew no guilt. His job was to secure the best terms for the United States and her citizens that he could. Probably no one could have done better. At the time of his appointment, Cushing was Webster’s “heir to political honors in Massachusetts,” and but for his loyalty to Tyler and his conservatism on the slavery issue, Cushing may well have succeeded Webster as the leader of Bay State Whiggery. Whatever the case, at this point in his career, Cushing was still a Whig, but his close connection with Webster and his support of Tyler had nearly isolated him. His biographer notes that Cushing had dinner with the Websters at least once a week, that Cushing often lent the secretary money, and that they were involved in joint investments.73 He was charged (quite unfairly) with political opportunism by his opponents, who were largely successful in blighting what was one of the most promising New England political careers of the era. He had just vacated his House seat and few such loyal Tyler men could be found in Massachusetts. Therefore his appointment was justified by politics as well as by his talents and preparation. Webster had a personal interest in the mission himself, if  only because his protégé, Cushing, was commissioner, and his son, (Daniel) Fletcher Webster, was secretary to the mission.74 The other members of the mission were mostly young men, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the mission’s surgeon, had taken his MD from the University of Pennsylvania the previous year.75 Kane, Webster, and Cushing were the only members who received a salary from the government for their services. The other five young men who went along did so at their own or another’s expense “supplying dignity and importance to the occasion,” in Webster’s words.76 Fletcher Webster was a cousin of Mrs. Parker, and he was provided with letters of introduction from John Murray Forbes to Howqua (who, unfortunately, died before the arrival of the mission) and to Paul S. Forbes. Dr. Kane had been born in the same town and month and attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania with Dr. D. B. McCartee, a newly arrived Presbyterian missionary who was staying at Macao pending assignment to Ningpo.77 But most importantly, from a standpoint of influence, Cushing and Webster were both New Englanders with many friends in trade and some among the missionaries. Two more members, Dr. Bridgman and Dr. Parker, both missionaries, were added in Canton as Chinese secretaries. Bridgman also acted as chaplain. Cushing had “partially known” Dr. Parker in the United States, but the

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two men became much closer during the months at Macao.78 Both missionaries brought experience and probably a degree of Chinese approval to the mission. Reportedly Parker was already acquainted with all the Chinese negotiators, having treated Ch’i-ying himself and the parents of another member of the Chinese team at his hospital in Canton. A glance at the credentials of the various members of the Cushing mission tells something about the thinking of Webster and the others responsible for its make-up. Like many missions of that day and this, one motive was politics and the advancement of favored persons. To this extent Senator Benton had been correct. However, in the main he was wrong, for place-making was by no means the primary end, nor was it the sole conditioning factor. Cushing’s only paid help was his secretary and a physician. At least one of the young men who accompanied the mission seems to have had some acquaintance with Chinese culture, but most apparently went along for the experience, like the lesser members of many American missions in Europe during this same period. Finally the mission was a lowcost enterprise,79 and this fact emphasizes the relatively low valuation of foreign relations generally at that time, especially relations with Asia.80 The administration apparently never considered the often-proposed alternative of a fully salaried, professional, consular system in East Asia. Judging from the extraordinary number of unpaid young men of questionable utility who went along, the mission was probably regarded as an eighteenth-century type of delegation. One man was expected to do most of the work, aided by a personal secretary and perhaps an interpreter. The rest were mere entourage, “supplying dignity and importance to the mission.” Americans in the eighteenth century frequently named treaties after their principal negotiator (Jay’s Treaty, Pinckney’s Treaty, etc.). By this logic and precedent as well as for convenience, the Treaty of Wanghia should probably have been called “Cushing’s Treaty.”

Information and Instruction The Demands of the Opium Trade Although the missionaries undoubtedly would have preferred active American naval action to prevent the traffic, the opium trade was the economic basis of the Canton foreign community. And whether they liked it or not, the missionaries depended on the drug trade for their remittances and for such services as communication, transportation up the coast and banking. For the previous two decades, the opium trade had balanced payments East and West. Its abolition would have altered drastically the lives and commerce of all foreigners at Canton and would have damaged East-West trade severely. Moreover, the British had continued to prosecute the traffic.

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Therefore, while public opinion at home and an important segment of the American community at Canton opposed the trade, it was likely to continue. American policy would have to come to terms with this squalid reality, just as British and Chinese policy had already done.81 For a brief moment under Commodore Kearny, the missionaries and American public opinion had prevailed, but the Cushing mission was to return American policy to the anomalous status it had had in the years before the Opium War. Additionally the opium trade was symbolic of an attitude which, if not policy, was very certainly a conditioner of policy. The manner of life, the customs, the common terms of reference (and of regard) for the Chinese and their government, the institutions of the community—all inclined Americans, like other foreigners, to approach the problem of policy in a special way.82 This culture served to focus American vision on some aspects of reality and to blind it to others, producing a distortion of perspective that was to have a very durable effect on American posture in East Asia from Cushing’s time at least until the Second World War. That these attitudes and inclinations were as much of Chinese as of foreign origin is clear but not important to the present purpose. That they were the result of circumstances as much as of intention is equally irrelevant. The fact is that the foreign settlement at Canton was all of a piece. If given the opportunity, the American community would very probably have acted in a manner not greatly unlike the British community. Canton residents would surely have supported a more “forward policy” than the Americans at home were likely to permit. Because the influence of Canton community’s opinion is detectable throughout the treaty, Dennett was enabled to say over half a century ago: The United States was in the Treaty of Wanghia putting on for the first time some of the garments of imperialism, only to find that the nation itself had not at all grown up to such ample vestments.83

But if the Canton community was a decisive influence in molding official policy, the means by which it made its views effective requires explanation. The community interest working through former Canton residents, American China traders, unofficial lobbyists like Peter Parker, and the personal associations of legislators like John Quincy Adams and Caleb Cushing has already been noticed. Another direct influence had its origins in the State Department itself. Webster Calls for Help Because the government had determined to send a commissioner to China, it occurred to Daniel Webster that it would be well to develop a China policy on which to base his instructions to Cushing. The permanent Washington staff of the State Department at the time consisted of only a

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few clerks, and they had precious little time or information with which to fashion such a policy. In 1843 the Department’s special intelligence resources consisted mainly of the consular reports, and these had been public property ever since Congress had called for the record. In a word the Department was no better informed than any literate person with access to the published legislative documents. Therefore China merchants, missionaries, and legislators who took the trouble to read books and the relevant British parliamentary papers were the experts in the field. Probably the best informed persons in public life were John Quincy Adams and Caleb Cushing, each of whom had been instrumental in eliciting the publication of the consular reports. Realizing his own ignorance84 and recognizing his constituency, Webster wrote Consul Snow at Canton requesting “regularly, such newspapers published at Canton, as usually contain political, commercial or general intelligence or interest concerning the affairs of that country.”85 More importantly he also wrote a letter requesting information and advice to all American merchants known to be active in the China trade.86 Of the several replies Webster received, two were detailed and thoughtful enough to be especially useful. A number of Boston merchants, all of whom were connected in some way with the Boston Concern, signed the letter written by John Murray Forbes, who, despite his youth (he had just passed his thirtieth birthday), was increasingly recognized as a leader among ex-China residents and their associates. Forbes began with the suggestion that the mission “be accompanied by a respectable fleet,” echoing many earlier voices. He noted, The Chinese look upon us as friends, but they have a great fear of encroachment by other foreign nations, and if we could, in a quiet way, without infringing upon the courtesies due to Great Britain, contribute anything to the means of defense against further aggression, it would open the eyes of the Emperor to the value of an alliance with us, more than the prospect of increasing their trade an hundred fold.

Forbes also stated that two interpreters would be required and suggested Peter Parker, more because of his “celebrity among the Chinese” than for his “experience in the Chinese language.” But Forbes was not relying on public relations alone. He warned the government about the various traps into which it might stumble unawares. He noted that presents could be interpreted as tribute and should be avoided except for “some tactful representations of friendship.” It would be necessary to stop at Macao, but then the mission might go on to Canton, or better still, to the Pei-ho, close to Peking. The Canton authorities should be notified that the mission would go to the capital (in  other words, the governor-general should be notified of the intention to go, not asked for permission to do so). However Forbes was careful to point out that American merchants already enjoyed all the privileges won by the

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British, and urged Secretary Webster not to permit the envoy to risk losing these gains. Forbes believed that the Chinese would be more tractable if they had to deal with the British first. If the United States were the first to negotiate with Peking, he argued, the Chinese will contest every inch of ground & endeavour to get the advantage of us in settling points of etiquette, which tho’ apparently unimportant may if yielded lead to much mischief. On the other hand, if they have to deal with the English first & endeavour to play this game, a threat of an appeal to arms will soon bring them to reason & on whatever terms they receive from the British Embassy both their pride & policy will induce them to accord the same to us. We should say then that the sooner our Mission can reach the Court after a successful British or other European Embassy has arrived there the better.

In the event no British mission got to Peking, “we think that infinite caution is required.” In the final paragraph, as if to emphasize his earlier caution, Forbes says, “If our Envoy does not see his way to succeed, let him do nothing”; but await a more auspicious moment.87 The Bostonians were anything but rash. This was the advice of men who remembered the ill-fated Lord Napier, the many squabbles between the governor-general and the Hon. East India Company, the Terranova affair, and the rest. They well understood the Chinese policy of equal treatment, because they had benefited from it before and were eager to do so again. The other letter was apparently written by John C. Green, chief of Russell & Co., as recently as 1839, but was also signed by his two partners and in-laws, Nathaniel and George Griswold of New York. Green advised against dealing with local officials, who, he said, “are notoriously corrupt,” and their interests and prejudices “are strongly arrayed against any relaxation of the laws and customs by which foreigners and the foreign trade have been hitherto controled [sic] and restricted.” Like Forbes he recommended missionaries as interpreters, but he suggested primarily Dr. Bridgman, “the best Chinese scholar of any American.” Next he suggested Dr. Parker—who is known we believe to the Department—whom we mention not for his knowledge of the Chinese language particularly, for his opportunities of study have not been very good—but for his respectable attainments and character, and his reputation among the Chinese, even at Court.

As to his friends at Canton, Green advised caution: the low opinion the Chinese had of merchants made such persons less useful, he felt, except as sources of information. Moreover he noted darkly, “We say nothing of the bias which private interest and association may impute to the counsel of merchants resident in China.” It was not for nothing that Green had the reputation for being a man of unbending honesty!

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Green also had doubts about the mission’s chances for success. Because no force was to be employed, a rejection would doom “the main purpose of the Mission,” and he strongly advised against performing the kowtow. Rather than submit to such degradation, he felt, it would be better to postpone the mission to a more favorable time, that is, after the British and the French had extorted the proper concessions which would then be used as precedents. Like Forbes, Green was confident that the Chinese would grant to the Americans what had been wrung from them by other Westerners. However, if the mission were to be accepted by the Court, Green counseled the commissioner to seek four concessions: 1. A reciprocal trade treaty, 2. A resident US minister at Peking (and a Chinese minister at Washington), 3. Resident consuls at ports in the Empire with free intercourse with local government officials, 4. Freedom to trade at all ports at which other foreigners trade free of molestation or unjust imposition. Finally and with characteristic bluntness, Green attempted to advise the government on opium policy: It is most likely that the Chinese Government will urge the Commissioner to interpose the authority of his office to prevent the participation of Citizens of the United States in the Opium trade. But we conceive that it would be extremely impolitic to assume any engagements whatever concerning this traffic that would require for their fulfillment the restraining, controlling or influencing of our Citizens in any degree. They have always been more or less engaged in the trade and probably always will be, however repugnant it unquestionably is to justice and humanity.88

Taken together the replies to Webster’s request for advice were clear, if cautious, reaffirmations of Canton community policy on all points. Each was written by a man who had lived some years in Canton, had been deep in the opium trade, was a close friend of Howqua, and had been an important member of Russell & Co. Other replies came from Thomas H. Perkins, 3 April 1843; Howland & Aspinwall, 4 April 1843; and Edwin M. Lewis & Co. of Philadelphia,89 4 April 1843.90 None of these writers had ever resided for extended periods at Canton. Only the latter contains any extensive information, and it generally corroborates the advice of the merchants quoted above. The Lewis brothers also recommended that the envoy consult the merchants resident at Canton together with “any supercargoes who may be in China and take their opinions as its guide, referring at [the] same time to the alterations demanded or obtained by other nations.” In addition they called for a debenture system

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for reexportation, assurance that no embargo would be imposed by the Chinese in the future, expansion of the area of the foreign settlement, the right of Americans to take their families to Canton, and a professional, fully salaried consul with “extraordinary powers.” Finally they wanted a strong East India Squadron on duty at all times, and some kind of extraterritorial privileges. More precisely, they called for a joint hearing by the consul and the commander of the East India Squadron to investigate alleged crimes, and, if probable cause were found, the accused should be returned to the United States by a national vessel for trial before the Supreme Court. Webster and Cushing accepted and did their best to implement virtually all of this advice, albeit with minor modifications.91 Finally, it must be assumed that there were other points of contact between the merchants and Webster or Cushing. Cushing’s biographer rather naively notes, “In April, 1840, Caleb Cushing discussed the Chinese situation with William S. Wetmore . . . who, through long residence in China, had become an authority upon its affairs.”92 Finally, just before Cushing’s embarkation, leading Boston China traders gave a banquet at the Tremont House at which Cushing and Webster were the guests of honor. The affair began in the late afternoon and lasted until after midnight.93 Cushing’s Instructions On 8 May Webster sat down to write Cushing a letter setting forth his instructions. The first objective of the mission listed by Webster was “to secure the entry of American ships and cargoes” into the new ports now open to the British “on terms as favorable as those which are enjoyed by English merchants.” Several sentences later, Webster notes: Latterly, a considerable trade has sprung up in the export of certain American manufactures to China [i.e., cotton and textiles, especially]. To augment these exports, by obtaining the most favorable commercial facilities, and cultivating to the greatest extent practicable, friendly commercial intercourse with China, in all its accessible ports, is matter of moment to the commercial and manufacturing as well as the agricultural and mining interests of the United States.94

Clearly the chief commercial aim of the mission was the assurance that our trade would be treated on the basis of equality with Britain’s, and a secondary purpose was the stimulation of American exports to China.95 After enumerating these goals, Webster acknowledged the “repulsive feeling towards foreigners” in China and expressed the hope that this sentiment might be “in some degree mitigated or removed by prudence and address on your part.” To emphasize this requirement, the secretary added: Your constant aim must be to produce a full conviction on the minds of the Government and the people, that your mission is entirely pacific; that you come

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with no purpose of hostility or annoyance.  .  .  .  It will be expedient, on all occasions, to cultivate the friendly dispositions of the Government and people, by manifesting a proper respect for their institutions and manners, and avoiding, as far as possible, the giving of offence either to their pride or their prejudices.

On the other hand, Webster enjoined Cushing in several ways to “assert and maintain, on all occasions, the equality and independence of your own country.” Webster’s intent is clear, but the phrase “as far as possible” provided Cushing with a tool (other than simple good humor) to employ in the negotiations. As with the instructions to Kearny, Cushing’s orders included using “the earliest and all succeeding occasions” to convey to the Chinese the American government’s disapproval of smuggling. As to the role of American naval forces in the suppression of illegal trade, however, Webster stated merely, “If citizens of the United States  .  .  .  are found violating well-known laws of trade, their Government will not interfere to protect them from the consequences of their own illegal conduct.” What is omitted here is more important than what is said: Webster had adopted the advice of the merchants; he did not say that US naval units would help to prevent smuggling by Americans. The treaty’s Article XXXII would faithfully reflect the letter and spirit of this instruction. In the same paragraph, Webster warned Cushing against permitting himself to be represented as a tribute-bearer, advised him to conduct his mission in a modest manner and to avoid the exchange of presents. Only then, after nearly one thousand words, did Webster mention the desirability of visiting Peking, and he did so in a most conditional fashion: It is of course desirable that you should be able to reach Peking, and the Court and person of the Emperor, if practicable. You will accordingly at all times signify this as being your purpose and the object of your mission; and perhaps it may be well to advance as near to the capital as shall be found practicable, without waiting to announce your arrival in the country. The purpose of seeing the Emperor in person must be persisted in as long as may be becoming and proper.96

In accordance with the advice received from the merchants, Webster had decided on a cautious bluff. Cushing was to persist in his attempt to visit Peking, but was to back down if the Chinese were obdurate. Again Cushing’s later actions proved him to be the conscientious servant of the Department.97 It should be noted that Cushing knew Webster very well. It is highly unlikely that Cushing was at all confused as to Webster’s purpose. They had been friends for many years, and Cushing was one of a number of prominent Americans who had helped to finance Webster.98 With regard to some Canton residents’ advice that the United States should join the European nations in forcing concessions from China or that she should mediate any difficulties between China and Britain, Webster

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was distinctly opposed. However, in accordance with Parker’s and Forbes’s counsel, Webster suggested that Cushing point out to the Chinese that America had won her independence from England, had no colonies in East Asia, and had a strong navy, all of which data presumably would cause the Chinese to be favorably disposed toward the mission. Before concluding his letter, Webster ordered Cushing in the strongest possible terms to secure a most-favored-nation clause or its equivalent.99 Article II of the Treaty of Wanghia was to incorporate this demand. Consul and Commodore Yield to the Commissioner In the meantime, in China, Sir Henry Pottinger and Ch’i-ying had signed the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, which settled many of the remaining difficulties between the British and the Chinese. With this agreement, the new system was completed for British traders, and the Americans hoped for similar treatment. Paul Sieman Forbes, the newly appointed American consul, reveled in his minor responsibilities, although, like the bulk of his predecessors, he did not regard the consulate as a very important consideration. From his journal and personal letters, it is obvious that he was preoccupied with his own affairs, especially with his advancement in Russell & Co. His future depended on the latter, while the consulate was comparatively unimportant. He would do everything Cushing asked of him but little more. When the mission landed at Macao, 27 February 1844, Fletcher Webster wrote Forbes, summoning him to the newly established legation in the Portuguese settlement. There the consul gave the commissioner his latest correspondence with the Chinese authorities, answered his questions on the community, its accommodation to the new system, and presumably explained his own connection with the leading American opium-trading firm in China, Russell & Co., to Cushing’s satisfaction (or at least his acquiescence).100 Thereafter Forbes was only occasionally of use to Cushing in his official capacity. The legation remained at Macao, while Forbes stayed at the factory in Canton. Aside from a few dinners, providing information, delivering messages, relaying letters from the acting governor-general, and calling Cushing’s attention to pressing diplomatic matters of local origin, Forbes’s function in the negotiations was minor. He was left to carry on his private business and strictly consular matters.101 The presence of the Commission would also place Commodore Foxhall A. Parker, Kearny’s successor as commander of the East India Squadron, in a comparatively unimportant position in comparison to that of his active predecessor. Although part of Parker’s inactivity was a matter of propriety, part was also due to his more reticent character. Cushing held plenipotentiary authority, and Parker’s orders were quite explicit: “You will hold the vessels of your Squadron subject to his [the Commissioner’s] orders in all things and endeavor so to regulate your involvements as to keep up a constant

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communication with him.”102 Nevertheless Parker was not without power of his own. His orders in regard to the opium trade, in which Americans were once again deeply engaged, were word-for-word the same as Kearny’s. Yet, while waiting for Cushing in Bombay, Parker could find no American law that gave him authority to seize the brig Antelope, the opium clipper on which Fletcher Webster103 had arrived. Webster’s compromising presence on the brig might be explained by the young man’s naïveté, but the Antelope had been built expressly for the drug traffic and was in the process of loading opium for the China coast.104 Parker again met the Antelope in Chinese waters but again took no action. Instead he confined himself to writing home for instructions, which never seem to have arrived.105 Thus, while Kearny placed warnings in the press and seized opium vessels until Augustine Heard angrily wrote that the commodore’s flagship had been dubbed the Consternation at Hong Kong,106 the timid Parker allowed opium vessels to carry on their trade more or less openly. Meanwhile Cushing prepared the ground for his mission, ignoring the policy implications of Parker’s inaction.

8 The Mission to China Mr. Cushing Prepares for His Mission Contemplations on the Outward Voyage

As

with other such missions in that day, the success of the Cushing embassy depended almost entirely on circumstances (luck) and on the skill of the mission’s principal member. The administration had chosen its man well, despite the partisan attacks of the Jacksonians. But for all his ability, training, and scholarship, not even Cushing could claim to be well informed on China. It was in the early spring of 1843 that this aloof scholar-statesman began to prepare for his contest with the representatives of the Son of Heaven. A  more mountainous task can scarcely be imagined. No one in America really knew much about China. Fewer than half a dozen Americans had ever learned Chinese,1 and published works in Western languages were rarely more reliable than the merchants and missionaries with whom Cushing was acquainted. The newly appointed commissioner set about buying and reading everything he could find on China, diplomacy, and the various issues with which he was instructed to treat. In the process he collected a substantial library. Of course Cushing enjoyed several advantages. He came from a China trade family and background, he was a gifted linguist, and he was a very hardworking scholar by habit. Moreover he needed only four hours’ sleep a night, so he had the time and discipline unavailable to ordinary mortals. On  the voyage out he turned his formidable talents to studying Chinese, but he soon had to acknowledge that Chinese was not to be acquired so easily as the European languages he had already mastered. Consequently, as soon as he reached Macao, he was to turn his attention to Manchu. The naval squadron, to give the commissioner “credibility,” which had been recommended by virtually everyone who advised the Department, was to consist of four ships; one of which, the brand-new steam-frigate Missouri, exploded on the way out. The other vessels were the frigates Brandywine

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and St. Louis, and the brig Perry. Altogether it was by far the most powerful flotilla the United States had ever sent to China,2 though the last two ships arrived so late as to provoke a number of peevish letters from Cushing. Cushing embarked at Norfolk, 5 August 1843, on a five-month voyage during which he mulled over his instructions and considered various strategies. His letters to the Department show him to have been a thoughtful man who took great pains to prepare for his assignment. He reported regularly on the progress of his thinking concerning such matters as other Western missions to the Chinese, treaty tariffs, extraterritoriality, communications with East Asia, negotiating tactics, and race relations the world over. In addition he faithfully relayed all information he believed might be of use to Washington, including scholarly reports on every country through which he traveled. All in all he sent some thirty such despatches to Washington during his journey to China. After the accidental fire, which totally destroyed the Missouri at Gibraltar on 26 August, Cushing left the squadron and took passage for Malta, Alexandria, and then across the Isthmus to Suez, where he received the news of the ratification of the Treaty of Nanking. This trip through the Middle East provided Cushing with some contact, however brief, with a part of the world where extraterritorial privileges for Westerners were common. While there he met a number of European emissaries and Eastern potentates, and he took advantage of every opportunity to expand his understanding of extraterritoriality and of East-West intercourse generally.3 Having sailed from Suez on 5 October, Cushing arrived in Bombay 15 November to find the Brandywine already lying there at anchor, ready to depart on the 26th. It was on this last leg of his voyage that Cushing condensed his thoughts into lengthy, carefully written despatches to the Department. These admirable documents set forth very clearly the fully matured views with which Cushing was to begin negotiations several months later. By the time he reached Macao, then, Cushing was probably as well prepared as possible, given the tremendous gap in American knowledge of China. Moreover he had determined on his priorities and his tactics, and he had developed a philosophy of international law to justify them. He would instruct the Chinese in the practice of diplomacy. Especially because Britain already had won them, the United States should demand extraterritorial rights in China for American citizens, not as a matter of concession upon the part of China, but as a principle of established international law,—that is that such a nation as China then was, was not entitled to assert the general principle of territorial sovereignty in order to retain jurisdiction over persons within her borders.4

Cushing, like many of his countrymen in Canton, regarded the West as a single entity in its dealings with Asia. He maintained that the cultural similarity of the Western nations created an affinity of interest in the East so

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close that they might be characterized as a single state for most purposes. Moreover Westerners required special treatment from non-Western rulers. He also was well aware that the Chinese government had already accepted the principle of extraterritoriality as well as a treaty tariff in the Treaty of Nanking, and therefore, he noted, “The subject has become one of the greatest immediate interest and importance, both as a general question of public law, and in its particular application to the United States.”5 The commissioner knew his administration. John Tyler appointed only Southerners to head the State Department during his term of office,6 and Cushing knew that the Union depended on the continued acceptance of slavery by the North. Yet slavery was becoming increasingly intolerable, especially since 1834, when Britain had abolished the institution throughout her empire. Cushing wrote a very interesting despatch from his desk aboard the frigate. He saw slavery as the logical result of the mingling of diverse races. In Europe, where hate or aid from another land played a part, the ultimate solution had always been exile or extermination,7 and in Europe’s colonies the line drawn between peoples was “far more abnormal” than was the color line in America. But Asia raised the most complex problem. The several strata in Asian society represented successive waves of conquerors. The colonial power was merely the latest and consequently the most privileged layer. He then accused European critics of American slavery of hypocrisy for condemning American slavery while continuing their “grasp of political power in any Oriental possession[s they] may have . . . , still less [do they] form any utopian vision of elevating the subject races to an equality with each other, and with [themselves].”8 In this remarkable communication, Cushing developed a fully evolved, self-consistent, tightly knit theory of social structure, culture-conflict, and race relations. Moreover it seemed generally accurate historically and universally applicable. An added advantage from Cushing’s point of view was that it provided a defense both of extraterritoriality and of American slavery. Despite his explicit recognition that the Chinese were a “highly civilized” people, the American commissioner classed them with colonials and slaves—that is, people who might legitimately be placed in an inferior status. Such an attitude dovetailed nicely both with the views of the Tyler administration and with those of the American community which Cushing met when he arrived at Macao on 24 February 1844. Preparations at Macao Consul Forbes had made what preparations he could without more precise knowledge of Cushing’s date of arrival. He had left a letter at Macao with Vice Consul William Pierce informing the American commissioner of the latest developments and containing all his official correspondence—both

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with the Chinese and with the State Department. He must have set up some kind of early warning system, for he wrote Cushing from Canton on the day the Brandywine dropped anchor in the Roads, over seventy miles away. He offered Cushing and Webster quarters at Russell & Co. and reported a rumor “which is very probable” that a Chinese commissioner was to arrive from Peking in about a month.9 Forbes assumed that this official was Ch’iying (or Keying), the imperial commissioner who had negotiated the British treaties. The expectation in Forbes’s letters of an early response from the Chinese must have galled Cushing if he reread this correspondence during his three-month wait at Macao. Cushing determined to stay outside the river, to give the impression that he was remaining only a short time and making it difficult for the governorgeneral to receive or communicate with him. He remained four days on the Brandywine while suitable quarters were found at Macao, finally landing on the 27th. Cushing set to work even before going ashore.10 He cautioned the members of the mission and the crew of the ship against saying anything that would compromise his purposes. In answer to any questions, all were to reply that their destination was Peking and to avoid other conversations respecting the mission altogether. By this means he hoped to put the Chinese government “in the predicament of being itself constrained to come forward and avow it’s [sic] views and intentions in respect to the mission.”11 His arrival was the occasion for great excitement among the Americans at Macao. Although the mission’s “pomp and parade” caused some mutterings, the settlement generally welcomed the commissioner. With his flowing moustache and neatly trimmed goatee, his modified major-general’s uniform, sword and spurs (which proved less an ornament than a cause of embarrassment when they caught Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman’s skirts),12 and his retinue of attractive young men, Cushing was the hit of Macao’s social season. Although rather taciturn by nature, he was single (he was a widower), rather good-looking, and the highest-ranking American official ever to have visited Asia. For a legation he rented the house of a former governor on the Praya Grande,13 and he made a point of visiting the Portuguese officials and all of the American ladies residing in the colony, as befitted a proper and rather bored commissioner. The day Cushing landed, Fletcher Webster14 summoned Consul Forbes from Canton to brief the commissioner. At the meeting Cushing gave the consul a letter notifying the Canton authorities of his arrival and instructed him to invite the American merchants in Canton to make suggestions “in regard to the commercial interest of the United States in China,” citing Webster’s previous letter to stateside merchants as precedent.15 Although he did not cite Sir Henry’s precedent, Cushing was also fully aware that Pottinger had also circularized British merchants in China before his own negotiations. On 12 March, twelve firms and individuals replied that they

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would make suggestions, though there are no letters from them containing such advice in the Consular Letters and very few in the Cushing Papers. The most complete set of recommendations from the merchants came from Consul Forbes in a document entitled “Remarks on the Regulations for Trade at Canton” dated May 1844, which was a compilation of the suggestions edited and summarized by Forbes. Both from this document and the commercial letters, it is clear that the merchants felt they had little to complain about.16 Nevertheless everything they called for was written into the treaty with the exception of a minor suggestion about accepting Latin American dollars at face value. In addition Cushing secured a reduction in the duty on lead, something Forbes thought the Chinese unlikely to accept. Among the more important actions of Cushing in the first few days in China was to notify Parker and Bridgman of their appointment. With Parker, Cushing struck up an association that was to be particularly fruitful. Although Parker’s knowledge of Chinese was not profound, it was serviceable, and his connections among the Chinese negotiators were extremely useful. Time and again, one or another of the “barbarian experts,” assisting either the imperial commissioner or the governor-general, would visit Dr. Parker to secure information, to deliver informal messages, or to report a rumor (and rumor often preceded action by several days, thus alerting the Americans to events on the Chinese side of the negotiations). In fact the role of Peter Parker in the writing of the treaty should not be underestimated: he had known Cushing in America; he was related to the Websters; he was the only American negotiator who knew any Chinese (other than Bridgman, who seems to have functioned primarily as a translator and interpreter); and his location at Canton during the long wait for Ch’i-ying made him especially useful and influential. Because Parker’s hospital duties kept him at the factories for most of this period, he was physically (as well as linguistically) more accessible to the Chinese. He was often the first to read the correspondence between Cushing and Acting Governor-General Ch’eng because the cautious Cushing wanted at least two translations of everything he saw. His notes to Cushing, written in a miserable scribble, are full of advice, information, and comments on the progress of events. Cushing was well aware of Parker’s utility. As early as 18 March, he wrote the doctor that if Ch’eng were wise, “he would instantly pick out the smartest Tartar and the smartest Chinese in his Province and place them at the disposal of the Legation, nominally as teachers.” Thus the governor-general would set up a listening post among the Americans and begin the process of teaching reliable officials English and such useful Western skills as military and naval science. Cushing cautioned Parker that this suggestion should be passed on to Ch’eng “as from me, but verbally, informally, unofficially, & confidentially,”17 for it would hardly do for the American commissioner to record such gratuitous help to the Chinese. In later years American representatives would not cover their generosity with such care.

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By the time negotiations started in mid-June, Parker was second only to Cushing in importance among the American delegates. He took part in all the bargaining sessions, and in the working-out of the new regulations governing all foreigners at Canton, he and Huang En-t’ung were alone. Cushing busied himself in many ways, preparing as best he could for the negotiations. He collected lists of names of officials and the offices held, the organization of the Chinese government and chains of command, lists of Roman Catholic missionaries in China, and other odd scraps of information that might prove useful in his dealings with the Chinese. As Fairbank has noted, Cushing was particularly careful to make himself familiar with the British experience. Soon after landing he established communications with Sir Henry Pottinger, the British commissioner and governor of Hong Kong. On 6 March, Pottinger sent Cushing a copy of the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue.18 Also Cushing managed to obtain copies of the Portuguese treaty of 9 November 1749.19 During his long wait at Macao, he studied these and all other documents bearing on Chinese negotiations with Western nations. In fact he detected important discrepancies in the various versions of both treaties. Cushing’s judgment of the matter was restrained: It seems a harsh construction to suspect the Chinese of such an act; [as deliberately altering the Chinese text unbeknownst to the Western negotiators] but the possibility of it is inferred from the circumstance that such frauds are known to have been practiced, in sundry cases, by Chinese officials, for the purpose of concealing the true facts of a case from the Emperor or from the people.20

In any case Cushing took no chances. He had the characters in the American treaty numbered and recorded to avoid any such difficulty with his own work. Another example of Cushing’s diligence in preparing for negotiations was his attempt to learn Manchu in order to open an alternative channel of communication with the Chinese diplomats. Here he encountered considerable difficulty. Agents at Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton collected Manchu books for him,21 but securing an instructor proved extremely difficult. For Fletcher Webster, who went to Canton in March, the opportunities proved somewhat better for a while, but the frightened teacher soon gave up, returned Webster’s money, and ended the lessons. Eventually Cushing found a teacher, but only after considerable trouble and not until mid-April. Before negotiations commenced, then, Cushing had experienced at least one of the restrictive regulations at firsthand—a regulation he would insist on abolishing. The Duel with Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai Ch’i-ying, governor-general and imperial commissioner, was away when Cushing arrived off Macao, although he was fully aware that the American

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emissary was coming. Consul Forbes had informed him the previous October in the presence of Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai, the governor of Canton; Ch’i Kung, governor-general of Kwangtung;22 Wen-feng, the Hoppo; and other officials.23 Ch’i-ying’s memorial on the interview noted that the most-favored-nation clause in the recently concluded Supplementary Treaty would give the British the right to visit Peking if the Americans were allowed to do so. The imperial commissioner suspected British complicity in the American mission but commented “even if it were clear that there was no mutual collusion it is at least an artful experiment by the United States.” As a result of this memorial, the emperor had issued the edict extending equal treatment to the American merchants but forbidding access to Peking.24 Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai (acting governor-general in Ch’i-ying’s absence) understood both the meaning of Cushing’s arrival and the emperor’s wishes. Ch’eng had replaced the retiring governor about a week earlier, and he well knew the penalties for officials who displeased the emperor. Thus he must have been apprehensive. His fears, however, did not only derive from his being a surrogate for the imperial commissioner. The entire bureaucratic system seems to have been animated by a remarkably defensive attitude. John Wills, in a recent critique of the “tribute system” explanation of Ch’ing foreign policy, noted of the previous century, “Most aspects of eighteenth-century Sino-Western relations can be explained by the concept of defensiveness.”25 Ch’eng’s answer to Cushing’s first letter was polite but extremely slow in coming.26 In it, the governor restated Ch’i-ying’s remonstrance against the necessity for the mission.27 Cushing’s next letter went by Major O’Donnell on 23 March. In this message the American commissioner deliberately adopted a high tone. His purpose seems to have been to jar Ch’eng into action and put the Chinese on notice that it would be dangerous to treat the United States in any but a proper and respectful fashion. Ch’eng’s letter had noted that Americans already enjoyed the same rights as the English, and “since the two nations are at peace what is the necessity of negociating [sic] a treaty?” He also stated that he must memorialize Peking before Cushing might go there. Cushing replied haughtily that he regretted “that he could not . . . discuss either of these questions with any person, however eminent in character and station, except that person be an Imperial Commissioner.”28 A number of writers have commented on Cushing’s tone in this correspondence. Professor Latourette felt it was a reflection of Webster’s misconception of the Chinese. However, it seems unlikely that Webster’s ignorance could have affected Cushing very importantly in the spring of 1844, and Cushing was surely under no illusions about Chinese cultural inferiority.29 It seems more logical to assume that when he scolded and threatened Ch’eng, he did so deliberately, particularly because he said as much himself. Moreover he stated that he was disappointed at finding no such person at Canton, implying that the Chinese were negligent in point of etiquette.

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Cushing had been studying Chinese negotiating techniques, and he was well aware of the uses of protocol. He was determined to put the Chinese on the defensive and thus increase their desire to “soothe” him. His tactic apparently worked, for Ch’eng immediately sent out informal feelers to discover Cushing’s real intentions. The officer who received the message attempted to get information from O’Donnell, and Huang En-t’ung and P’an Shih-ch’eng (the hong merchant Puankhequa’s son) and other “barbarian experts”30 approached Peter Parker.31 However, forewarned by Cushing, all members of the American mission gave only the information that they were bound for Peking. The exchange of notes with Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai continued in this vein for about two months, with the Chinese official clearly growing more nervous about the obstreperous American’s intentions. A gesture that further increased Ch’eng’s concern was Cushing’s announcement in the second week in April that the Brandywine would make a courtesy call at Whampoa. Ch’eng quickly replied (19 April) that “our August Emperor tenderly cherishes men from afar; and  .  .  .  whatever would be of advantage to the Merchants of every nation has certainly been done to the utmost.” He also assured Cushing that Ch’i-ying had already received his orders naming him governor-general of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, “and in course will come to Canton.” The Brandywine, Ch’eng emphasized, should not go to Whampoa, which was reserved for merchantmen, but should remain outside the river. Warships frighten the populace, he asserted, and hinted that sending the ship-of-war into inland waters smacked of bad faith.32 But Commodore Parker had already arrived at Whampoa and requested permission to give a twenty-one-gun salute; the governor replied in consternation that salutes were not permitted nor were visits to officials. He  requested that the commodore not permit his crew ashore and that he leave the river forthwith. Ch’eng also wrote Cushing much to the same effect, asking him again to recall the vessel. Ch’eng was very busy at his writing desk that week. He memorialized the emperor that Cushing was growing impatient. He reported that the American wanted to know when the imperial commissioner could be expected to arrive and noted the American’s sharp protests against Chinese negligence and impropriety. Parker reported the visit of a Chinese officer to his quarters in an attempt to get Parker to use his influence to keep the Brandywine outside the river. The officer noted in passing that Ch’eng “was afraid to take any responsibility,” thus confirming Parker’s own analysis of that official’s timidity. On the 18th a worried aide to the governor begged Parker to go to Whampoa to urge the commodore to take the frigate back to Macao.33 By 10 May, Cushing evidently had decided that he had made his point and that nothing was to be gained by maintaining the heat on Ch’eng. Nevertheless at no time did he step down from his haughty position of instructor

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to the untutored. He loftily accepted all Ch’eng’s explanations and announced that “in view of  .  .  .  your Excellency’s earnest protestations of the friendly intentions of the Imperial Government,” he would wait a short while for a reply from the emperor. Then he patiently explained the nature of an ambassador, of the rights and courtesies that are common in diplomatic usage, and noted suspiciously, “These principles are universally received in the West; and I have reason to think they are in China also.” As evidence he cited the Treaty of Nanking and the Macartney mission, and he recognized the Chinese government’s “justice and propriety of granting reparations” for the “injuries done to Captain Elliot and other British Officers, by Chinese Ministers of State.” He ended by stating that he was only postponing consideration of the “open disrespect to the United States, and . . . [taking] due measures of redress . . . in the hope that suitable reparations will be made for these acts in due time.34 On 15 May, Cushing wrote Washington about “two letters of great importance from the governor-general.” One of the letters announced the appointment of Ch’i-ying as imperial commissioner to treat with the Americans.35 It also stated that Ch’i-ying would arrive about 5 June. In the second the governor-general, apparently attempting to show his goodwill, had sent copies of his instructions from the emperor: Ch’eng, the highest local official, had opened his files to the man with whom his country was about to begin negotiations—an act that would almost certainly involve concessions China would prefer not to make! Such an extraordinary action would have been unthinkable in the West. In reviewing his correspondence with Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai, Cushing explained his purposes and their outcome: [T]he correspondence with Ching [Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai] not only proves to have had the advantage of having settled many things, and thus prepared the way for the negotiation with Tsiyeng [Ch’i-ying], but it has had the further advantage of enabling me to say all the harsh things which needed to be said, and to speak to the Chinese Government with extreme plainness and frankness, in a degree which would have been inconvenient if not inadmissable in immediate correspondence with Tsiyeng.36

One might add several other advantages to the American mission which resulted from the three-month delay at Macao. It enabled Cushing to consult the local community, the British negotiators, and the written record at some length and to make accurate assessments of the nature of the men and institutions with which he was to deal. He also gathered considerable information on the working of the new trading system and accordingly altered his negotiating goals. Finally he acquired experience in formal dealings with the Chinese in his exchange with Ch’eng. Thus, by the time of Ch’i-ying’s arrival, Cushing had gained much knowledge and experience and was ready with a number of proposals and perhaps even a fully developed projêt for the treaty. Certainly a projêt was ready by 21 June. Unfortunately, no copy

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of the original document seems to have survived, but Cushing reported that except for minor modifications, the Treaty of Wanghia was a faithful replication of the projêt, the terms of which he had worked out at Macao in the tedious months of waiting from February to June 1844. The Hsü A-man Incident The rest of the correspondence between Cushing and Ch’eng prior to the arrival of Ch’i-ying is of no great interest except for the letters pertaining to the “Arrow” incident and the killing of the Chinese Hsü A-man. Cushing had brought with him a new flagpole for the consulate, topped with a weather vane in the shape of an arrow. Never having seen such a contrivance before, the superstitious Cantonese populace were at a loss to explain it. Thus they began attributing various local calamities (such as an outbreak of the plague, a drought, and fear of a war with the United States) and imagined future catastrophes to the shiny brass arrow that moved from point to point so inexplicably. It was in this atmosphere that a mob of Chinese attacked the flagpole and damaged it before being driven off by armed American residents. Paul Forbes removed the weather vane on 6 May to the satisfaction of “Scholars, Gentry and aged people in General Court Assembled” who put up a placard the following day.37 Five weeks later (the very day before Ch’i-ying arrived at Macao), several merchants strolling in the American garden were assaulted with brickbats and compelled to have recourse to firearms, in defence of their lives against the violence of a mob of . . . desperadoes and, in the course of the affray a Chinese, Hsu-A-man, was killed; no protection was obtained from Chinese soldiers. . . . Mr. Cushing appealed to Kiying for protection, to prevent a recurrence of similar acts of violence.38

It is impossible to assume that so perspicacious a diplomat as Cushing was unaware of the opportunity this homicide presented to test the extraterritorial provisions he hoped to write into his treaty. Thus the speed of the negotiations must have gratified him.

The Imperial Commissioner Arrives On 29 May, Cushing reported that he had received his first letter from Ch’i-ying, written from Soochow on 29 April, and he commented that the St.  Louis and the Perry had still not arrived. “Therefore,” he noted testily, “to remain here . . . and meet Keying, if not the most desirable thing, is at present the only possible thing.” But he was convinced that negotiating at Canton was best for the realization of the purposes for which he had been

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sent to China. “In the north,” he feared, “the primary goal of the mission would be confused with the question of reception at Court.”39 This was precisely the view of the Chinese, though their emphasis was different. The emperor and Ch’i-ying had few reservations about matters of trade or even extraterritoriality, but presentation at court was another matter. From their standpoint, the implications of a barbarian presence in Peking for the Court’s pretensions to universal hegemony were profoundly subversive. They saw no way to do it, and preventing the trip without provoking Cushing was their greatest concern.40 Cushing’s despatch of 12 June reported the receipt of a letter dated 31  May from Ch’i-ying announcing his arrival at Canton.41 The imperial commissioner was on a courtesy visit to Hong Kong to bid good-bye to Sir Henry Pottinger, the British commissioner, who was leaving for Bombay. Ch’i-ying stated that he would arrive at Macao on 14 June. Cushing was also able to report, no doubt with considerable relief, that the St. Louis and the Perry had finally appeared in the outer waters. The first ship was not idle long. She had only been at Hong Kong a week, when the riot that resulted in the death of Hsü A-man brought an appeal from Consul Forbes, and the St. Louis sailed upriver to Whampoa. From there Acting Commander E. G. Tilton sent boats carrying sixty men to Canton to protect the resident Americans against further attacks.42 It is interesting that unlike the visit of the Brandywine the previous month, the St. Louis brought no complaint from Chinese officialdom, and it unquestionably strengthened the forceful posture Cushing wished to assume. Ch’i-ying was the most remarkable Chinese official that Americans, used to the arbitrariness of the old system, had ever known. An imperial clansman and an intimate of the emperor (with whom he had grown up), Ch’i-ying had first appeared as a negotiator for the Chinese with Westerners in 1842. Prior to that time, he had held a series of posts for the dynasty, but according to Swisher, none of these positions indicated that he might be aiming for a career in foreign affairs. On the contrary he seems to have specialized in finance and military affairs.43 His acquaintance with British military operations in the Opium War convinced him that resistance was useless, and he thereafter urged the emperor to make peace. It was Ch’i-ying who had negotiated with the British in 1842 and again at the Bogue in 1843. In these contacts he seems to have evolved a policy that he believed would enable him “to fit the novel relations with Britain [and later with other countries] into the orthodox framework of the Chinese imperial system.” The means to this ambitious end were “appeasement combined with personal influence” on foreign commissioners and the manipulation of China’s foreign trade, “which, judiciously used, could keep the greedy Westerners in order.”44 In this program Ch’i-ying’s primary motivation apparently was not patriotism but personal ambition. He hoped to obtain control of Chinese foreign

Ch’i-ying, imperial commissioner who negotiated the Treaty of Wanghia with Cushing. Private collection.

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policy. Here, clearly, was a power vacuum—one that both the American and Chinese commissioners perceived, but while the former with his Western background understood it very well, and even made suggestions to fill it, to Ch’i-ying it was an entirely new concept. Consequently his efforts were bound to be amateurish. His methods, “which might have got results with a border tribe, left Her Majesty’s Government [and Cushing’s] unaffected.”45 Ch’i-ying’s accommodating, even affectionate, attitude more than once made things awkward for the aloof New Englander, but he soon adjusted and ultimately was able to employ some of the same devices as Ch’i-ying. Ch’i-ying’s view of Cushing and the Americans generally was that they were well meaning, sincere, “respectful and obedient,” but almost hopelessly ignorant. He also took the opportunity to inform the emperor about America. Probably using the account of the United States prepared by Cushing and translated for the benefit of Chinese officials who had “very imperfect and incorrect notions” of the country,46 Ch’i-ying provided a brief outline of recent US history and of the national character and resources. America was originally a large continent  .  .  .  as different from China as night from day, a vast country with a sparse population. . . . Although she established her country not more than a few decades ago, her territory is broad, her people diligent, and her products abundant. Hence of all the barbarians of the West, which along with England and France are regarded as great powers, only the United States is noteworthy, while Holland and Spain, although established previously, on the contrary do not come up to the recent status of the said country.47

But their extreme ignorance of civilized behavior, especially of the language and customs of China, made them particularly difficult to deal with. Unlike the English, who were somewhat conversant with Chinese written and spoken language, . . . the American barbarians have only Parker and Bridgman who do not know many Chinese characters. They are versed only in the Cantonese local dialect, with the result that it is hard to understand each other’s point of view, and a great deal of energy is consumed.48

It is amusing and reminiscent of Western frustrations in attempting to reach “backward” peoples to read Ch’i-ying’s reports of his patient, painstaking, but fruitless efforts to enlighten the dim, inscrutable minds of the American barbarians. These people are outside the pale, in regard to the designations and forms are in utter darkness. If we use our documentary forms to determine authoritatively their rank, even if we wore out our tongues and parched our lips we could not avoid the smiling response of a deaf man.49

American incomprehension was exasperating. The days were growing hot. Macao lies just under the Tropic of Cancer, on

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the same latitude as Havana, and the South China Coast can be intolerable in late June. This is the humid season. The wind dies, and everything steams. Claude Fuess insists that the treaty was negotiated in a windowless room, causing great discomfort among the Americans, dressed as they were, formally, and for more temperate weather. The Chinese, on the other hand, were clad in silks and were accustomed to the vicissitudes of their own climate.50 The heat, the eagerness of the Americans to be done, the many pressing obligations of Ch’i-ying,51 and, above all, the basic agreement on the essentials of the treaty to be consummated greatly expedited the work. The document was signed about two weeks after the envoys first greeted one another at the legation in Macao.

The American Projêt On 16 June, Ch’i-ying arrived at Wang-hsia (Wanghia in most Western accounts) just outside the walls of the Portuguese settlement but inside the Barrier. When he paid his first, ceremonial visit to Cushing two days later, the imperial commissioner was accompanied by Huang En-t’ung (provincial treasurer); P’an Shih-ch’eng (described as circuit judge of the province, though most of his duties seem to have revolved around the foreign community52); Ch’ao Ch’ang-ling;53 and others.54 Ch’i-ying and his entourage had settled into a lovely Buddhist temple at Wang-hsia (the Cantonese called it the temple of Kun Yam, the goddess of mercy), where this second meeting took place. Here Ch’i-ying was on home ground, so to speak, and began to reveal his technique. After greeting Cushing, the imperial commissioner embraced him55 and showed every evidence of warm feeling. The refreshments and small talk were not widely different from those of the previous day. Up to this point, the minutes of the negotiations give no hint that any public business had yet been broached, however, on the evening of the 19th, Webster, Bridgman, and Parker for the United States and Huang, P’an and Ch’ao for the Chinese met to “arrange the course of the negotiation.” It was this group that effectively hammered out the treaty, meeting alternately at the temple and at the legation. On the 21st the same group met to begin work. The Americans had come well prepared “for the projêt of a Treaty being completed agreeably to previous arrangement, Mr. Webster with Dr.s [sic] Bridgman & Parker delivered it to H. E. Huang.”56 In his cover letter, Cushing pointedly stated that the differences between the terms of the projêt and the British treaties resulted from the fact of the possession of Hong Kong by Great Britain: “The United States does not seek any such possession in China, and it is therefore constrained to propose new articles of commercial regulation, for the security of citizens of the United States residing or prosecuting trade in China.”57 He also noted that he had inserted a

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“multitude of provisions for the benefit of China.” The following day, Cushing remarked in another message that he had accepted the treaty tariff as it appeared in the British agreements, taking exception only to the duties on a few items that came from the United States such as ginseng and lead. For the most part, the correspondence of the following week consisted of extraneous matters: the Arrow incident, the riot of 15 June, the killing of Hsü A-man, new regulations for Americans at Canton, and the detention of Americans during the opium crisis of 1839. The minutes are much more instructive, because the real work of the mission was going on at meetings in the temple at Wang-hsia and at the legation. Ch’i-ying reported the projêt immediately to Peking but did not analyze it at length for the emperor’s benefit until the negotiations were almost at an end.58 At a meeting on 24 June in the legation, Ch’i-ying, Huang, Ch’ao, P’an, and T’ung brought out a counter-projêt. Cushing read it over and stated that he had no objection to most of the amendments. At this point Ch’i-ying again demonstrated his use of personal affection. He asked the Americans if they trusted him and called for the abandonment of any trace of suspicion. Cushing replied “that he had never entertained any distrust & could not therefore put it aside.” The commissioners shook hands and “embraced each other most cordially,” after which Ch’i-ying informed one of the secretaries to write “We mutually trust & do not suspect.” H. E. then took the pencil and underscored the characters. The delegations agreed to compare the two projêts in the two succeeding meetings (Tuesday and Wednesday) and on the third day (Thursday), “The deputed officers of both parties to meet & compare & finally settle—and on Friday seal & exchange Treaties.” Surely such expedition has never been possible in any agreement of similar character ever made by the United States with a Western power. Cushing then listed four areas of contention which he felt needed discussion: his orders “to deliver a letter of the President in person &c.” (i.e., in Peking); the physical insecurity of Americans in Canton; the “grave offence [sic]” of the confinement of Americans in 1839; and “the death of an American citizen in 1842” (i.e., Sherry).59 A breathless silence prevailed during the statement of these topics & deep solicitude on the part of the Chinese. H. E. Ke Ying asked if there were any more topics, & being answered in the negative, there was a very marked change in this & their countenances as if it were a relief to know the worst. H. E. Ke Ying then wrote in reply to each topic as they had been noted by H. E. Huang. 1. “It must be maturely deliberated upon for it is an important subject.” H. E. Cushing remarked upon the second, that it was best to appoint officers on both sides to adjust it. H. E. wrote 2. “It is right to appoint officers to settle it.”

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H. E. Ke Ying observing what had been written remarked in reply to the minister, clapping his hands, “It is just what Huang has written. I appoint,” said he smiling, “Huang & Parker to settle it”—Huang also wrote as follows, 3. “H. E. Lin was misled & now has been severely punished.”

[and finally] 4. “The death of Sherry is a matter of long standing & difficult to investigate. It occurred in a time of war & was unfortunate.” Then was resumed the first topic—& H. E. Ke Ying often sitting some minutes grave & silent, burst forth in a strain of eloquence. Some conversation then ensued between the Envoy & Mr. Webster. In the meantime Huang in a low voice had said “If H. E. the Envoy persists in going to Peking, then Ke Ying will not take the responsibility of settling a Treaty here—” (to which Dr. Parker volunteered the reply that H. E. the Envoy was not particular, he had always said the commercial regulations would as well be settled anywhere as here &c). At length Ke Ying said to himself “If the Envoy persisted [sic] he should not conclude a Treaty with him.”60

The Peking Trip There can be no question but that the Peking trip was viewed by the Chinese delegation as the central issue of the negotiations, and they were determined at all costs to prevent it. The implications of such a trip would be that the Chinese political system had been radically altered, and the dynasty was far from ready to acknowledge such a change. The Americans, on the other hand, were quite willing to forgo the long trip to Peking, which Cushing himself called “but the means to an end.” It may be well to recall Cushing’s instructions on this score. Well into his letter (paragraph #5), Secretary Webster states: It is of course desirable that you should be able to reach Peking, and the court and person of the Emperor, if practicable. You will accordingly at all times signify this as being your purpose and the object of your mission;  .  .  .  The purpose of seeing the Emperor in person must be persisted in as long as may be becoming and proper.61

Obviously insistence on presentation at court at this point would prejudice the entire mission. Ch’i-ying was offering Cushing the choice of realizing his primary purpose of securing a favorable commercial treaty or of risking everything in a dubious attempt to attain a very secondary objective. The imperial commissioner had as much as stated that he was prepared to grant many favors in the field of China’s foreign trade, “considered unimportant in itself . . . the bait . . . [to] keep the greedy Westerners in order.”62 Here

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were the makings of a bargain, but for the moment Cushing was keeping the Chinese in suspense. At this time it seemed doubtful whether he [Ch’i-ying] would dine at all.— After conferring with Mr. Webster, H. E. Cushing promised to communicate his decision in writing the next day—& all adjourned to dinner—the Chinese with heavy hearts.63

It is informative to compare the reports of the two commissioners on this exchange. In his memorial Ch’i-ying remarked that negotiations were continuing, but he emphasized the American’s obstinance in persistently refusing to abandon the visit to the capital. Reading through Cushing’s correspondence with Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai,64 the imperial commissioner concluded that Cushing planned to sign the treaty first and then demand an audience with the emperor. Accordingly he wrote the emperor that he had countered that if the treaty were signed at Canton, there was no need to go to Peking, and then asked Cushing for his credentials. When this gambit failed, Ch’i-ying “called on the said envoy in person and told him that the regulations of the Heavenly Court had never provided for [going to Peking] and could not be amended; that since he respected and admired His Imperial Majesty, he must humbly obey His Edicts and not make obstinate demands.”65 Cushing’s version of this conversation ran rather differently. The imperial commissioner, he reported, “avowed distinctly that he was not authorized either to obstruct or facilitate my proceeding to the Court, but that if I persisted in the purpose of going there, at this time, he had no power to continue the negociation of the Treaty.”66 Certainly this was putting the matter gently but firmly. Although the wording of the indirect quotation suggests that Cushing may have softened it, it is also a tribute to Ch’i-ying’s “shrewdness in the art of personal relations.” The following day Cushing addressed himself to the subject in a letter. He stated that he deeply regretted “that such are the views entertained by the emperor,” because he was forced thereby to incur “the grave responsibility of omitting to execute the instructions of my Government.”67 Again Cushing was placing himself in the position of appearing to take major risks for Ch’i-ying and thus implying that the latter was obligated to offer some consideration in recompense. He was playing the same game as the mandarin. “But I know,” Cushing continued, “that it is the primary object of my government, as it is my own, to bind together the two Governments by the ties of a sincere and cordial friendship,” and so he agreed. Finally he specified, “And I do this with the further understanding, that on the other points of negociation, pending between your Excellency and myself, we arrive at a satisfactory conclusion; without which it will, of course, be necessary for me to proceed to Tien-tsin.”68 Remarking, in his memorial, on Cushing’s “cunning mind,” Ch’i-ying also understood the threat, but he felt “since the said barbarian envoy regarded

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the treaty as vital, its prompt conclusion was agreed to.” He reported that haggling was still going on, but that only four or five articles remained to be settled. The sources of influence on Ch’i-ying need greater study, for his was no simple task. He had his master in Peking, the might of the British, and the displeasure of other barbarians to worry about. Moreover the influence of precedent was apparently far stronger with him than with Cushing, for all the latter’s conservative legalism. The mandarin’s extraordinary flexibility was at least partly the result of the two treaties with the British, which had badly bent the iron framework of Chinese tradition. One has only to contrast Ch’i-ying’s tortuous tactics in the negotiations with Pottinger to the swiftness and tranquillity of the discussions with Cushing to realize the difference. It is also evident that there were other pressures working on him—the French mission was on its way; the viceroyalty of the two Kwangs undoubtedly involved him in many matters of importance, which drew his attention from the American treaty; he was unwell for at least part of the time; and so forth. One gets the powerful impression that Ch’i-ying felt that the crucial capitulations had already been made to the British and that the talks at Wang-hsia merely constituted a tidying operation, relatively unimportant in themselves but useful in “soothing” the American barbarians who had generally given little trouble anyway. For several days the two envoys did not see each other, but on the 29th, Ch’i-ying sent a message to the effect that the projêt was “admirable” but that a few changes would be necessary.69 In his comment to the emperor, on the other hand, he enumerated ten articles “which were entirely inadmissible but which were stubbornly demanded.” 1. Consuls at the treaty ports were to have the right to apply directly to the Censorate with problems. 2. The Chinese government should pay an indemnity to foreigners whose buildings burned. 3. The repayment of duties if imported goods remained unsold for three years. 4. The building of government bonded warehouses. 5. The opening of the entire coast to foreign trade. 6. The Chinese government should protect all vessels in its waters and provide restitution for damages caused there by third parties. 7. Merchant vessels taken by enemies of the United States in Chinese waters should be recovered by Chinese forces. 8. The exchange of salutes between national vessels and Chinese forts when the former arrive in port should be permitted. 9. The Grand Secretariat or another ministerial board should receive intergovernmental communications.

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10. If China goes to war, American vessels should be permitted to leave in order to protect themselves from harm.70 Presumably it was these objections and the wording of the rest of the treaty that occupied the members of both missions throughout the remaining three days before the treaty was signed. Most of the “haggling” that Ch’i-ying stressed in his memorials to the emperor therefore must have taken place in this very short period, if it took place at all.71 In reality most of the bargaining was already completed. On 25 June, Huang, P’an, Ch’ao, and T’ung had met Webster, Bridgman, and Parker at the legation in the late afternoon. The first matter brought up by the Chinese was the question of correspondence between governments (next to the Peking trip, evidently the most important subject in their view). They presented some informal comments of Ch’i-ying’s on the matter to the effect that none of the existing boards at Peking would be suitable for the reception of messages from the American government. One of the boards dealt with inner Asian tribal peoples; another dealt with dependent states such as Korea, Cochin China, Siam, and Loo Choo (the Ryukyu Islands). There was, in fact, no Chinese department of state. Instead, noted Ch’i-ying, “I the Minister have received Imperial appointment to the office of superintending the appropriate affairs of free commerce at the five ports.” The imperial commissioner was, then, the Chinese surrogate for foreign minister. If the commissioner was unavailable, then foreigners might communicate with the governors of border provinces, “all of whom are Chinese Ministers of the first class by whom all on the seaboard is to be regulated.”72 Then Huang proposed that they prepare a copy of the treaty. The negotiators had clear sailing through the first eighteen articles, but on Article XIX, concerning the duties of the local government to guarantee the security of Americans in the area, there was “spirited discussion.” Huang and Webster drafted the final compromise. Article XX (on the reexportation of goods) was an even more difficult problem. Eventually the conferees agreed to refer the matter to the commissioners by giving them three alternatives from which to choose—drawback, warehousing, or bonding. Because the next article was the first of the extraterritorial provisions, it might have been expected that there would be some difference of opinion. I believe there can be little argument with Fairbank’s judgment that the Chinese did not understand the implications of their actions in signing the “unequal treaties” of the early 1840s. In any case anyone raising the issue has more to explain than one who supports Fairbank’s position. For example, if the Chinese knew what they were doing when they agreed to extraterritoriality, why did they not resist Cushing’s delineation of these rights and the methods for putting them into effect? The promise of equal treatment required only a repetition of the vague phrasing of the British treaties. It certainly cannot be said that their desire to “soothe” the Americans was so

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strong that they were persuaded to abandon a vital national right, for they raised very strong objections to Cushing’s proposed visit to Peking. Clearly they saw the latter issue as more important than the former. They were simply wrong. However the minutes say only, “No further disagreement occurred till we came to the subject of correspondence direct with some board at Peking” (i.e., Article XXXI). Encountering a complete block here, the American secretary (Peter Parker) wrote: It became necessary to take a stand & shake the rod of entering Peking over their heads—they promised to refer the matter again to Ke King Paon [Ch’i-ying] and the interview ceased—& after dining—at 10 o’clock, they took their departure in very good humor.73

Thus ended the major working session of the mission. The seven negotiators had reached substantial agreement on all but one of thirty-one articles in a treaty that eventually was to include only thirty-four articles, and they had done so in less than five hours! There seems to have been little difficulty resolving the various articles that the negotiators could not settle among themselves. The original English draft of the text in the Cushing Papers contains notes appended to each article. Many are extremely simple: “Chinese amendment agreed to”; “Chinese amendment withdrawn”; “Agreed to without alteration.” Articles XX through XXII show evidence of much work. Articles XX, XXII, XXXIII, and XXXIV were referred to the commissioner, but the only two sections causing any real contention were those dealing with the firing of naval salutes and the means of communication between governments. The former was a minor matter, but the latter proved a sticky question.

The Problem of Communication Cushing wrote Ch’i-ying on 28 June: The Government of the United States desires to have a Minister at Peking. If  this demand be waived, it becomes indispensably necessary that some other means be provided, by which the Government of the United States may make known it’s [sic] wishes to that of China. [T]he Secretary of State of the United States will not transact the business of the two nations with a mere Provincial Governor.

Two days later the imperial commissioner responded in a most diplomatic note. Indicating general approval of the negotiations to date, Ch’i-ying took major exception to this article only. He explained carefully, China formerly did not receive Ministers from foreign countries, but since the five ports have been opened to general trade, an Imperial Commissioner with

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general superintendence has been appointed to receive foreign Ministers. . . . If now the sole appointed high officer of the United States will not interchange public documents, but on the other hand seeks some board or office in Peking, with which to transact business, is plainly to intimate that I am inadequate to hold intercourse with.74

Here Ch’i-ying was evidently once again attempting to employ that personal appeal that seemed so effective. He also tried to enlighten the American about Chinese governmental structure when he explained (very correctly), “The office of Governor General not only is not inferior to that of a Board in Peking, but even not beneath that of the Cabinet.” If Cushing had not understood the major outlines of the Chinese government when he arrived in Canton, he learned thereafter. His explanation to the State Department in his despatch of 13 July was very clear and more accurate than anything the Department had yet read: There is not in the personnel of the Chinese Government any Minister or Department corresponding to the Minister or Department of Foreign Affairs in Europe. It is utterly absurd and inadmissable for China to think of persevering, under the new state of facts which has arisen, in excluding all direct correspondence of Western Governments with the Court. Indeed, the Chinese Government has made a perceptible advance towards the appointment of a Minister of Foreign Affairs, in the very extensive commission it has conferred on Tsiyeng.  .  .  .  in virtue of which, and of his authority as Imperial Commissioner Extraordinary, he has the power to treat with any and all Foreign Powers.75

But Cushing did more than foresee the development of a foreign office. Ch’i-ying’s account contains a statement that suggests that Cushing even tried to move the Chinese to create one: The said barbarian envoy has also attempted to insert an article in the treaty now under negotiation providing that a ministerial board in Peking  .  .  .  should receive communications from his country, following the precedent set by Russia and other countries.76

The emperor’s reply was simply that “not only has there never been such an institution but the capital actually has no one conversant with the written or spoken language of the said country.”77 It was a tragedy for China that her government was not more open to suggestion. Cushing may have been attempting what Anson Burlingame later succeeded in doing and what still later became rather common practice, that is, to help China adjust so that she might become better able to survive in the turbulent modern world.

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What the truth of the matter may be, we shall probably never know, but Cushing ultimately settled for the compromise that became Article XXXI of the Treaty of Wanghia: Communications from the Government of the United States to the Court of China shall be transmitted through the medium of the Imperial Commissioner charged with the superintendence of the concerns of foreign nations with China, or through the Governor General of Liang Kwang, that of Min and Cheh, or that of the Liang Kiang.

There are two significant parts of this article. First it assumes the right of the US government to communicate with the Court, rather than with representatives thereof. Second it specifies several possible lines of communication. An American official might submit his message to the imperial commissioner or to one of the four governors-general of the five treaty ports. No longer could a single provincial official block communications with Peking.78

Who Won? The antique controversy whether the shrewd New England lawyer succeeded in “coming the Yankee”79 over the wily mandarin has been argued back and forth for many years. Actually the discussion reveals more about American culture than about the events of 1844. The adversarial character of many of America’s core institutions (government, business, law, sports, and even courtship) probably makes such a question inevitable, though it does not necessarily endow the matter with much importance. In the discussion the comparatively naive historians of the United States generally have had the worst of it. As Fairbank put it in what has been the last word until recently, “In this contest the Manchu won and the Yankee lawyer got nowhere. As soon as Cushing abandoned his trip, he was given his treaty.”80 But at least on the basis of what the China scholars have so far seen fit to publish, it makes just as good sense to say that Ch’i-ying agreed to the substance of the treaty in order to persuade Cushing to abandon his trip. Probably the greatest difficulty between the two groups of historians is the lack of a common ground for their dispute. Evidently neither has become wholly familiar with the other’s material. The China historians are perfectly correct from their point of view and on the basis of their data. On the other hand the earlier American historians, lacking the skills and the sources of their counterparts, have put their case clumsily. The threat of a Peking trip

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certainly did not alter the opinions either of the Court or of Ch’i-ying. It  was useful, however, in pressuring Ch’eng and in assuming the posture that Cushing wished to adopt. Moreover it apparently occupied the attention of the Chinese while the more important commercial, missionary, and extraterritorial privileges were granted with comparatively little scrutiny.81

9 Retrospection Application and Reflection Testing the Treaty

Once the treaty was signed, there was little else for Cushing to do, but, shrewd lawyer that he was, he unquestionably understood the value of putting the treaty to the test of practice. By so doing he would establish precedents for the guidance of his successors and of the Chinese. The most delicate problem presented by the new articles was undoubtedly that of applying the extraterritorial clauses. The Hsü-A-man killing provided an ideal opportunity to put the new system into effect. Governor Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai began the exchange of notes with a message to Consul Forbes on 18 June demanding that the “murderer” be delivered up. Cushing received a note from Ch’i-ying on the 22nd much to the same effect and also calling attention to the problem of public order. Deploring the quick temper of the Cantonese, the imperial commissioner remarked that any solution to the problem that ignored this volatile people’s sense of justice might cause serious social disturbances. Also “it evidently stands to reason that the murderer ought to forfeit his life,” added the official. Cushing opened the case by sending Forbes a thumbnail sketch of his view of the necessity for the introduction of extraterritoriality for Americans in China and announced his intent to use the Hsü A-man case to accomplish this end. The situation was uniquely well adapted to the purpose because, as Governor Ch’eng had indicated in his letter of the 18th, Hsü A-man was not Cantonese and therefore had no family in the area to stir up the populace against the Americans. Cushing instructed Forbes to summon a committee of Americans to investigate the killing and report its findings.1 The committee, consisting of six members, represented Heard & Co., Wetmore & Co., and four independents. Russell & Co., Olyphant & Co., and the missionaries were noticeably missing from the body.2 The group reported on 11 July that it had found unanimously that the killing was a “justifiable act of self defense.” Cushing so reported the matter to Ch’i-ying on the 23rd, just twenty days after the treaty had been signed.3

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Cushing established Chinese confidence in American goodwill in two other cases—that of Joseph Moses, who had suffered the loss of property to a band of thieves during a fire which destroyed his factory and that of Charles Emory (or Emery) and George Fraser (or Frazer), two shipwrights who had established a shipyard in Chinese territory opposite Hong Kong. The Chinese were now demanding that the latter remove their business to Hong Kong. In both cases Cushing found that the treaty did not help his countrymen. He informed Moses that nothing in the treaty covered fire loss4 and wrote the shipbuilders that their establishment was illegal under both the old and the new systems. However he did petition Ch’i-ying to give Emory and Fraser time to make the transfer without suffering ruinous losses.5 The “New Regulations” In the “New Regulations for the Security of the Citizens of the United  States resident in Canton,” Cushing set up a substitute for the old Eight Regulations. Negotiated by Huang En-t’ung and Peter Parker, this document shows the strong influence of the history of the foreign community in the previous decade. A stone wall was to replace the old wooden fence enclosing the Square, and other walls were to be built on Old and New China Streets and Hog Lane, all of which gave access to the foreign factory area. The only apertures in this wall were to be closed by stout doors sheathed with sheet-iron and guarded by soldiers who were to live in a station house on the grounds. Americans were to be permitted to construct walls on their own premises. Peddlers, open-air markets, and idlers were to be forbidden in the factory area, and the street in front of the factories was not to be a thoroughfare. Gates were to be placed at either end of the factory area, and they were to be locked at night and on Sunday by order of the consul. No  liquor was to be sold in the area, and dumping filth was prohibited outside the walls. In a letter of 15 August, Cushing suggested to Ch’i-ying that the proprietors and occupants of the factories pay for the walls and that the wall be continued along the water side of the compound.6 Although negotiated by Parker, the New Regulations applied to all foreign residents, and they were issued by the imperial commissioner’s proclamation. Although Parker’s influence is highly visible throughout the negotiation of the treaty, it is especially evident here.7 The Sunday closing of the street gates and the ban on liquor sales were items he had long championed. Cushing reportedly refused only one of the regulations dear to Parker’s heart, according to one resident. A number of English, at least, had taken advantage of their newfound freedom to settle Chinese mistresses in their hongs. “This shocked the doctor, and he suggested the addition of a rule against prostitutes entering the factories.” American residents complained to the

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consul, who presumably remonstrated with Cushing, and the article was deleted.8

The Community Reacts The Merchants The American community in general responded predictably to the mission. Few merchants had thought Cushing or any other commissioner could gain much, for “there is nothing in particular for us to complain of or ask for, as we enjoy all the privileges granted to the Eng.”9 The residents criticized the mission on many grounds: some thought a treaty unnecessary, others felt the naval squadron was too small to impress the Chinese sufficiently, still others believed Cushing should have gone north immediately, and a few objected to the number of people who accompanied Cushing, especially the naval officers, who apparently enjoyed their stay in Canton: The celebrated China mission is loafing about and amusing itself with a reckless disregard of public interests. Lieutenant  .  .  .  & middies are as thick as bees in Canton and the Chinese shopkeepers are reaping a golden harvest from their extravagance. The people of the mission came out with an exaggerated idea of their own importance, and are just beginning to find out that we are not dying for want of them, that it will be barely possible for us to survive their departure, and that they can do little good in China. Individually the officers are nice fellows; collectively, they are a great bore.10

However, Cushing soon became quite popular among the members of the community despite his politics and his taciturn nature. His vigorous action in sending the Brandywine upriver, his crisp handling of the Hsü A-man affair, and his frankness in consulting with the merchants and missionaries won him much admiration. The treaty surprised the residents by its extraordinary liberality with regard to their interests. It gave both sections of the community considerably more than they had hoped for. Generally the merchants had expected that the gains of the Treaty of Nanking would be conferred to them with a few additional commercial clauses, especially one facilitating reshipment of goods already landed in China. However, their previous experience did not permit them much optimism.11 The opium traders were particularly anxious about possible US action against their traffic, and the missionaries were praying for freedom to evangelize, to study the language, and to acquire land for their various institutions. If the treaty is to be judged by the approval of the residents, it was an unqualified success. Upon his departure, Cushing received a letter of appreciation signed by almost all of the American merchants at Canton. One phrase in the letter

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catches the eye particularly. That is, the residents convey their “warmest thanks for the invariable attention and consideration which Y. Ex. has bestowed on the commercial interests generally.”12 The commercial correspondence rings with praise for the new agreement. Possibly most delighted were the drug dealers, who discovered that their trade was ignored in the treaty. As John Heard remarked, Cushing deserves as much or more praise for what he has left undone, as for what he has done. He has not interfered with our trade, by raising questions vexatious in their nature, and calculated to give annoyance to merchants, neither has he issued proclamations, like Com. Kearny, founded upon mistaken impressions, and having the effect of depreciating American property, particularly those vessels under the American flag engaged in the Opium trade.13

The traffic was illegal, and all deplored it, of course, but smuggling violated Chinese, not American, law and therefore did not come within the jurisdiction of the consular courts. Because the Chinese could not and the Western nations would not enforce Chinese law, the treaty was, in effect, a guarantee of special privilege to the narcotics smugglers whose trade henceforth was to be free of all law whatsoever.14 The Missionaries The delight of the missionaries in their newly won freedom to pursue the several phases of their calling has been noted earlier. In addition the pronounced influence of Peter Parker in both the writing of the treaty and the working out of the new regulations for the Canton community assured a very favorable reception. However it may be well to note the circulation that Parker and Bridgman secured for their evaluation of the Cushing Treaty. Letters from both were widely quoted. In the Missionary Herald of February 1845, Parker exulted, Nearly everything that Americans could ask, or China consistently concede, has been secured. Mr. Cushing has not reached Peking, as he might have done; but he obtained for his country a full equivalent, by the confidence and goodwill that has thus been secured. I am convinced that a real bond of friendship now unites these two great nations of East and West.

Bridgman was equally unstinting in his praise: This treaty, if ratified, will secure no inconsiderable advantages to the United States, and, indeed, all that could be asked under existing circumstances. Mr. Cushing has carried himself through these negotiations in a spirit and manner alike honorable to himself and the people he represents.15

Of course with all constituents wholeheartedly behind his treaty, Cushing had the satisfaction of watching it sail through the Senate unopposed on 16

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View of Hong Kong in 1844. Pen and ink by George West (Cushing Mission). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

January 1845, an unusual event for Cushing, whose career was characterized more by controversy than widespread approval. Moreover it launched him on something of a career of speaking to many audiences, and he even planned to write a history of China. However the Mexican war, in which he served, and other political matters interrupted this laudable project, and it was never completed.

The Participants Reflect But the most important judgments were delivered by the two principal figures in the negotiations. In many ways Ch’i-ying’s is the more interesting. He defended the commercial clauses and pointed out his own work in defeating “not a few which were minute, far-fetched, rapacious, or crafty.” He showed most doubt about the missionary articles, which, he stated, he at first refused to approve. However he found Cushing’s arguments compelling. The Portuguese at Macao and the British at Hong Kong already enjoyed the privileges of building churches, hospitals, and cemeteries. Thus the extension of such a right to the Americans was only fair, especially because they were not demanding territory. The hiring of teachers and purchase of books was already commonplace, and Article XVIII simply recognized existing reality. He was impressed with the barbarian envoy’s sincerity. He remarked that the willingness with which Cushing agreed to Chinese jurisdiction over smuggling and the American’s suggestion that detailed reports be prepared by consuls annually for the use of Chinese officials seemed to be evidence of good faith.16 Ch’i-ying’s friend and patron, Mu-chang-a, and other members of the Grand Council saw the provisions of the treaty somewhat differently. Although they agreed that, on the whole, the pact had realized the objectives

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of the government, they took exception to the missionary clauses: “The article regarding the engaging of scholars to teach and the purchase of books is essentially contrary to law. Besides being very indefinite, it will lead to many evils.” However, since we are temporarily obliged to acquiesce in order to conciliate the barbarian temper, naturally it is improper to make unconsidered and confusing changes and then cause the barbarians to complain. . . . Now after the conclusion of the treaty, we should order the persons engaged by the said country to report their names, ages, families and places of residence to the said local officials to keep on record, before they are allowed to go to the said barbarian establishments. As to books purchased, each book shop should keep a separate list. Titles of books, number of copies, and price, after being sold, should be entered on the record at the time, and at the end of the year turned over in summary to the local officials and presented to the governor general for examination, so that by examining the entries we can thoroughly discover miscreants and search out those from afar.17

The grand councilors also remarked that no person could be compelled to teach barbarians, and no bookseller could be prevented from raising his prices “extortionately.” Unlike Ch’i-ying, the grand councilors mentioned extraterritoriality, but no one in the Chinese government seems to have understood the importance of the matter. Wolfgang Franke explains this blindness in terms of Chinese tradition, which had permitted a number of non-Chinese people to live within their own enclaves inside the Empire, governed by their own laws: In Chinese eyes this was not a special privilege granted to the foreigners, or to which they had a legitimate claim. It rather implies a certain contempt for them: the barbarians were regarded as unable to understand the civilized customs and sophisticated way of life of the Chinese; thus they were obliged to live in their own primitive and barbarian way!18

Finally Mu-chang-a and his fellows expressed the fear that the barbarians would try to expand their real estate holdings and that therefore boundaries should be strictly observed. They also advised Ch’i-ying to consult with the other governors “to devise means of mitigating” evangelism. They cannot propagate or practice among the people. Take pains to cause the residents of the seacoast to understand that barbarian languages are not to be imitated and barbarian rites are not to be practiced.19

Obviously the Grand Council intended to give the treaty something less than wholehearted endorsement. On these points missionaries would have troubles for many years to come.20 The report of the Grand Council came to Cushing in a letter dated 2 November 1844 from Peter Parker, who obtained it from Paul S. Forbes.21 How Forbes managed to obtain an internal

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communication from the highest levels of the Chinese government is not known for certain, but we can hazard an informed guess. Young Howqua had given confidential government communiques to his American friends before,22 and he would have been the logical channel for this report. In any case such swift and accurate intelligence speaks volumes for the closeness of the international mercantile fraternity at Canton in this period. Cushing’s evaluation is contained in his despatches of 13 and 15 July most especially, but in a number of subsequent documents he expanded on this rather brief analysis. Best known is his voluminous despatch #97 dated 29 September aboard the USS Perry, which is surely the clearest and most complete contemporaneous treatise on the American background of the introduction of extraterritoriality into China. In this document he reiterates his considered belief that Western nations share “many of the qualities of one confederated Republic” and that “the West was for the most purposes a unit” in its intrusion into China. He acknowledged in his despatch of 26 August 1844 that it was only “reasonable and proper that Britain should benefit through the most-favored-nation clause of the Supplementary Treaty from his own work at Wang-hsia.” As the labors of England, in bringing China within the pale of European negotiation, had resulted in the benefit incidentally of all the rest of the world, it is right that the labors of European (or American) intercourse with China should result in the benefit of England.23

Cushing was also aware that his treaty presumed a professional consulate and diplomatic representation. In several different communications to the department, he noted that the provisions of the new pact will undoubtedly require that Representation shall be some person other than the ordinary consuls, engaging in commercial affairs, having personal interests of their own which may be in conflict with those of their fellow-merchants and for same reason . . . not enjoying the highest consideration of the Chinese government.24

On this score Cushing is justifiably open to criticism. Probably he should have known that the American government was no more to be stirred to action by his advice on this matter than it had by two generations of Canton merchants and consuls. The chief point about the American treaty, in its application, is the fact that it was not backed up, until a decade later, by a genuine consular administration. As a result, the much-advertised provisions favorable to China were generally not enforced, while the provisions favorable to the foreigner were avidly taken up and enforced by the British consuls, if not also by the Americans.25

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The Treaty in Historical Perspective When compared with the two British agreements, the Cushing Treaty exhibits several remarkable characteristics. Most striking is the difference in length. Although the Treaty of Nanking is short and general, moving speedily from preamble to the signatures, the American document is long, rather leisurely, and far more comprehensive. Part of the reason for the difference is obvious: Nanking was primarily a peace treaty, while Cushing’s aims were the facilitation of commerce and security for Americans in China. Matters that are central in the Cushing agreement are to be found in the General Regulations appended to the Nanking pact. But even when both sections of the British treaty are taken into consideration, the Cushing Treaty is still about one thousand words longer, and these were not words wasted on protocol. The Treaty of Wanghia simply covered more ground. Naturally, lacking both colonies and military forces in the Far East, America was compelled to define rights and duties more explicitly than the British. But perhaps it is more just to compare the American document with the Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue, which was designed to settle matters that the Nanking Treaty left untouched or that the experiences of a year under the new system made necessary. The Supplementary Treaty is about the same length as the Cushing Treaty if one counts its General Regulations, yet the American agreement is still more inclusive. Maybe this should be expected from negotiators who came later and had simpler, clearer aims. The British had to make provisions for clearing the debris of war, the payment of the indemnity, the evacuation of territory, etc. But no matter how it is explained, the Cushing Treaty remains the superior instrument. With fewer words than the combined British treaties, it contains more matter. Cushing simply did a more workmanlike job than his British counterparts. There is also the matter of tone. The British treaties are cool, even brusque, implying a confidence in another means of securing compliance— overwhelming force—while the American document contains adjectives and phrases that stress international friendship. It is interesting to contrast the references to peace in the three documents. The Nanking Treaty states only, “there shall henceforth be Peace and Friendship between Her Majesty . . . etc.”; the Bogue pact speaks of “perpetual Peace and Friendship.” The Cushing Treaty calls for “firm, lasting and sincere friendship” and “perfect, permanent and universal peace.” We know Cushing thought he was being more friendly and fairer to the Chinese than the British negotiators had been. His treaty called for as equitable an administration as extraterritoriality allowed—though that reservation is vitally important. Certainly the treaty was one-sided, but any agreement with China in the 1840s was bound to be one-sided,26 given the contrast between China’s weakness, ignorance, technical backwardness, and her pretensions. This is the reason, after all,

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for calling these pacts the “unequal treaties.” Cushing himself was determined that the Chinese should receive the same rights and responsibilities as Americans under his treaty,27 and within the limits of circumstances and his instructions, he did remarkably well. His orders were clear: he was to do the best he could for the Americans in China, and in particular, he was to secure the same rights for Americans as the British enjoyed. Because the United  States was not interested in acquiring colonies, he needed a legal substitute for the protection afforded Britons by the possession of Hong  Kong.28 The consular courts of the Near East offered a model solution. Cushing’s outline of the history of the institution demonstrates conclusively that he was fully aware of its evolution in that area of the world.29 He also understood many of the evil effects of extraterritoriality. If he lacked consideration for the welfare of the Heavenly Dynasty or its people, he was not alone in this attitude. It was universal among Americans and other foreigners at Canton, and it cannot be urged that Cushing should have abandoned his orders and his countrymen for the sake of the Chinese. Moreover small nations seldom take upon themselves the task of aiding big nations. They tend, rather, to behave in a classically selfish manner. In any case “as long as the British held to the principle of free trade and the Chinese acquiesced in [this] magnanimous policy, the United States could collect the dividends of gunboat diplomacy while maintaining the forms of amity toward China.”30 One criticism of Cushing is possibly just. He did not use the power he had to interrupt the American opium trade. Yet even here he was following his instructions, which warned against the use of American naval power to stop the traffic. Those instructions had been drawn up on the advice of many people who were intimately connected with the illegal commerce and close associates of Webster. Commodore Parker was similarly cautious; he  had been reluctant to take even such steps as his predecessor, Commodore Kearny, had done. Cushing’s treaty carefully outlawed the drug traffic but avoided the only action that might have stopped it—naval power. Unless America followed a policy like Kearny’s, British traders could always seek the safety of the American flag and thus exempt themselves from British prosecution (and it seemed at first as though Britain might attempt to ban the trade). Without American cooperation, however, such action was doomed to failure. In this way Cushing greatly helped the opium trade and rendered action against the trade by any strong power highly unlikely.31 Finally to a man who could rationalize the existence of slavery at home, the comparatively minor anomaly of American prosecution of the opium trade must have presented few problems. As the representative of American merchants in that trade, Cushing did as workmanlike a job as possible. The Treaty of Wanghia, then, was much better articulated than the two British pacts. It afforded “a more thorough legal framework for Sino-foreign relations,”32 and this is precisely what both parties needed. The American

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agreement anticipated more difficulties and provided ways for settling them; it set forth procedures for effecting what the British treaties merely stated as principles,33 and it added a number of new provisions clarifying, extending, and limiting the rights and duties of both Chinese and American nationals. Indeed the editor of Niles’ wrote the concluding paean of praise for Cushing: “After closing his arduous labors, and, as we believe, achieving more for his country by far than Sir Henry Pottinger has done for his, he left China on the 20th of August last, in the U.S. Brig Perry.”34 New provisions such as these in treaties with China came to be called “concessions.” To employ such terminology was tacitly to admit perhaps more than was intended at the time. To “concede” something is to surrender it, which implies a defeat for the conceding party and a victory for the other. More deeply it assumes the existence of a two-sided, adversarial relationship, with China always alone and losing.35 But call these provisions “concessions” or not, they were judicious from a short-range, American point of view. The various monographs revising Dennett’s very favorable appraisal of the Cushing mission have tended to obscure the fact that Cushing was a very competent diplomatist. The document he negotiated in those hot summer days at Macao was by far the most comprehensive of the early “unequal treaties.” That the treaty had imperialist overtones is hardly a libel of Cushing’s character. He was to be an avowed imperialist in the Texas, Oregon, and Cuba questions, and the Canton community’s demands sounded a very similar note. Cushing merely negotiated an instrument that served the interests of the American community at Canton. Yet that interest was the national interest as almost everyone who was concerned in the matter would have agreed at the time. Neither the China scholars nor the older American historians, I believe, do Cushing full justice, just as neither fully appreciated the strength of forces operating from the other side of the negotiating table. As with most human events, the Treaty of Wanghia was overdetermined. Although there is a drive toward economy among historians in appraising influences, the law of parsimony has its limits in the writing of history. Thus it may have been ancient Chinese policy that impelled the emperor to grant to all foreigners rights equal to those won by the British in 1842, but surely they could not have been withheld for long anyhow, and the manner in which the West acquired those rights made a very great difference. Similarly it may have been Chinese custom, the example of the Portuguese at Macao and of the British on Hong Kong and the fear of losing more territory, that moved the Manchus to agree to extraterritoriality, but certainly British power, the community’s discussion of the matter, American experience in the Near East, and Cushing’s own convictions also had some influence in determining the final form of the institution. Fairbank has put it very precisely in the statement already quoted: “The Manchu administration hardly realized what it gave away.” Cushing perceived

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the same truth. As urbane, polished, and as highly civilized as the Chinese negotiators appeared to all the Western delegations that came to Macao, they were babes in the diplomatic woods. They were “versed neither in economics nor in Western law”; indeed they held both in contempt. Manchu policy and Confucian values deprived them of any opportunity to gain experience in dealing with the technologically superior (and therefore imperialist) Westerners. Ch’i-ying was one of the Empire’s top administrators and certainly no fool, but he could not have considered Cushing’s carefully constructed projêt more than a very few days at best. Yet this projêt became the Treaty of Wanghia, the model treaty for such instruments years after its signing. Most clearly, Cushing’s extension and articulation of the most-favored-nation clause and extraterritoriality, together with the treaty tariff, created a mechanism that was to humiliate China and threaten her sovereignty for a century to come.

Epilogue: The Legacy of Old Canton The Persistence of Canton Culture

A perspicacious reader might ask, “Why study any dead community at such length?” An answer to this question must necessarily be complex. Certainly the Canton firms produced business, financial, and lifestyle leaders among the American wealthier classes, especially in the northeast. Equally clear is the fact that among the American residents of old Canton lay the origin of American policy toward China. Because the community was so extraordinary, an acquaintance with its composition, activities, and attitudes is necessary for an understanding of that group and that policy. The life of the foreign enclave and the manner in which business was conducted shaped American attitudes, along with those of all foreigners on the China coast, and Americans, with their unusual democratic, New World orientation reacted in ways, which may have been unique among Western residents. In any case those attitudes continued throughout the nineteenth century. Because the opium trade was the economic foundation of the community (and particularly of the more important American firms), it has received extended attention (too much so according to one critic). It may have been that tea or silk was equally influential, but I do not believe it. Moreover I am convinced that this traffic was a major influence in molding American opinion, and it gave especial importance to such issues as extraterritoriality and the official blindness concerning the illegal commerce. Of course for the most part, while they were in China, Americans blended into the larger foreign community, making whatever adjustments in habit and outlook that seemed appropriate to the attainment of their primary (i.e., generally business) goals. Although they adapted easily both in Canton and at the treaty ports, Americans were self-consciously distinct from the other Westerners—they had come with peculiar values and ideas which set them apart. These values and concepts underwent changes at the treaty ports, just as they had in old Canton, and these changes would later appear in the pressures on American policymakers, missionary boards, and other people who attempted to represent the United States in that very different part of the world. Professor Fairbank notes: There are no pure “Sino-American” relations in China. The Americans are part of a “foreign” community . . . members of a class of privileged “foreigners” who

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form an additional stratum of the local ruling class. [Yet,] the American in his self-image  .  .  .  is an anti-imperialist (and therefore anti-British) democrat, but he cannot live in China except as the British do, as a member of the elite. . . . Thus, the American in China was obliged to be a democrat manqué, a ruler with qualms of conscience, in a world he never made but found seductively enjoyable. . . . The Englishman fitted into China’s ruling class with less tension between his ideals and his actions.1

Additionally these (psychologically) uncomfortable expatriates were the effective agents in transferring whatever was moved from China to America and vice versa—goods, people, and influences. In the peculiar culture of the treaty ports, Americans appear to have exerted an extraordinary leverage. Just after the turn of the century one writer commented that Shanghai was more American than British in tone, despite the greater number of British residents. It was young, growing, informal, very busy, and imaginatively enterprising, unlike the more traditional cities of the United Kingdom,2 a condition at least in some degree due to the example of its American residents.

Canton Culture Spreads North The more one pursues the subject, the clearer it becomes that most of what we know as “treaty-port culture” had been in existence years before the treaty ports were created. The “unequal treaties” opened the northern ports, but they did not create the communities and their special style of life, attitudes, and institutions. These dated back at least to the end of the Napoleonic Wars and some went still further into the past.3 Yet whatever its earlier history, treaty-port culture was an extension of old Canton. Despite its unfavorable location, Canton remained the most important foreign trading center in China for a decade after the Opium War. Even the 20 percent lower shipping costs at Shanghai did not divert most tea from Canton until the Taiping Rebellion disrupted the old trade routes. As both the principal port for trade and the first Chinese city that Western vessels touched, Canton served as a gateway. China was so different from anything Americans and other Westerners had ever known that, even had the dynasty adopted free trade, newcomers would still have been dependent on the old hands for their introduction to China. Missionaries, eager to take advantage of their newly opened opportunities, crowded into the Canton area and taxed the resources of the Mission and its friends. Like the merchants they continued to approach China through Canton, because there was no practical alternative. During that critical period when the new ports were being opened, the Canton community, which now included Hong Kong, remained the only established Western settlement on the coast where non-Chinese might find fellow countrymen, friends, or even people whose language they

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could speak. The newcomers were apt students of what the community had to teach about their new environment. There they put on the old attitudes and mores as easily as they donned the typical dress and adopted the seductive lifestyle of the old system. Not only merchants and missionaries but also their Cantonese compradors and servants carried northward the views, the business methods, and the well-worn habit patterns of Canton. Because these southerners had skills the northern Chinese lacked, they were the natural go-betweens, and they soon established an important place for themselves in the treaty ports. In actuality what was new on the Chinese side was principally the forms of things. Although the Cohong, the Consoo Fund, and the innumerable charges of the old system were abolished by the Treaty of Nanking, much of the substance remained. And more kept appearing as both Westerners and Cantonese reestablished the old ways up and down the China coast. The ex-hong merchants continued to do the lion’s share of the business at Canton,4 and all sorts of people, displaced by the abolition of the Canton system, found niches for themselves and their skills. Compradors, linguists, shroffs, and other typically Cantonese occupations appeared at every port. The ubiquitous coolies, the swarms of personal servants, and the tea, silk, porcelain, and chow chow merchants continued largely as before. Vested interests of all nationalities worked to perpetuate as much of the old system as served their purposes.5 Another very strong reason for the reestablishment of Canton institutions in the treaty ports was simple drift. The treaties abolished the old system, but efforts to set up new institutions were directed toward a defense of what Westerners had won. The Chinese were too inexperienced to organize a workable new system. At the most elementary level, therefore, the absence of foreign initiative was a prescription for chaos. The situation was not improved for a decade after the Cushing Treaty, when, paradoxically, the pursuit of traditional business in traditional ways finally forced change. The international Maritime Customs Service was the result of British and American official exasperation with the breakdown of the Shanghai customs and was secured over the opposition of many merchants as well as the footdragging of Chinese officialdom.6 For many years even the composition of the treaty ports’ population remained similar to what it had been at pretreaty Canton. It was a strongly masculine community, dominated by the British and Americans, with the former outnumbering the latter more than two to one in the late 1850s and three to one by 1870. The only significant new national element was the Germans, who numbered 138 at Shanghai by the latter date. Among American merchants New Yorkers and Bostonians still predominated, and New England was disproportionately represented among the missionaries.7 Continuing the unacknowledged educational function of old Canton, the treaty ports introduced newly arrived Westerners to China, inculcating ideas,

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roles, business methods, pidgin, and lifestyles in much the same fashion as in the earlier days. Alterations in the community ethos came slowly and in the form of accommodations to the changing realities of trade and the clash of Western power and knowledge with Chinese impotence and inexperience. But for the most part, continuity was more striking than innovation, and in attitudes, institutions, tastes, even in geography and architecture, the treaty ports resembled old Canton. Understandably, most scholars have emphasized the qualitative difference resulting from the shift of power in East Asia from China to the Western nations. In the new settlements this shift was reflected in the recognition that the British consulate was the center of potential power, particularly as H.M. officials learned how to employ their advantages. But the similarities to old Canton are at least as important as this difference. Perhaps they are less noticeable, because diary keepers, letter writers, and journalists generally record news, which is to say change, rather than the many continuities. If foreign consuls were the focus of power in the treaty ports, the tone of the community was more often set in the local (British) chamber of commerce. The members were firms and individual proprietors—representatives of business. The large concerns tended to dominate the group as they had before the Opium War. The Americans, remaining out of the organization, were nevertheless influenced by the chamber’s decisions. They usually followed the lead of the British, just as they had done in old Canton after 1821. Earlier writers have noted the manner in which the treaty ports resembled each other topographically. Each was near, yet separated from, a Chinese walled city. The foreign quarter often included “a defensive screen of water.”8 Most were located upriver from the sea near an anchorage where ships might remain for extended periods. Although Captain Elliot had picked Hong Kong, it was British and American merchants themselves who first decided to settle in strategic positions at Amoy, Foochow, and Shanghai. All Westerners had similar motives in going to the new ports, and they had similar needs and fears about remaining there. As soon as the number of foreigners became large enough, the settlements asserted their autonomy. The Chinese living there were chiefly servants, compradors, refugees, and other dependents on the foreign community.9 In each of these particulars, one sees the shadow of pretreaty Canton. Although Hong Kong was not, properly speaking, a treaty port, in many ways it resembled one. Isolated from the Chinese hinterland even more than the other settlements, the new crown colony partook fully of the culture that was common to all foreign enclaves on the coast. From a merchant’s point of view, Hong Kong was an extension of the outside anchorages. Originally it offered merely a safer harbor than Lintin, and later it became the first dry-land storeship—the largest and most secure smuggling base in China. The creation of Hong Kong had been the work of Charles Elliot, whose

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devotion to the commerce is well known. In fact he went so far to avoid interrupting the trade that most British merchants in China were outraged and accused him of everything from cowardice to treason. They were convinced that he was pro-Chinese and/or was the creature of James Matheson. Whatever their opinion Elliot’s one lasting contribution was Hong Kong, and despite some early problems, the settlement soon proved its worth. The hong merchants, alert to their own interests, did not regard the new settlement with friendly eyes.10 Like Elliot they realized that possession of the island-entrepôt meant the end of Canton as they knew it. Henceforth the foreigners held the cards. Trade restrictions, tariffs—any kind of commercial legislation could now be circumvented. Why, indeed, go seventy miles up the river with all the attendant regulations, expenses, and dangers, when a perfectly good and legal marketplace now existed outside? From the standpoint of the Chinese government, Hong Kong was immediately a disaster. Every regulation or tax tended to drive trade from Canton to Hong Kong. Canton’s problems were Hong Kong’s opportunities, and there was absolutely nothing any mandarin could do about it. Even extraterritoriality, provided for in the British treaty, became almost unnecessary, when legal problems could be handled locally. A mere exchange of prisoners solved most criminal problems. For the Americans, with their demand for equal treatment and their anti-imperial views, the crown colony’s existence had ensured that extraterritoriality was among the first matters defined in their negotiations with China. Moreover once so delineated, the right would extend British privileges still further because of the most-favored-nation clause. The same was true of other newly negotiated rights—transshipment of goods, revisions in the tariff, missionary rights, etc. And the settlement of Chinese nationals in Hong Kong would raise the question of jurisdiction in a new way. The extension of British citizenship to include Chinese residents of Hong Kong would be impossible for China to oppose. The cession of Hong Kong was critical, and the most-favored-nation clause, which had been Chinese policy (under very different circumstances), began the century-long erosion of Chinese sovereignty. The composition of both incoming and outgoing cargoes remained about the same in the years after the treaties. The volume increased substantially, however, and the beginnings of major changes were visible. Opium and bills were still the leading imports, and tea remained the principal export. The rhythm of tea production still dictated work hours and seasons, making the first flexible and the latter alternately strenuous and leisurely. The big four American firms at Canton in the 1840s and 1850s were Russell & Co. (founded 1824), Wetmore & Co. (founded 1834), Olyphant & Co. (founded ca. 1828–30), and Augustine Heard & Co. (founded 1840). Only the last had not been in existence at least a decade when the Cushing Treaty was signed, but both of its founders were graduates of Russell & Co. Thus all the well-established American firms were products of old Canton. Even

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many of the smaller concerns of the postwar years were led by the pretreaty generation. Bull, Nye & Co. (under several names), J. D. Sword &  Co., Rawle, Duns & Co., and other companies were the creations of men with years of experience under the old system. The same was true of the British firms, most notably, of course, Jardine’s and Dent’s. These men and organizations and others like them had grown and prospered in the pretreaty environment, and they continued to operate in much the same manner as they had before the “new system.” Many Canton ways of doing business were accepted without question. They were simply very convenient. Among the most obvious were sale by chop and muster, the contracting of housekeeping functions to a comprador, bookkeeping systems, letter writing, and so forth. In most important respects even countinghouse organization was recognizable as that of pretreaty Canton though more extended, growing in ways and directions begun under the old system. As firms became larger, the partners began to dine apart from the employees, and specialization of labor increased. The largest hongs became departmentalized by cargo—tea, silk, opium, cotton goods, etc. Each of the several experts, tea-tasters, silk-inspectors, and bookkeepers, enjoyed a certain distinction for his expertise and possessed a variety of titles—English, pidgin, and slang—for his profession.11 The development of physical facilities was similar. The factory grew into a compound (yamen?), but the residence halls and the business offices remained in the same building. Go-downs, compradors and their employees, shroffs, and servants were housed nearby. Even the appearance of these structures was familiar. The “compradoric style” of architecture included exterior colonnades, arcades, verandas, and other features characteristic of the old thirteen factories at Canton.12 The kitchen and dining arrangements, the heating, and the disposal facilities were also very familiar to those who had known the old system. Even the subsidiary businesses that cropped up in the treaty ports resembled those in prewar Canton. Ship chandlers, contractors, hotel keepers, shipbuilders, and the rest were to be found in Shanghai directories as soon as such publications appeared. Missionaries continued to dominate the hospitals, schools, charities, and scholarship. The Chinese Repository continued publication until 1851 and served as a common source of information until a spate of newer (generally lay) journals took its place. Recreational facilities proliferated with the newly acquired freedom of movement. All of the pastimes of old Canton found counterparts in the northern ports, and, in addition, those pursuing activities, which had been forbidden or inconvenient at Canton, often coalesced into organizations, especially at Shanghai. There was The Club, around which social life revolved. All Westerners except the Germans, who had their own, belonged to this organization. The German club admitted all foreigners to its excellent theater productions. Community members also supported the race track,

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Russell & Company, Shanghai, c. 1875. Watercolor on paper by unidentified Chinese artist, E83587. Note the colonnaded verandas, the extensive gardens, and the general “compradoric” architectural style. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Mark Sexton.

a bowling alley, a racquet club, a yacht club, rowing clubs, cricket clubs, other athletic organizations, and lending libraries. There were churches, a seamen’s chapel, a hospital, and at least one and often two newspapers, each representing one of the mutually antagonistic divisions of the settlement. Even the internecine feuds resembled the petty bickerings in the older community. Even the less-formalized recreations resembled those common under the old system. Perhaps most evident were cards. Loo, poker, whist, and other gambling games were everyday amusements. Music, horseback riding, billiards, and hunting all had their devotees. Bird hunting became something of an obsession with some traders. In the prewar era, it had been possible only on a few offshore islands, but, especially at Shanghai, it was extremely popular. Years after they had returned home, merchants wrote extensively and with great zest of their hunting exploits in the delta. The custom of huge meals and frequent banquets, noted at Canton, was stimulated as settlements were planted in and near the lushly productive Yangtze Basin with its varied and unusual foods and its access to the products of central and north China.13 Only the tea-tasters, who had to preserve the acuteness of their tastebuds, and those in training for the numerous athletic events, exercised discipline at the table. Like Canton residents before the war, treaty-port

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merchants dined and often drank with Falstaffian gusto. The stress on violent daily exercise made for large appetites, despite the often enervating climate. With the release from the old Eight Regulations and the acquisition of space, amenities formerly available only at Macao were moved to the foreigners’ factories. The gardens,14 pets, and aviaries, previously found only in the old Portuguese colony, were located inside the walled company compounds at the northern ports. Life for the foreign resident became easier, more comfortable. And yet, as before, the inhabitants complained of boredom. If, as Clyde Kluckhohn says, “each different way of life makes its own assumptions about the ends of human existence,” what can be said for the premises of life at the treaty ports or, indeed, at old Canton? As in all preindustrial societies, this leisure and opulence were paid for, in several ways, by the lower classes. One does not have to subscribe to Marx’s theory of surplus value to understand this truth. The common Chinese provided the market for opium, the cheap labor to produce the teas and silks, the servants for the Westerners’ factories, and, later on, even the commodity for the coolie trade. Like slum dwellers in areas bordering on wealthy sections of modern cities, they were easily displaced by the richer Westerners whenever they wanted more land and facilities. “The style of living amongst the better class of Europeans has resulted in many inconveniences to those below them in worldly means and position,” commented three writers about Amoy in the late 1860s.15

The Transmutation of Ghetto Attitudes These “inconveniences” were physical evidence of a set of attitudes that became common at the treaty ports—attitudes that had been inherited from old Canton, but which now lacked the restraints of the old Canton system. In the ghettos of medieval Europe, Jews developed a number of characteristically negative images of the Gentiles who surrounded them. The outside world was both fatefully attractive and dangerous, at times even threatening the safety of the ghetto itself. Regarded as aliens, and compelled to live under oppressive regulations apart from the rest of the population, European Jews developed conceptions of the Goyim that were markedly defensive. Similar conditions often make for similar attitudes.16 Residents of the metaphorical ghetto of old Canton had begun to project upon the Chinese their fears and needs in a series of negative views that survived the power revolution of the Opium War and took root in the new settlements on the coast. In this way ideas, which grew out of fearful impotence, became stereotypes held by a powerful, exploitive elite—an odd and ominous situation. The Jews never acquired any share of their oppressor’s power to demonstrate

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what could happen when such ideas become the basis for action. With foreigners in China after 1842, matters took a very different turn. Long before the Opium War released it from restrictions, the Canton community had developed its own culture and continuity, borrowing heavily from British India, the Dutch in Java, and from the Chinese themselves. It was, as others have noted, a hybrid, and it exhibited the vigor frequently associated with hybrids. Yet it was dependent upon an illegal commerce condemned as immoral by the community’s own spiritual leaders. The drug traders knew, of course, that like the rest of the community, their critics needed the very trade they censured. From a mere handful of residents before the War of 1812, the foreign settlement had evolved into a flourishing establishment of over one hundred permanently resident traders and missionaries, and the number of annual transients ran into the thousands. All this growth had been made possible only because the China trade had grown, and the China trade rode on the back of opium. It is remarkable, under the circumstances, that there are so few expressions of guilt in the correspondence, especially because the drug traders were often men of upright character. Perhaps the explanation of this puzzling phenomenon lies partly in the fact that the commerce had developed over several decades in tandem with other more or less questionable trades and in time of world war. In traditional society wartime commerce almost compelled merchants to skirt the edges of the law. Dodging blockades, flying false colors, trafficking in contraband, and even privateering were simply part of mercantile life during an international conflict, even for otherwise law-abiding citizens. Seen in the light of the disturbed conditions of wartime, the American drug trade in China appears as part of a larger pattern. It was only one of a great number of imaginative and sometimes deviant ways to solve the difficult trading problems of the time. The period of its gestation—the 1790s to the early 1820s—was an era of war in all parts of the world, followed by residual conflicts especially in Latin America, the eastern Mediterranean, and southern and central Asia. The problem of what to take to China in exchange for teas, silks, and cottons was particularly perplexing. For people who had been evading wartime restrictions all over the globe for twentyfive years, the opium trade must have appeared relatively innocuous. Once begun the trade was revealed as a bonanza, and it soon provided the solution for which China traders had long searched. With the import bottleneck broken, the legitimate trade boomed, and the Canton community grew until it burst its bounds. Thus conceived in sin and dependent upon smuggling for its economic life, the Canton foreign settlement’s development could hardly be anything but skewed. The community’s very needs impelled Americans, like other residents, toward behavior and attitudes that were selfish, exploitive, and, in practice if not intent, racist. The prosecution of the opium trade, after all, presumed something about the seller’s regard for the user. It became

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psychologically necessary for the merchant to define the Chinese as persons to whom it was appropriate to sell opium.

The Opium Trade Resumes Not waiting for the conclusion of a treaty (which ignored them in any case), drug merchants returned to the trade as soon as it was relatively safe. It  is not clear which American firm reentered the opium trade first, but certainly the British never left it. Even before the end of the captivity, James Matheson and Andrew Jardine were arranging for their drug traffic to be conducted through their Manila affiliate, Otadui & Co. (of which firm the American John Shillaber was a partner), ordering opium on the firm’s account from Bombay, and otherwise preparing to capitalize on the new situation.17 Although mightily harassed by Chinese officials, the British coastal trade continued despite depressed prices, a condition that was not relieved until British forces crushed Chinese resistance. While prices were low and enforcement effective, however, there was little incentive for most Americans to break their promises not to traffic in opium. Several individual traders may have been the first Americans to reappear in the drug trade. One George W. Fraser (also known as Frazer), captain and nominal owner of Jardine’s one hundred-ton schooner Ariel, flew the American flag as a means of avoiding British jurisdiction. Commodore Lawrence Kearny’s attempt to prevent the abuse of the flag by seizing the little clipper made him the target of considerable abuse for “enforcing Chinese law” in the correspondence of members of both Heard’s and Russell’s.18 A partner in the latter firm, Robert Bennet Forbes, was the builder of the vessel, and Heard’s was Jardine’s agent at Canton. Besides by that date, both firms were again dealing in opium themselves. Heard and Company Although the date of Augustine Heard & Company’s entry into the trade is uncertain, it took place well before the end of the war, probably in the spring or summer of 1841. George Basil Dixwell, the firm’s opium man, had arrived by May. Previously he had been a supercargo in the Bengal trade, and in November Coolidge asked Matheson to assist the young man in drug matters. Dixwell was at that time on his way to Macao “to inspect several parcels of opium consigned to us from Bombay.” The letter bearing the request also carried the note in Matheson’s hand, “I will advise him concerning opium.”19 Thereafter the letters from Dixwell contain much information on the firm’s drug business. Early in 1842 Coolidge even offered Matheson the services of his concern in selling opium at Whampoa.20 At first Heard & Co. ventured in English ships, but it soon acquired its

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own vessels. It sent the Don Juan, a chartered schooner, up the coast with opium in August 1844 and made “splendid sales” at prices far above those of the sluggish Canton market.21 By the following summer, the firm was running three vessels in the coastal trade and had purchased a fourth as a storeship but kept her under the British flag.22 At that time the opium traffic was Augustine Heard & Company’s most profitable business. Dixwell wrote Heard, “The Indian [opium] business is so much the best we have that it seems as if no effort should be spared to foster and increase it.”23 Russell and Company The more important of the two remaining American companies that had pledged themselves to refrain from carrying on the narcotics traffic was Russell & Co. That firm had cited in its correspondence at least four good reasons to stay clear of the illegal commerce: first it was dangerous and illegal; second it was “disreputable and immoral”; third the firm had given its word not to trade in opium; and fourth (and probably most crucial) the market was very poor so long as the Chinese continued to enforce their domestic laws. The first and the fourth reasons had now been eliminated by the British expeditionary force. The only inhibitions left were legality, morality, and honor. Balanced against these three imponderables were the weightier concerns of security and money. Once again the opium trade was by far the safest and most profitable commerce in China. Whatever the importance of other considerations at other times and under other circumstances, economic rationality very plainly dominated the thinking of the partners of Russell & Co. in 1842. The firm remained true to Green’s pledge during the period of hostilities, but, once the war was over, Russell & Co. wasted little time in resuming its opium business. Edward Delano, whose diary for 1841 contains a number of entries very clearly expressing his distaste for the drug commerce, notes laconically on 26 October 1842, “Had conversation with Mr. [Edward] King about Opium trade—he says we shall go into it on the 1st January— recommends ordering a ship of 3 or 350 tons from U.S. to which I agree.” Early in 1843 Russell & Co. again was actively dealing in the narcotic, and Howqua’s death in September removed a major obstacle to this part of the firm’s business. Two partners, Joseph Gilman in 1842 and Edward Delano in 1843 and again in 1844, went to India. Although the purpose of Gilman’s first voyage is not absolutely clear, Delano was instructed to buy opium and his references to opium production and sales in both Calcutta and Bombay make it evident that promoting Russell & Company’s drug business was never far from his mind during his visits to the subcontinent. It is also quite evident that the partners recognized the continuing odium attached to the trade for, whenever they were compelled to say anything public about the traffic, they lied about it. Possibly the most glaring of these

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denials was that of Paul S. Forbes. Because he was also the American consul, Forbes was obliged to remain free of illegal dealings, especially within the territory of the host country. Secretary of State Legare had reminded Forbes on 2 June 1843 that his connection with an opium-trading firm was impermissible for a US official.24 Forbes denied the charge, though the participation of Russell & Co. in the drug traffic by early 1843 is established beyond doubt. The other partner in Russell & Co. who perjured himself was the redoubtable Robert Bennet Forbes, who claimed in his Personal Reminiscences: Russell & Co. considered it important to keep the pledge made by Mr. Green, and for a long time had nothing to do with opium; certainly not within my time, between 1840 and 1844, when my interest ceased for a time.25

Forbes also neglects to mention that he was a partner from 1849 to 1854, when the firm was admittedly back in the trade. Moreover, although Forbes returned home in 1840 when the firm was out of the trade, he immediately began building opium clippers, the first of which was the schooner Ariel. She was built for sale in the trade, and she was sold to Jardine, Matheson & Co. early in 1842.26 Clearly one claiming some kind of self-justification because of his lack of connection with the drug trade should hardly have been constructing opium vessels. Also before 1844 Forbes sent out several other such craft. These were not for sale but were the property of Russell & Co.27 There appears little reason to press the point. Russell & Co. obviously would not have ordered or purchased the ships unless it had a reason to use them. Forbes wrote his memoirs years after the fact, but his pride in his ships did not permit him the convenience of forgetfulness. He lists all the ships, which he had a hand in building, in the appendix to his book. One can only conclude that, like his cousin, Bennet Forbes lied.28 The Nature of the New Opium Trade There was good reason to lie about participating in this latter-day drug traffic, for it differed considerably from the comparatively tranquil commerce of the early years under the Lintin system. From 1837 onward the risk was high. Additionally in breaking Chinese resistance, the British also destroyed what maritime policing existed, and piracy reappeared in more virulent form than ever. Under these conditions, only the most desperate and best organized Chinese brokers remained in the trade. By 1839, Jardine found it necessary to warn his coastal captains, “Lay it down as a rule not to be deviated from . . . Never trust one of the low fellows who accompany you along the Coast, one dollar. . . . The men sent in the Ships are generally low, unprincipled characters, not to be trusted.”29 Heavily armed Western

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craft made the deliveries, and the level of violence was higher than ever before. The character of the trade thus began to appear even more disreputable. The vicious behavior of some of the crews contrasted with the fact that the officers of opium vessels, whether British or American, were generally young men of excellent families.30 Protected by Western guns and the Chinese underworld, the trade went wherever there was demand. And it certainly was profitable, despite the lamentations about low prices. In the midst of the Opium War, James Matheson wrote Andrew Jardine, “Do not be afraid of wanting money. We have ample for every purpose.  .  .  .  Morgan sells  .  .  .  a Lac a month—Davis and Scott [captains in the coastal trade] perhaps half a Lac a month. . . . Morgan’s balance on 1st May was nearly 6 Lacs.”31 Even allowing for the high wages paid in the smuggling trade, two hundred thousand dollars gross for a month was a comfortable profit for a single ship. In 1842 the Canton newspapers carried a number of articles deploring the “licentiousness of the crews of the Opium vessels at Whampoa.”32 The Register commented editorially, everyone must know what sort of a community is likely to be formed by a body of seafaring men pursuing an illegal trade at the mouth of their own guns; their success in trading depending upon sharp competition one with the other and their security being in their united might.33

Actually this was prophecy. The Canton estuary was to become the scene of some of the most brutal actions in the history of the trade.34 When the Americans returned to this commerce, they were compelled to adopt its operative procedures, including violence and disregard of Chinese life and property. The most grievously hurt by this turn of events, as always, were the most unoffending—Chinese fishermen, small traders, and boat people. A British seaman engaged in the drug trade casually noted the attitude of the smugglers: “We always make a practice of running over the Chinese fishing boats by night, for they will not get out of our way.”35 The Canton Register further noted the futility of Chinese resistance to this ugly business. Because no fleet that the Chinese could muster could match the weaponry and speed of the smuggler’s vessels, the only path of defense open to the Chinese authorities was shore batteries, but this alternative would have been both ineffective and a violation of the newly signed Treaty of Nanking. British naval vessels stationed in the area would have intervened. Thus the continuation of the traffic was insured and protected.36 All this data was common knowledge in the foreign community, particularly among those interested in the trade. The partners of Augustine Heard & Co. and of Russell’s were fully aware of the implications of their actions when they made their separate decisions to reenter the opium trade in the months after the Chinese capitulation.

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The North Coast But this was in the Canton estuary. In the increasingly important markets established at the various stations along the east coast, things may have been more peaceful, at least at first. Certainly plenty of ships were coming and going to the coast and to India, Manila, and Singapore. Houses at Canton and Hong Kong took pride in the comfortable passages, the rakish lines, and the astonishing speed of their opium clippers. Their names indicate something of the owners’ feelings: the Ariel, the Red Rover, the Antelope, the Zephyr, the Coquette, the Will-of-the-Wisp, and the various bird schooners— the Kestrel, the Lark, the Swallow, the Petrel, the Falcon, and so on. Letters and diaries left by Canton residents continually refer to the arrival and departure of these sinister but lovely vessels, and who knows if the merchants who plied this trade from the safety and luxury of Canton and the treaty ports gave even a second thought to the misery they brought to thousands of harmless people? Meantime the regularity of the commerce and the speed and security of the clippers made them the common carrier of mail, persons, and valuable goods. The cash surplus the trade generated made narcotics traders the bankers and insurers of the rest of the community during the early years at the new ports. For a number of such important services as well as for their commercial base, the treaty ports were even more heavily dependent upon the drug traffic than old Canton had been. Consequently the influence of the opium trade persisted and probably increased. In fact it was an arch-symbol. It represented the triumph of economic necessity over moral imperatives, exemplifying many merchants’ basically predatory attitude toward Asia and the inability of China to resist them. Rationalizations notwithstanding, the issue was reasonably clear, for some firms declined to deal in opium for moral reasons, although they realized that they were placing themselves at an economic disadvantage in so doing. James Matheson was not telling his London correspondent any secret when he wrote, “it is the command of money which we derive from our large Opium dealings and which can hardly be acquired from any other Source [that] gives us important advantages.”37

The Moral Implications of the Traffic Yet even those who did not take part in the traffic accepted, to some degree, the premises on which the trade was based, for nonsmugglers were a part of the community that opium had created. Thus all benefited from the illegal commerce, and all Westerners were affected by community opinion. The treaty ports produced a frame of mind that has become notorious. There is a continuous line of development from the beginning of the drug

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trade to the emergence of that poisonous set of attitudes sometimes called the “Shanghai mind.”38 To the economic necessity and the symbolism of the opium trade must be added the primary motivation of every American China merchant. He was there to acquire a “competency” as quickly as possible. In the acquisitive atmosphere of old Canton and at the treaty ports, secondary motivations were kept in check. Here, if anywhere, the “economic man” of the classical economists was to be found in the flesh. China traders were rational, profitmaximizing entrepreneurs in Canton, where few pressures from family, custom, religion, or law restrained them. They had come to seek a fortune; they would wrest it from China and go home to practice their ethics. One of the most brutal expressions of this commercial-errantry, with all its power and [acknowledged!] possibilities for evil, was reported some years later in Shanghai when a mercantile resident remarked to the famous British consul, Rutherford Alcock: No doubt your anticipations of future evil have a certain foundation. . . . They will probably come, when those who then may be here will see abundant cause to regret what is now being done.  .  .  .  But it is my business to make a fortune with the least possible loss of time . . . in two or three years at farthest, I hope to realise a fortune and get away and what can it matter to me, if all Shanghai disappear afterwards, in fire or flood? You must not expect men in my situation to condemn themselves to years of prolonged exile in an unhealthy climate for the benefit of posterity. We are money-making, practical men. Our business is to make money, as much and as fast as we can;—and for this end all modes or means are good which the law permits.39

It may be that the danger of such destructive attitudes is built into all capitalist enterprise unrestrained by strong moral strictures and an enforced legal code. It has recently been noted that Adam Smith found the same attitude among East India Company servants.40 But the “Shanghai mind” was not merely greedy self-concern. It also involved an ignorant contempt for Chinese values and life. This attitude took time to develop and to become a part of the common mental equipment. It required a change in the power structure and habituation to cruelty. So long as the foreigners remained few in number and Chinese power went unchallenged, factory denizens remained respectful, or at least bigots did not dare parade their prejudices. The antiopium campaign of the late 1830s increased the community’s familiarity with violence, and the war brought appalling massacres as masses of Chinese soldiers confronted modern weaponry for the first time. Brutality became casual. The slaughter of fugitives is unpleasant, but we are such a handful in the face of so wide a country and so large a force, that we should be swept away if we did not read our enemy a sharp lesson wherever we came in contact.41

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Such was the justification of one British soldier. During the Opium War the contrast between the traditional fierce posturing of Chinese soldiers before a battle and the heaps of corpses after a “battle” made for an anomalous response from the American observers. They were at once sympathetic, contemptuous, amused, and horrified. Although Edward Delano pitied the Chinese, he also was exasperated at their weakness and “cowardice.” To this was added a tendency to ridicule. Delano’s diary contains a story that even today retains its pathos and desperate humor. Capt Eyres of H.B.M. Sloop of war “Modeste” came on board. He was agreeable. Says that during the engagement, or previous to the engagement at Anunghoy fort, a linguist came on board his ship begging him not to be in too much haste in discharging the guns, and further stated that if the English would not put any iron or lead in their guns, he would not! This said the Chinese would give them time to escape.42

The manner of handling accidental killings of Chinese reinforced cultural attitudes. For years such incidents had been quieted by a payment to the family of the deceased. Sums that seemed enormous to a coolie’s widow were paltry to a merchant used to daily dealings in kegs of specie.43 The consequent disgust of traders at the “venality” of the Chinese was as natural as it was unfair, and it served to strengthen the conviction that the Chinese set a very low value on human life.44 This kind of accident became more common at the treaty ports. Avid bird hunters at Shanghai sometimes accidentally shot peasants on whose land they were stalking game. A few dollars to the family and an appeal to the local authorities brought immunity from any retribution. “Which of us has not had this experience?” asked Dyce with startling frankness in 1906.45

Missionary Attitudes The missionaries were no exceptions. They struck up friendships with merchants whose livelihood they despised, they cashed letters of credit with opium merchants, accepted their services in missionary institutions, and used smuggling craft to journey up and down the coast and to carry their mail. Merchants and missionaries wrote for each other’s publications, shared accommodations, and joined each other’s organizations and social gatherings. Small wonder that they developed similar interests and attitudes. At least part of this identity of viewpoint is to be expected. Even more than merchants the missionaries tended toward rigidity in their cultural values and a corresponding contempt for Chinese culture and customs. Some see a major racist component in the missionaries’ opinion of the Chinese, and, because most Westerners probably shared a low opinion of nonwhite peoples generally, they were probably not exempt.46 Nevertheless missionary

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publications and correspondence, as a rule, seem to show less racial feeling than do mercantile writings, and there is much evidence of a very different nature. The early missionaries made strong efforts to love the Chinese. They accepted them as fellow beings with equal claim to Christian concern. This regard clearly was a function of the missionaries’ more profound allegiance to the universalist teachings of Christianity. It was to be the instrument of saving these otherwise hopeless creatures, after all, that the missionaries had come to China.47 Yet to speak of saving others presumes at least cultural superiority over them. The missionaries could not regard the Chinese as equals so long as they remained in their graceless condition.48 As with the merchants, the nature of the missionaries’ contacts with the Chinese made this attitude almost inevitable. Although sympathy and affection were encouraged by the faith and were explicitly recognized as missionary methods as well as virtues, it is notable that they were largely directed toward children, servants, or patients, that is, people identified as inferiors or petitioners for help. Incidentally they were also the most likely to accept the faith. It was a rare missionary who protested against the extraterritorial or other “unequal” clauses in the new treaties. On the contrary there was considerable attraction for many in the “forward policy” adopted by the British. A  contemporary clergyman put the contradiction nicely. The war, he noted, was regarded by the religious public, both in England and in this country, as one whose objects were wholly unjustifiable, and whose results would probably tend still further to alienate the empire from all Christian nations. . . . The result was hailed with thankfulness and joy.49

It was one thing to deplore the war and the hatred it would arouse, but it was quite another to ignore the opportunities for evangelism that the “unequal treaties” opened up. It was for this, after all, that the members of the Mission had been praying ever since they had begun their labors in the very limited vineyard of Canton and Macao. They could hardly be expected to reject the benefits of the changed political situation. That the ways of God are inscrutable, and that he works his purposes even through the evil doings of sinful men were axioms to men of the cloth. In this fashion they had the best of both worlds: they could condemn the war and welcome the fruits of victory.

The Survival of the Ghetto Dead institutions, especially once they come to be regarded as immoral, are often a mystery to generations that have never experienced them.

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Institutionalized evil, after all, is somehow more tolerable than radical, novel wickedness. Like the traditional church, most people come to live with ancient sins, though not necessarily approving of them. Gradually, however, cannibalism, human sacrifice, slavery, racism, imperialism, and all kinds of exploitation have come under the ban of an increasingly sensitive humanity. Most of the vast and largely unexplored ethical revolution has taken place in the past two hundred years. Hence the present generation’s understandable but regrettable bias against the past. The good old days are now the bad old days, and with this growing sense of horror at the sins of our ancestors has come more than a little self-righteousness. I do not wish to be either a moralist or an apologist, but an historian is trapped by his profession. Judgment may be the Lord’s, but avoiding judgment on an immoral act seems immoral in itself. Even the most objective writer cannot avoid stating facts, which often indict unless explained away. There are temptations in both directions—either to defend the people one has begun to understand (and one meaning of understanding is sympathy) or to condemn the evil. The line is difficult to discern, let alone to hold. I hope I have not succumbed to my dilemma.50 I have found in the opium trade a key to the understanding of the early American community in China and to the shaping of our first official China policy. Thus, I have given the drug traffic special attention. It may be that tea or silk was equally influential, but I do not believe it. Under almost any circumstances, people far from their homes behave differently from more sedentary folk. They also are changed by their experiences. When they return to the place of their origin, they often carry back in their luggage strange ideas, tastes, and perspectives. They are marginal, not quite fully integrated into any culture, but they sometimes have shown great capacity for changing things, both at home and abroad. Few of the Canton residents individually were movers and shakers, but collectively the community was the agency of momentous historical action. In addition a number of Canton nabobs became leaders in the American industrial revolution after their return home. Many were known for their exotic tastes, sumptuous living, and, oddly, their conservative business ethics. Except for a handful of lately arrived clergymen and an occasional doctor or naval officer, the only Americans who went to China before the Opium War were businessmen. Even the consuls were primarily merchants, as Congress scrimped and cut corners to ensure that the Foreign Service cost as little as possible. Thus it was that the American community, which grew up in the only port in China open to them, was a mercantile community. I do not wish to slight the missionaries. Although few in number, they were most important, and some very competent scholars are currently investigating them. Yet the community’s soul was commercial, and in their backgrounds, day-to-day requirements, and attitudes, merchants and missionaries were not strikingly different.

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The Americans were a comparatively large group at Canton, second only to the British, and they were self-consciously distinct. Most importantly they were the effective agents in transferring whatever was moved from China to America or vice versa—goods, people, ideas, or influences. It has long been clear that America did not cut her China policy out of whole cloth but received it pretty nearly complete from her nationals resident in Canton. It is only by understanding these people that we can begin to comprehend their needs and concerns. I have attempted to describe the Americans’ origins, daily lives, their business methods and organizations, their later lives, and their relation to some of the great events that took place on the coast of China during the sixty years of the old China trade. I have done so in the hope that others will become interested in this and other examples of what might be called “private international relations.” Just as it was a critical element in the origin of official relations in the 1840s, it was also important elsewhere in what has come to be called the Third World, and it remains important today. Moreover its influence on China continued long after Caleb Cushing went home. One of the most significant lines of continuity between old Canton and the treaty ports was that of opinion. Beginning with the ghetto psychology of Canton and extending to racial attitudes, exploitive frames of mind, the confusion of luxury and necessity—in fact, with most of the alterations of traditional democratic and Protestant values, the treaty ports strongly resembled Canton before the Opium War.51 It will be recalled that the isolation of foreigners was originally a Chinese idea, begun and continued as a means of preventing contamination of China by the barbarians. The same motive led to the ban on alien women, to the prohibition against learning foreign languages, or to teaching the outsiders Chinese and the Eight Regulations generally. Gradually members of the foreign community came to accept and even to value their segregation. Perpetuated and legitimized by the “unequal treaties,” the ghetto became a place of privilege and a target for Chinese xenophobia. As the foreigners’ fear of the Chinese developed, they grew increasingly concerned for the security of their persons and property. “Their position . . . on the very edge of a teeming continent, exposed to a hostility which was more cultural than political . . . created an underlying solidarity among the foreign residents.”52 As Manchu authority deteriorated and disorder increased, this solidarity grew proportionately. It reached something of a peak, or rather a plateau, in 1853, when the Shanghai community raised its own troops and barred all Chinese soldiers, rebel (Taiping) or imperial, from the settlement. Thereafter the barbarians were regularly united by the strongest of motives—self-defense. Luxury, isolation, fear, local hostility, the “natives” visible only as menials, the universality of avarice, and the acceptance of the narcotics trade made the treaty port a breeding ground for vicious myth and cavalier arrogance.

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Because the existence of the opium traffic had already identified the Chinese as exploitable, they became available for other dubious trades. With the beginning of the Taiping Rebellion and the uprising of the Triads at Shanghai, Americans sold arms, food, and services to both sides. As the practice of competitive convoying and the coolie trade developed (the latter especially at Swatow), it was clear that the old disregard for the Chinese, especially those of the lower orders, had not only survived but had taken root elsewhere and had produced new and more malignant growths. The ricksha, which some see as a symbol of the “cultural miscegenation”53 of the treaty port, also represented the white Shanghailander’s view of his position in East Asia. It converted the coolie into a beast of burden in the service of the Westerner. Living as a privileged minority in well-upholstered comfort, insulated from, but extracting fortunes from various kinds of exploitation, Americans in the treaty ports could hardly be expected to develop enlightened social attitudes. Because they saw their residence as temporary, and they knew that a fortune was self-justifying at home, Americans were the less willing to disturb the mores of treaty-port culture. It would have been surprising, given this milieu, had more humane or more democratic views prevailed. When they became used to the workings of extraterritoriality, foreign residents’ irresponsibility and arrogance grew proportionately. The ultimate product of this development was the granitic “Shanghai mind” that came to characterize many residents of the treaty ports. Americans who became absorbed into this community not infrequently adopted its mentality, and because American merchants were a continuing force in American foreign policy, it is scarcely necessary to note that US flexibility was probably impaired by the residence of American citizens at the treaty ports. To say that many of these attitudes and customs clashed harshly with both the national and the Protestant creeds is also to say that the mercantile influence on American foreign policy often worked against the dictates of both, as well as against any larger view of the common national interest. Thus comparatively well-educated Americans, with democratic and Christian ideals, joined a very pleasant, comfortable community which became the means for altering or even of sloughing off these ideals. The Canton community and its heir, treaty-port culture, provided an easy way of transvaluing both the ideology of the Declaration of Independence and the Christian imperative. Through the Canton community, both merchants and missionaries met the problems of imperialism and racism together with the rest of Western civilization. The compromises these American exiles made with their ideals were to return to haunt this nation and to frustrate its policies and purposes.

The American Consul’s Four-in-Hand, from a stereoscope photograph. Notice the unusual construction of the sedan chair. The bearers carry it Indian file, not abreast. While this arrangement undoubtedly facilitated getting through narrow streets and crowds, it must have been difficult to turn sharp corners. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.

List of Abbreviations

AAL ABCFM, SCM AH ALB APS BCW BHR BL B&S CCL CL-Smyrna CNT CP CPress CR CReg CWK DAB DP DWCO EC ED EICo EICoA EIHC FAD FFP FP GP H/C HL HP H/R HSP

Abiel Abbot Low American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, South China Mission Augustine Heard Joseph Archer Letterbook American Philosophical Society Benjamin Chew Wilcocks Business History Review Baker Library, Harvard Business School Bryant & Sturgis Canton Consular Letters Consular Letters from Smyrna Charles Nicoll Talbot Carrington Papers Canton Press Chinese Repository Canton Register Charles William King Dictionary of American Biography Delano Papers David Washington Cincinnatus Olyphant Edward Carrington Edward Delano British East India Company British East India Company Archives Essex Institute Historical Collections Frederic A. Delano Forbes Family Papers Forbes Papers Girard Papers House of Commons Harriet Low Heard Papers House of Representatives Historical Society of Pennsylvania

342

list of abbreviations JA JC JCG JEC JH JL JM JMA JMF JPC JR JRL J&THP KP LB L/C LLB LMFP LP MHS NA NK NYHS NYPL O&Co OHG OP PA P&Co P&E PCB PHR PM PP PRs PSF R&Co RBF RBFP RIHS RP SC SCP SR

Joseph Archer Joseph Coolidge John Cleve Green James Eliot Cabot John Heard, III James Latimer James Matheson Jardine Matheson Archive John Murray Forbes John Perkins Cushing James Ryan John Richardson Latimer James & Thomas Handasyd Perkins Kinsman Papers Letterbook Library of Congress Latimer Letterbook Low-Mills Family Papers Latimer Papers Massachusetts Historical Society National Archives Nathaniel Kinsman New York Historical Society New York Public Library Olyphant & Company Oliver H. Gordon Olyphant Papers Philip Ammidon Perkins & Company Peabody Essex Museum, Salem Peter Chardon Brooks Pacific Historical Review Peabody Museum (now Peabody Essex Museum) Perkins Papers Personal Reminiscences Paul Sieman Forbes Russell & Company Robert Bennet Forbes Robert Bennet Forbes Papers Rhode Island Historical Society Russell Papers (so-called “Russell & Co. Papers”) Samuel Cabot Samuel Cabot Papers Samuel Russell

343

344 SW THP TP TTF W&Co WCH WD WHL WJ WP WRT WS WSW

list of abbreviations Samuel Wetmore, Jr. Thomas Handasyd Perkins Talbot Papers Thomas Tunno Forbes Wetmore & Company William C. Hunter Warren Delano William Henry Low William Jardine Wetmore Papers William Richmond Talbot William Sturgis William Shepard Wetmore

Appendix 1: Wade-Giles–Pinyin Equivalents Almost all of the sources from which the material in this volume is taken are to be found in books, documents, journal articles, and monographs employing the traditional Wade-Giles system of rendering Chinese words into English. Yet, in the past decade, the newer pinyin system has become standard. To attempt to transliterate every Chinese word in the text would be an enormous and not very fruitful task. Moreover it would add another problem (and chance for error) to the task of checking references. Finally, in at least one instance, it would make a pun incomprehensible. Thus in the following glossary, I have attempted to give the pinyin equivalent for the Chinese words found in the text. Some common terms are so fully accepted in their traditional (common) form that I continue to use them. For example, the city of Canton (Guangzhou) will be found as Canton, and the province is Kwangtung (Guangdong). Peking (now Beijing) is simply Peking (or, in one case, Pekin). Similarly, Swatow (Shan t’ou, now Shantou), Amoy (Hsia-men, now Xiamen), and Whampoa (Huang-p’u, now Huangpu) remain unchanged. I am obliged to Robert Gardella, Frederic D. Grant, Jr., and Carol R. Kaufmann, upon whose advice I have relied in this table. Wade-Giles or Common Term Amoy (Hsia-men) Anhwei cha (Mandarin Ch’a) Chao Ch’ang-ling Chapu (Cha-p’u) Chekiang Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai Chenhai Ch’i Ch’ang (Keechong) Ch’i Kung Ch’i-shan (Kishen) Ch’i-ying (Keying) chien-shang chih Chihli Ch’ing Chinkiang chou (magistrate) chuan (magistrate)

Pinyin Xiamen Anhui cha Zhao Changling Chapu Zhejiang Cheng Yucai Zhenhai Qichang Qigong Qishan Qiying jianshang zhi Zhili Qing Jinjiang zhou zhuan

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appendix

Chuenpi (Ch’uan-pi) Chusan (Island) Cohong (kung-hang, kung-hong) Conseequa (P’an Ch’ang-yao) (Li-ch’üan hong) Consoo (kan-su, kung-so) Foochow Fukien Hingtai (also known as Heng tai) (Yen Ch’i-cheng) Honam hong Hoppo (see Y’üeh-hai-kuan chien-tu) Howqua (Hao-kuan, or Houqua; see Wu Ping-chien) hsien (magistrate) Hsü A-man Hsü Nai-chi Hunan Hupei Hu-pu (Board of Revenue) Huang En-t’ung Huang-p’u (Whampoa) I-ho yang-hang (Howqua’s hong) Ilipoo (also I’li-pu) Kiangsi Kiangsu kuan (qua) Kuan Yin (also Kun Yam, goddess of mercy) Kwangsi Kwangtung Lantao Lintin Lin Tse-hsü lou-kuei Meiling Pass Mu-chang-a Nanking (Nanching) Ningpo P’an Shih-ch’eng (Puankhequa’s son) Pei Pei-ho Poyang Lake Puankhequa P’an Chen-cheng (1714–88) P’an Cheng-wei (1791–1850) P’an Shao-kwang (hong name) P’an Yu-tu (d. 1821)

1

Chuanbi Zhoushan gonghang Pan Changyao (Liquan hang) gongsuo Fuzhou Fujian Yan Qizheng Henan hang Hubu Haoguan xian Xu Aman Xu Naiji Hunan Hubei Hubu Huang Entong Huangpu Yihe yanghang Yilibu Jiangxi Jiangsu guan Guanyin Guangxi Guangdong Lantao Lingding Lin Zexu luogui Meiling Mu Zhang’a Nanjing Ningbo Pan Shicheng Bei Beihe Poyang Pan Qiguan Pan Zhencheng Pan Zhengwei Pan Shaoguang Pan Youdu

appendix Shanghai Sing-lo (hills in Fujian) Soochow Swatow (Shan-t’ou) Szechuan Taiping (or Tai Ping) Teng T’ing-chen Tinghai tsung-tu (viceroy) T’ung-lin t’ung-shih (linguist) Wang Ch’ing-lien Wang-hsia (or Wanghia) Whampoa (Huang-p’u) Woosung Wu Ch’ung-yueh (Howqua’s fifth son, who succeeded his father as head of the hong) Wu-i (hills or mountains) (Bohea) Wu Kuo-ying (Howqua’s father) Wu Ping-chien (see Howqua) Wu T’ing-hsien yamen Yang Feng Yangtze Y’üeh-hai-kuan chien-tu (Hoppo) Yuen-Ming-Pao (court circular)

347

1

Shanghai Songluo Suzhou Shantou Sichuan Taiping Deng Tingzhen Dinghai zongdu Tonglin tongshi Wang Qinglian Wangxia Huangpu Wusong Wu Chongyue Wuyi Wu Guoying Wu Bingjian Wu Tingxian yamen Yang Feng Yangzi Yuehaiguan jiandu Yuanming bao

Appendix 2: Statistics and the American Trade The shape and dimensions of the old American China trade are not unfamiliar. Morse, Dennett, Latourette, Prichard, and others sketched the broad outlines of the commerce over half a century ago, and it seems superfluous to reproduce their work here. Beginning with a single ship, the trade grew to become a business of great importance, at least for the northeastern part of the United States. In a relatively short, sixty-year period, it helped bring about major social changes in America, making many New England, New York, and Philadelphia families very rich by early nineteenth-century standards. It also provided a prime source of capital for the American Industrial Revolution and a distinctive lifestyle and social attitudes for the country’s upper class during its formative period. And yet it all came about inadvertently, almost accidentally. The American trade may well have remained a very minor, if exotic, enterprise, had it not been for the wars of the French Revolution. This twenty-five-year conflict made the carrying trade to Europe an American monopoly until American national pride took the United States into the War of 1812 and interrupted that profitable commerce. The new republic’s China trade only once exceeded $1 million a year, before the season of 1795–96, when the Dutch stopped coming to Canton. Thereafter the American commerce was invariably second only to the British. During Jefferson’s Embargo and the War of 1812, the commerce shrank almost to nothing as the British navy demonstrated its effectiveness. By 1818 American imports had resumed, reaching over one third of the total and nearly three quarters of Britain’s (US $9,867,208 and UK $13,048,022, for a total of $26,200,230). However America’s share did not keep pace, although individuals prospered. In 1830 it was about one seventh of Britain’s and one ninth of the whole. The Americans brought to Canton goods worth $3,054,976, while the British imported $21,961,754, for a total of $27,070,015. In exports, the Americans fared somewhat better. Thus, in 1818, of a total of $26,109,536, in merchandise taken away from China, the Americans carried $9,057,107 and the British $13,832,429. In 1830 goods worth $25,270,490 left Canton, of which total, America’s share was only $4,344,551 and Britain’s $20,446,699. But, such as they are, figures provide only the faintest outlines of the trade. In silver, furs, ginseng, and Turkish opium, Yankees dominated for

348

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349

years. Moreover American bills on London were not often counted into the import statistics, and, to that extent, the figures on American imports were distorted. More importantly the Americans’ use of bills on London complemented British commerce, particularly the fast-growing traffic in Indian opium. Together, they balanced all East-West trade for years. Finally, it is not only the figures on gross American imports that are questionable. Of the three chief sources of statistics on the American trade, none is complete or wholly reliable. Neither the US Treasury Department, the Select Committee of the British East India Company at Canton (and after the latter’s demise in 1834, the Canton Chamber of Commerce), nor private merchants provide the kind of firm, factual ground for generalization, which is the delight of economists. The Treasury collected figures in American ports, and insofar as information from that source gives a picture of the trade, the data is dependable. However until at least the 1820s, much of the trade was not direct. China vessels often followed very circuitous courses, collecting specie, evading trade regulations, gathering Pacific products, opium from Smyrna, etc. And return voyages were also complicated. In fact some American trade only became “American” when the ship arrived home, sometimes after years of tramp trading. The East India Company’s figures, while carefully and regularly compiled, suffer from equally serious imperfections. First, the Company (and later the Chamber of Commerce) had to rely on linguists’ reports, hardly an unimpeachable source if the traders in Canton are to be believed. Moreover the Company’s records, at least as reported by H. B. Morse, are none too clear. In some years, for example, Morse gives no less than three different figures for American tea exports from Canton.1 Also sometimes standard units of measurement change without warning. Although a picul, a chest, and a case of opium are 1331⁄3 lbs, according to most sources, this rule does not always hold in the tea trade, as Morse’s figures make abundantly clear. Moreover Hunt’s states that a chest of opium (apparently Indian opium) weighed about 150 pounds.2 The matter is further complicated by the difficulty of trying to ascertain the volume of illegal and unreported business, a risky enterprise at best. Unfortunately a chief source of statistics on the Turkey trade is the Company, and the members of the Select Committee had no way of knowing how much was imported or sold. Their figures are estimates based on partial information or even guesses. Morse tried to flesh out these skeletal numbers with data from other sources, but he admitted that the result was unsatisfactory. Private merchants in the trade were sometimes better able to judge its volume, but because they lacked a permanent bureaucracy instructed to gather accurate statistics, their reporting tended to be occasional and spasmodic. To be sure private reporting services existed, and they made use of both public and private sources. The publications of such services vary in quality, but they are far easier to use than the official records or commercial

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letters. Unfortunately some contain egregious errors in transcription, and they do not always indicate their sources. Thus they must be used with care. One of the best early statistical reporters was Timothy Pitkin, whose A  Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States (1816, 1828, and 1835) selects, reproduces, and condenses material from the Treasury reports and adds information from other sources. Pitkin, an amateur historian, was a member of Congress at the beginning of the War of 1812 and knew his sources about as well as anyone. Moreover he took the trouble to write ex-consuls to supplement the data from Washington. He also included some useful narrative. In general Pitkin’s work is the most dependable of these compilations, particularly the 1835 edition. Other writers have paid him the compliment of borrowing his figures. For American silver exports to China, for example, Latourette borrows from Pitkin, and Morse, Greenberg, and Cheong from Latourette, but not everyone credits the original source. For the later period, it is difficult to get solid, regular figures from Canton. The Canton Chamber of Commerce apparently assumed the Select Committee’s task of collecting trade statistics, and the Canton publications reported them sporadically. In any case the Chamber went out of existence in 1839. I have also used Volume III of John Macgregor, a Scottish statistician, whose Commercial Statistics  .  .  . (5 vols., London, 2nd ed., 1850) is one of the better contemporary compilations. Macgregor seems to have had connections in the East India Company, for his figures are close to the Hon. Company’s, where they can be checked. He also uses Pitkin, Canton newspapers, and the British consul at Canton after 1845. He admits ignorance rather than quote dubious figures (a rare and valuable quality in a statistician). When he cannot get Canton figures, he uses those from the US Treasury (Commerce and Navigation). Finally he is generally careful to inform his reader about the source of his data, including from which end of the trade the figures originate. Altogether I have found Macgregor quite useful, though his copyists made a number of minor errors. Macgregor also includes a number of convenient features such as table of prices paid by Americans at Canton, tea prices all over the world, various countries’ average tea consumption, etc. Another book worth mentioning is William Milburn’s Oriental Commerce (2 vols., London, 1813 and 1825), although its early publication date makes it less useful than Macgregor for most purposes. It contains considerable additional information on the commerce, trading procedures, China goods, qualities, prices, and some tables. Milburn was a former East India Company servant, and he often must have known his subject matter firsthand. There are a number of other works of varying utility and dependability. Historians besides Morse have sometimes managed to piece together statistics. E. H. Pritchard took a bold approach to the problem of ascertaining the volume of the trade of individual foreign countries at Canton. Obtaining the figures on articles traded by each country from the East India Company’s

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2

manuscript record, he calculated their value on the basis of contemporary Canton prices. Although the results were “not minutely accurate,” he admitted, “in a general way they represent pretty accurately the trade of each nation.” I have converted Pritchard’s figures (given in taels) at 0.72 taels to the (Spanish) dollar in the table on US trade. There are many gaps in the opium import figures (see above, p. 408, n. 90). Stelle also estimates the amount of Turkish opium sent to Canton in some seasons during the 1820s. I have used his estimates (as well as those of contemporaries) to fill blank spaces. Such estimates are not firm data, but they are better than no information at all, and as someone has said, to insist on reliable statistics is to abandon hope of writing most economic history. I am aware of the many pitfalls in an enterprise of this nature. Different reporters employed different fiscal years, they used different currencies, different standards of quantity and value, and they were located as much as half a world apart. American prices could differ dramatically from Canton costs, even if the quantities were the same. I have tried to allow for such discrepancies. Unfortunately some unresolved differences remain. So be it. I hope the result, while not “minutely accurate,” justifies the labor. American Trade with China—Totals (in dollars) American Imports to Canton

Year 1784–85 1785–86 1786–87 1787–88 1788–89 1789–90 1790–91 1791–92 1792–93 1793–94 1794–95 1795–96 1796–97 1797–98 1798–99 1799–1800 1800–1 1801–2 1802–3 1803–4 1804–5 1805–6 1806–7 1807–8 1808–9 1808–10

Morse Imports IV: 384

Pitkin1 Imports

American Exports from Canton

Pritchard2 Imports

Morse Exports IV: 384

Pitkin1 Exports

189,514

1,144,103 2,459,410 2,319,964 2,309,304 3,219,262 4,613,463 4,558,356

3,555,818 5,326,358 3,877,362 3,940,090 479,550 5,744,600

3,558,818 5,326,358 3,877,362 3,940,090 479,550 5,744,600

Morse Annual Reports 479,850

96,347 27,778 179,167 552,014 187,028 46,889 167,361 382,167 474,167 378,230 302,778 307,542 557,083 1,052,431 1,169,653 1,813,819 1,608,000 502,000 658,792 1,150,306 982,403 3,376,000

1,023,242 1,352,860 387,310 261,795 595,249 1,047,385 1,374,506 877,267 3,842,000 5,127,000 4,294,000 3,476,000 808,000 5,715,000

3,842,000 5,127,000 4,294,000 3,476,000 808,000 5,715,000

Pritchard2 Exports 110,167 56,000 470,819 173,042 422,806 1,141,139 386,111 520,972 668,181 716,389 770,694 1,650,000 1,738,611 1,730,000 2,200,000 2,400,000 2,500,000 3,100,000 2,900,000 1,800,000 3,842,000 5,127,000 4,294,000

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appendix American Imports to Canton Morse Imports IV: 384

Year 1810–11 1811–12 1812–13 1813–14 1814–15 1815–16 1816–17 1817–18 1818–19 1819–20 1820–21 1821–22 1822–23 1823–24 1824–25 1825–26 1826–27 1827–28 1828–29 1829–30 1830–31 1831–32 1832–33 1833–34 1834–35 1835–36 1836–37 1837–38 1838–39 1839–40

}

Pitkin1 Imports

Pritchard2 Imports

2,898,800 3,132,810 1,453,000

2,898,800 3,132,810 1,453,000

451,500

451,500

2,527,500 2,527,500 5,609,600 5,609,600 7,076,828 7,076,828 9,867,2083 10,217,151 8,185,000 8,125,800 4,035,000 5,392,795 8,199,7433 8,192,768 8,339,389 8,339,398 6,315,127 6,460,339 8,962,045 7,781,301 7,776,301 4,273,617 4,243,617 *5,394,917 6,238,7883 *4,065,670 4,030,865 *4,341,282 3,917,6323 3,054,976 3,054,9763 *5,531,807 3,050,9373 8,362,971 3,590,4553

2 American Exports from Canton Morse Exports IV: 384

Pitkin1 Exports

Pritchard2 Exports

2,793,000 2,973,000 2,771,000 2,771,000 620,000 620,000 Morse Annual Reports 6,214,800 9,867,208 8,185,960 4,035,000 7,192,826 4,636,071 6,313,127 8,962,055 7,756,031 3,843,717 5,768,109 3,373,565 3,917,632 3,054,976 3,050,937 3,590,455 4,090,455

572,000

572,000

4,220,000 5,703,000 6,777,000 Treasury 9,057,107 Imports 8,173,000 4,290,560 4,088,000 5,935,368 7,058,741 7,523,492 5,301,171 5,677,149 5,570,515 8,501,119 2,566,644 8,752,562 3,864,135 4,373,891 1,482,802 6,559,925 1,354,862 4,552,200 742,193 1,290,835 1,580,422 1,433,759 1,010,483 1,868,580 1,194,264 600,591 1,516,602 1,533,601 1,006,966

4,220,000 5,703,000 6,777,342 9,057,033 8,173,107 4,715,696 7,563,644 7,523,492 5,677,149 8,501,119 8,752,562 4,373,891 6,559,925 4,552,200 4,209,810 4,344,551 5,999,731 8,225,375

Morse Annual Reports 6,047,500 9,277,107 8,469,015 4,270,000 7,145,920 7,724,492 5,889,649 8,745,121 8,949,562 4,464,888 6,317,360 4,650,200

Treasury Exports 5,392,7954 3,111,951 5,242,536 6,511,425 5,618,502 7,533,115 7,422,186 3,617,183 5,339,108 4,680,847 3,878,141 3,083,205 5,344,907 7,541,570 7,892,327 5,987,187 7,324,818 8,965,337 4,764,536 3,678,509 6,640,829

*Taken from Canton paper.

1840–41 1841–42 1842–43 1843–44

American Imports (US Treasury) 1,200,816 1,444,347 2,418,958 1,756,941

American Exports (US Treasury) 3,985,388 4,934,654 4,855,566 4,931,255

1. H/R Doc. #248, 26:1, 4–51; year ending 30 September. Timothy Pitkin, Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America (New Haven, 1835), 302: year ending 30 June. Pitkin lists “China and East India Generally,” 1795–1800. 2. E. H. Pritchard, “The Struggle for Control of the China Trade during the Eighteenth Century,” PHR III (1933): 293. Pritchard’s figures are given in taels. I have used the conventional equivalent of 0.72 taels to the Spanish dollar in determining these figures. For the last three seasons, Pritchard’s figures are identical with Morse’s (H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 [1926–29; reprint, 5 vols. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966–69]). 3. Hunt’s generally agrees (in several issues; see, for example, 29 [July 1853]: 104–5). 4. Morse, Chronicles, III: 367.

appendix

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2

American Tea Trade with China Season 1784–85 1785–86 1786–87 1787–88 1788–89 1789–90 1790–91 1791–92 1792–93 1793–94 1794–95 1795–96 1796–97 1797–98 1798–99 1799–1800 1800–1 1801–2 1802–3 1803–4 1804–5 1805–6 1806–7 1807–8 1808–9 1809–10 1810–11 1811–12 1812–13 1813–14 1814–15 1815–16 1816–17 1817–18 1818–19 1819–20 1820–21

Morse1 Piculs 3,024

Morse1 Dollars

8,864 5,632 8,916 23,199 5,575 13,974 11,538 14,115 10,787 21,147 25,848 23,356 42,555 42,488 35,620 40,879 38,732 17,788 54,9024 87,771 65,779 58,770 8,128 73,028 21,643 26,778 10,556 7,133 53,040 117,396 169,143 76,447 40,153

Pitkin2 Pounds 880,1003 695,0003

3,047,242 985,997 2,614,008 2,009,509 2,460,914 2,374,118 2,310,259 2,008,399 1,890,965 4,501,503 3,797,634 4,086,9603 4,269,828 6,053,529 3,622,828 5,119,441 6,870,806 8,108,774 4,812,638 1,482,990 7,839,457 3,018,118 3,056,089

4,325,500 3,041,942

Hunt’s Pounds

7,679,120 9,830,480 9,402,160 5,654,480 1,562,320 9,224,880 2,615,520 3,496,880 1,436,880 1,469,360 7,723,200 9,391,680 9,701,040 12,035,280 10,519,160 4,973,463

1. H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (1926–29, reprint, 5 vols. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966–69). 2. Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America (Hartford, Conn., 1835), 246–47. Until 1801 Pitkin deducted teas exported from the United  States from the imports. Thereafter, he reports imports, exports, and consumption. Taking his consumption figures in the years 1801–12, the yearly amounts are approximately the same as during the 1790s. In the latter decade, the United States exported from one to three million pounds of tea each year. 3. Chinese Repository. 4. Beginning in 1804–5, Morse (Chronicles, IV: 385) reports the number of chests of tea exported. Hunt’s (XIII [January 1845]: 50) has more precise figures. Morse seems to have rounded them.

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American Tea Trade with China

Season 1821–22 1822–23 1823–24 1824–25 1825–26 1826–27 1827–28 1828–29 1829–30 1830–31 1831–32 1832–33 1833–34 1834–35 1835–36 1836–37 1837–38 1838–39 1839–40 1840–41 1841–42 1842–43 1843–44 1844–45

Morse Piculs

Morse Dollars

63,159 84,778 76,142 103,161 96,162 64,321 78,807 73,883 66,204 54,386 83,876 122,457

3,385,720 3,072,615 3,217,645 4,584,874 4,485,788 2,117,749 3,235,620 2,777,318 2,496,683 2,014,402 3,667,565 5,925,541

Pitkin5 Pounds 4,975,646 6,639,434 8,210,010 8,934,487 10,209,548 10,098,900 5,875,638 7,707,427 6,636,790 8,609,415 5,182,867 9,906,606 14,639,822 CR8 16,581,467 15,185,067 9,821,067 19,333,597

14,257,36410 14,257,36410

Pitkin5 and US Treasury 1,320,9277 1,858,962 2,360,350 2,785,683 3,725,675 3,740,415 1,711,185 2,443,002 2,045,645 2,421,711 1,416,045 2,783,488 5,483,088 6,211,028 4,517,775 5,331,486 5,893,202 3,494,363 2,413,283 5,414,548 3,343,359 4,367,101 3,776,464 4,075,191

US Treasury6 Pounds 4,973,463 6,636,705 8,208,895 8,919,210 10,178,972 10,072,898 5,868,828 7,689,305 6,595,033 8,584,799 5,177,557 9,894,181 14,637,486 16,267,852 14,403,458 16,347,344 16,942,122 14,411,337 9,296,679 19,966,1669 11,163,9319

5. From 1821–22 to 1833–34, Pitkin seems to record imports into the United States rather than teas leaving Canton. Also, his figures are very close to those of the Treasury, from whom both Pitkin and Hunt’s borrowed liberally. 6. H/R Doc. #248, 26:1, 24. 7. Pitkin and the Treasury differ by two dollars here. 8. Pitkin’s figures end in 1833–34. The rest of this column is from CR IX (August 1840): 191. N.B.: If these figures were dated one year later (about the time the teas arrived in America), they would resemble the Treasury’s much more closely. 9. John Macgregor, Commercial Statistics, 2d ed. (London, 1850), 818. 10. The 1843–44 figure comes from the CR (i.e., from Canton). That for 1844–45 is from Hunt’s 29 (July 1853): 105 (i.e., from the United States).

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2

American Trade in Turkish Opium

Season 1804–5 1805–6 1806–7 1807–8 1808–9 1809–10 1810–11 1811–12 1812–13 1813–14 1814–15 1815–16 1816–17 1817–18 1818–19 1819–20 1820–21 1821–22 1822–23 1823–24 1824–25 1825–26 1826–27 1827–28 1828–29 1829–30 1830–31 1831–32 1832–33 1833–34 1834–35 1835–36 1836–37 1837–38 1838–39 1839–40 1840–41 1841–42 1842–43 1843–44 1844–45

Morse1 Chests

Morse Dollars

JRL2 Phipps3 Chests

JRL & Phipps Dollars

750 1,000 700 200 30 500 226

375,000 610,000 437,500 195,000 45,750 512,500 287,020

Pitkin & Hunt’s4 Dollars

P & Co. & Others Smyrna Cases Cases

1025 180 150 32 200 100 80 488 448 807 180

1,900 100

383

437 170

140 411

146 4647

56 1,000 1,256 ⁄ 715

12

402 380 963 743

700 1,428

546,339 259,291 415,150 178,600 133,000 287,700 29,500 800,000 816,725 502,900 806,827 221,100 228,000 500,000

1,6002 1,6002 9502 1,4282

262,400 528,500 70,000 340,9916 490,0816 319,2316 269,4496 270,6656 258,2356 256,8006 195,00011 418,34511

427 1,2508 1,2508 1,30010 1,60010 1,50010 1,30010 1,000+ 1,200

800+2 963 8–900 1,00012 44613

2569 1,651 403 805 556 421 762 217 655

2,00013

1. International Relations I: 209–10. The second column under this note contains figures from the Chronicles, annual reports in the text. 2. Statistics compiled by Latimer (LP). 3. John Phipps, A Practical Treatise on the China and Eastern Trade (Calcutta, 1837), 236 and 240. The first group of figures (1816–22) were taken from the Anglo-Chinese Kalendar for 1832. Latimer seems to have used the same source. The figures for 1833–34 and 1834–35 are from Phipps alone. 4. Hunt’s III (December 1840): 27. This is Hunt’s estimate of the yearly trade. Pitkin agrees for the first three years only. 5. William Read’s letters to Willings and Francis (Philadelphia), 27 November 1805 and 9 January 1805 [sic Read’s error]; Willings and Francis Collection; HSP suggests that this number is much too low. 6. Pitkin’s figures differ beginning 1821, viz.:

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appendix 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827

2

115,000 383,000 133,000 287,700 29,400

Then for the direct trade from the United States, he shows: 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833

301,804 135,605 103,247 69,392 650 1,558 11,043

7. This figure is a minimum; imports are unknown. The number 464 is the result of subtracting the stock on hand from the consumption. 8. Stelle estimates between one thousand and fifteen hundred cases were imported for 1824–25 and 1825–26. See pp. 408, n. 90. 9. This column consists of statistics from the Smyrna Consulate. It records cases of Turkey opium reported taken away in the previous season by American ships. The 1829 report noted that an additional 1,320 cases went to England on American account for shipment to China. 10. R. B. Forbes, Notebook #2, FFP. For 1827–28 he gives sixteen hundred to seventeen hundred at minimum. 11. Joshua Bates testified that he shipped £39,000 worth of opium to Perkins & Co. in 1828 and £83,669 in 1829. I have converted them to dollars at $5 to the £. These figures are, then, minima. The sums represent only Perkins & Co. opium and priced at cost in England. 12. C. T. Downing, The Fan Qui in China in 1836–7 (London, 1838), 1: 52. Downing estimates one thousand chests a year were consumed. 13. Approximate figure, CR (October 1837). Hunt’s insists that the annual consumption did not exceed one thousand chests (3 [October 1837]: 471).

Destinations of American Exports from Canton, 1818–321

Season 1817–18 1818–19 1819–20 1820–21 1821–22 1822–23 1823–24 1824–25 1825–26 1826–27 1827–28 1828–29

To the United States Morse Pitkin

6,172,991 6,759,582 2,808,633 7,716,444 7,650,938 3,806,706 5,318,966 3,337,480

5,927,519 7,527,804 6,793,078 3,462,582 6,016,218 6,760,582 5,006,243 7,016,444 7,650,938 3,922,194

To Europe2 Morse Pitkin

1,746,194 386,910 409,012 485,677 884,856 144,465 533,030 1,144,720

849,823 1,496,442 1,348,563 1,109,114 772,763 383,910 453,706 584,675 684,856 154,468

Elsewhere Morse Pitkin

262,830 379,000 217,000 200,000 416,768 412,715 291,364 70,000

32,787 31,466 144,000 774,663 379,000 217,000 200,000 416,768 352,715

appendix

Season 1829–30 1830–31 1831–32 1832–33

To the United States Morse Pitkin 3,620,700 3,356,551 5,577,732 6,691,412

To Europe2 Morse Pitkin 139,874 650,000 130,000 922,974

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2

Elsewhere Morse Pitkin 339,015 257,000 150,000 346,173

1. Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America (Hartford, Conn., 1835), 306. For Morse’s figures, see Annual Reports in H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (1926–29; reprint, 5 vols. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co.,1966–69). 2. Pitkin identifies this as “Batavia, New Holland, Manilla, Sandwich Islands, South America, Mexico [sic].” Morse varies by the year, “South America and Sandwich Islands,” “South America and Sandwich Islands, etc.,” and “Sandwich Islands and California” with Brazil listed separately.

Appendix 3: A Note on the Silver Trade A casual reading of the statistics, despite their imprecision, reveals that from at least 1800 to 1828, silver was invariably the most important American cargo to Canton. Before the Americans came to dominate the specie trade, the metal had been brought by the British East India Company and the galleon trade from Spanish America. The latter commerce apparently was significant until the end of the eighteenth century. Cheong estimates that the galleons and the Manila trade together brought $5 million annually to Asia, most of which came to Canton or went via Canton to India, yet his chart of the galleon trade (with a single exception) shows no more than one galleon sailing from Manila per year between 1784 and 1800, and it is not at all clear that all returned. Moreover in three of these years, no galleon sailed, and in a fourth, the galleon was wrecked. Again no galleon left in 1802, 1803, or 1805.1 In the last year, to aggravate the situation, the British East India Company made it “official policy to send no more bullion to Canton.” Now this was the very period when the Americans were beginning to bring large amounts of silver to China. From year to year, it was treasure that made up the bulk of American Canton cargoes. Silver totaled from about one half to nearly three quarters of the dollar value of American imports. The Spanish intermittently continued their imports, but the amount declined, especially through the 1820s. This American trade in silver is the more remarkable because of the increasing difficulty in collecting the metal, a condition produced by this prolonged drain on world silver supplies, the decline in world production, and the Latin American revolutions. In the mid-1820s a slump in the market brought down some of the largest American China traders (i.e., specie importers), notably Edward Thomson of Philadelphia and Thomas H. Smith of New York. The entire trade suffered, but no part of the commerce was affected more than silver importations. Meanwhile beginning in 1807 and growing especially significant in the mid-1820s, a new British export trade in silver developed from Canton. After 1825 the quantity sent away was substantially larger than the amount the Americans brought. To a modern reader, such figures make it clear that the entire specie trade was now unnecessary. Beginning in 1826 and eventually displacing the bulk of the specie trade came what appears in retrospect to have been an obvious rationalization of

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the trade. The commerce in American bills on London was simpler, cheaper, faster, and more efficient than the eternal search for diminishing supplies of silver. Yet what appears obvious in retrospect may well have been obscure in prospect. Because such bills had been negotiated for many years on a small scale, the wonder is not that the great specie trade died out, but that it had continued for so long, when such an easily available alternative existed. As with many such questions, there are probably several interacting factors that help explain the delay. Certainly one would appear to have been the relatively primitive nature of world banking. Greenberg and, more recently, Cheong2 have described the catalytic event—the remittance crisis of the private British traders at Canton—a predicament that compelled them to look for a new means of getting their property home. For years the East India Company’s treasury at Canton had sold bills on India and sometimes on London to finance its tea trade. Yet as the opium business increased, the amount of silver in Western hands grew, taxing the Hon. Company’s willingness to accept all the metal offered at Canton. There was always the possibility of shipping silver. Especially when sycee was cheap, it made a very satisfactory remittance, because it was purer than the various Western dollars which circulated on the China coast. However, the export of silver was illegal, and it was also clumsy, dangerous, and inconvenient. Moreover large sycee exports drove up the price in China. Into this complicated situation came the American bills on London merchant-bankers. These interest-bearing instruments were at once safer, easier, and generally more lucrative than treasure shipments. Although the export of silver continued, in the remaining years of the trade, the remarkable feature recognized by contemporaries and emphasized by the statistics is the dramatic increase in American bills. For the Americans, the bill trade proved to be the solution of the problem of a commodity to take to China. Of course it was the growing traffic in opium that made this paper commerce possible. Even those who were the most opposed to the drug trade not only benefited from it, but even encouraged it by the very fact that they took bills to Canton. Probably the best argument the drug traders could have made against those who condemned them for their immoral commerce was to have pointed out the hypocrisy of their opponents in selling bills to those who extracted the silver from China in the only cash trade on the coast. Specie Trade at Canton

Season

Coordinated American Specie Import1

British Specie Import

Other Flags’ Specie Import

1802–3 1803–4

2,584,000 est. 2,932,000 est.

1,997,131

850,000 est. 1,162,000 est.

British Specie Exports

360

Season 1804–5 1805–6 1806–7 1807–8 1808–9 1809–10 1810–11 1811–12 1812–13 1813–14 1814–15 1815–16 1817–18 1818–19 1819–20 1820–21 1821–22 1822–23 1823–24 1824–25 1825–26 1826–27 1827–28 1828–29 1829–30 1830–31 1831–32 1832–33 1831–34 1833–34 1834–35 1835–36 1836–37 1837–38 1838–39 1839–40 1840–41 1841–42

appendix Coordinated American Specie Import1

3

British Specie Import

Other Flags’ Specie Import

2,902,000 4,176,000 2,895,000 3,032,000 70,000 4,723,000 2,330,000 1,875,000 616,000

1,152,147

1,816,000 420,000

1,922,000 4,545,000 5,601,000 7,369,000 6,297,000 2,569,500 5,125,000 6,292,840 4,096,000 6,524,000 5,725,200 1,841,168 2,640,300 731,200 1,123,644 183,655 667,252 682,519 1,029,178 378,830 1,390,832 463,970 678,350 728,661 987,475 477,003 426,592

1,520,400 3,557,088

500,000 150,000

British Specie Exports

3,337,070 1,870,0002 1,564,518 1,402,461 1,158,685

45,000

2,754,085 45,000 1,076,386 63,356

35,000 55,000 16,000 7,500 20,500

199,700 1,500,000 est.3 1,500,000 est. 1,500,000 est. 1,500,000 est. 1,500,000 est. 1,500,000 est. 700,000 est. 700,000 est. 700,000 est. 600,000 est. 670,000 est. 500,000 est. 500,000 est. 500,000 est. 16,700 55,300

3,920,000 3,088,6794 861,4705 495,0006 480,5607 234,600 1,076,386 1,743,357 4,341,000 4,019,0008 6,094,646 4,703,202 6,746,3729 6,595,306 4,023,003 4,890,92510 6,731,61511 3,959,453 4,468,411

1. H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (1926–29; reprint, 5 vols. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966–69), IV: 385. Timothy Pitkin (A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America [New Haven, 1835], 303) and Michael Greenberg (British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842 [1951; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969], 219) (who borrows from Latourette) generally agree on these figures. Pitkin has one major difference: for 1831–32, he gives the figure $2,480,871, but he admits that his source for the years 1828–32 was a Canton newspaper. Pitkin’s year ends on 30 June, while the East India Company (Morse) generally opened its

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books early—February to April. The US Treasury’s figures are often markedly different from the others, viz.: 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826 1827 1828 1829 1830 1831 1832 1833 1834 1835 1836 1837 1838 1839

3,391,487 5,075,012 3,584,182 4,463,852 4,523,075 1,651,595 2,513,318 454,500 601,593 79,984 367,024 452,119 290,456 378,830 1,390,832 413,661 155,000 728,661 987,473

However the Treasury presumably took its figures at the port of departure in America, and it appears that the Treasury used the calendar year, to judge from the closeness of its figures with those of the other sources from 1834 to 1839 (H/R Doc. #248, 26:1: 14 [1834–35 to 1839–40 in the coordinated list]). Although Morse (Chronicles) is a major source of data for the silver trade, he makes some serious errors in transcription. The summary figures he gives at the end of Volume 4 (page 345) sometimes do not agree with the yearly record, and for many years, his summary’s figures are one year later than those in the yearly record. Sometimes the best one can hope for is approximations. 2. A second shipment of $1.4 million was made (Morse, Chronicles, III: 80). It is not clear if the first figure included this shipment. 3. Estimates from 1815 to 1828 are of Spanish imports, given by the chief of the Spanish factory at Macao in response to a query from the Select Committee. Select Committee Report, 31 March 1830, EICoA. 4. Another $3 million (estimated) went from Macao to India (Morse, Chronicles, III: 345). Cf. Greenberg, British Trade, 218. 5. $1.6 million went by other flags (Morse, Chronicles, III: 366). 6. Nine hundred thousand dollars went by other flags. 7. $1.3 million went by other flags. 8. Cf. Greenberg, British Trade, 218. 9. Ibid. American ships took nine thousand dollars (IV: 196). 10. Americans took $264,816 (Morse, Chronicles, IV: 340). 11. Including $513,795 in gold (Morse, Chronicles, IV: 370).

Specie and Bills Imported by American Ships

Year 1801–2 1802–3 1803–4 1804–5

Specie—Canton Pitkin, Morse & Macgregor

Morse (Annual Reports)

United States

2,902,000

1,383,000 2,584,000 2,932,000 2,207,400

US Treasury

Bills—Canton Pitkin, Morse & Macgregor

362

Year 1805–6 1806–7 1807–8 1808–9 1809–10 1810–11 1811–12 1812–13 1813–14 1814–15 1815–16 1816–17 1817–18 1818–19 1819–20 1820–21 1821–22 1822–23 1823–24 1824–25 1825–26 1826–27 1827–28 1828–29 1829–30 1830–31 1831–32 1832–33 1833–34 1834–35 1835–36 1836–37 1837–38 1838–39 1839–40 1840–41 1841–42 1842–43 1843–44 1844–45

appendix Specie—Canton Pitkin, Morse & Macgregor

United States Morse (Annual Reports)

4,176,000 2,895,000 3,032,000 70,000 4,723,000 2,330,000 1,875,000 616,000

3,979,000 2,650,000 6,128,000

1,922,000 4,545,000 5,601,000 7,369,0001 6,259,3001 2,569,5001 5,125,000 6,292,840 4,096,000 6,524,000 5,725,200 1,841,168 2,640,300 731,2001 1,123,644 183,655 667,2522 682,5191 1,029,1783

1,214,220 1,922,0005 4,545,000 7,369,000 6,297,000 2,569,500 4,612,000 6,292,840 4,096,000 6,524,000 5,705,200 1,841,168 2,450,000 731,200 1,123,644 183,655 667,252 682,519

463,9704 678,3503

3

US Treasury

Bills—Canton Pitkin, Morse & Macgregor

2,896,500 2,679,126 1,433,500 321,000

200,000 2,995,0008 3,391,487 5,075,012 3,584,182 4,463,852 4,523,075 1,651,595 2,513,318 454,500 601,593 79,984 367,024 452,119 290,456 378,830 1,390,832 413,661 155,100 728,661 987,473 477,003 426,592 588,714 571,660 565,955

400,000 500,0001 657,3001 393,6501 1,168,500 2,480,8711 4,772,5166 3,656,2907

1. Pitkin’s and Hunt’s figures differ. Pitkin mistakenly uses the bill figure for 1831–32 for the specie total for 1832. 2. Pitkin mistakenly uses the bill figure for this year. Hunt’s is nearly one hundred thousand dollars higher. 3. Macgregor only. Hunt’s also gives this figure (XII [January 1845]: 51). 4. CR, VI: 284. 5. There was no EICo figure for this year. This is a US Treasury record.

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6. Macgregor differs. 7. Macgregor only. 8. H. B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (1926–29; reprint, 5 vols. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966–69), III: 367. The dates on which figures are based differ in Canton and America.

Appendix 4: Known Partners of American Firms at Canton, 1803–44 This list is by no means complete. There were a number of smaller firms, Americans who belonged to British firms, and individual proprietorships. Perkins & Co. (originally Ephraim Bumstead & Co.): James and Thomas H. Perkins (Boston partners, 1803– ) Ephraim Bumstead (1803–5 died) John P. Cushing (1803–30) Thomas T. Forbes (1827–29 died) [absorbed by Russell & Co., 1830] James P. Sturgis & Co.: James P. Sturgis (1818–ca. 1830) George W. Sturgis (1818–26 died) Henry Sturgis (1818–19 died) Pitman & French: Timothy G. Pitman (ca. 1821–32 died) William French (ca. 1821–32) Daniel T. Aborn (1826–31) Samuel Russell & Co.: Samuel Russell (1819–23) Philip Ammidon (1819–23) [absorbed by Russell & Co.] Russell & Co.:1 Samuel Russell (1823–36) Philip Ammidon (1824–30) William H. Low (1830–33 died) Augustine Heard (1831–36) John C. Green (1834–39) John M. Forbes (1834–38) Joseph Coolidge (1834–39) A. A. Low (1837–39)

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William C. Hunter (1837–42) Edward King (1837–42) Robert B. Forbes (1830–32—captain of the Lintin, 1839–44 and 1849–54) Warren Delano, Jr. (1840–46 and 1861–66) Russell Sturgis, Jr. (1842–44) William H. King (1843–49) Daniel N. Spooner (1843–45 and 1852–57) Joseph T. Gilman (1843–45) Edward Delano (1844–46) Paul S. Forbes (1844–73) George Perkins (1846–49) Russell, Sturgis & Co.: John W. Perit (1834–39) George R. Russell (1834–39) Russell Sturgis, Jr. (1834–39) Henry P. Sturgis (1834–39) [Manila partner] Warren Delano, Jr. (1835–40) [absorbed by Russell & Co., 1840] Nathan Dunn & Co.: Nathan Dunn (1830–33) Jabez Jenkins (1830–34) Joseph Archer (1830–34) [supplanted by Wetmore & Co.] Wetmore & Co.: William S. Wetmore (1834–47) Joseph Archer (1834–38) Samuel Wetmore, Jr. (1837–53) William Couper (1839–44) William R. Lejee (1839–44) William Moore (1844—still there in March 1847) William A. Lawrence (1844–44 died) Nathaniel Kinsman (1844–47 died) Samuel B. Rawle (admitted temporarily, 1844) Thomas H. Smith & Sons:2 Employees: Jacob Couvert D. W. C. Olyphant Charles N. Talbot

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Oliver H. Gordon William C. Hunter [Smith failed ca. 1827. Olyphant & Talbot founded Olyphant & Co.] Olyphant & Co.: David W. C. Olyphant (ca. 1827–39) Charles N. Talbot (1827–32) Charles W. King (1832–45 died) William H. Morss (1842?–45) Gordon & Talbot:3 Oliver H. Gordon (1836–40) William R. Talbot (1836–40) [dissolved at Canton in 1840; continued in New York City] Benjamin C. Wilcocks:4 (ca. 1804–8; 1812–27) John R. Latimer (1824–34) [ended with Latimer’s departure] Augustine Heard & Co.: Augustine Heard (1840–62) Joseph Coolidge (1840–44) George B. Dixwell (1841–1853) John Heard III (1844—still there in 1862) Joseph Roberts (1844–1850) Augustine Heard, II—still there in 1862) Albert Farley Heard—still there in 1862) George W. Heard—still there in 1862) [absorbed by Jardine, Matheson & Co., 1875] The Blight Family:5 James Oliver (ca. 1799–ca. 1804) George Blight (ca. 1805–14) Charles Blight (Dent & Co. ca. 1811–27) James H. Blight (ca. 1821–35?) William P. Blight (by 1828–by 1832) Nye, Parkin & Co. (“Nipperkin”): Gideon Nye, Jr. (1843– ) William W. Parkin (1843– ) Thomas S. H. Nye (1843?—lost off Formosa, 1848) Clement Drew Nye (1843?– )

Appendix 5: Commercial Family Alliances The Tangled Boston Concern Family Connections

Quite naturally when an early American businessman needed an agent to operate at some distance from the countinghouse, he chose first a relative and second a friend. If kinship and friendship failed him, a merchant tended to select an agent by his reputation. An excellent example of how thoroughly the factor of blood ties entered into business relationships in the China trade is the remarkable family complex—brothers, nephews, cousins, and in-laws—associated with Perkins & Co. and later with Russell & Co. There were no fewer than nine Sturgises in China during the sixty years of the old China trade.1 Captain William Sturgis of Bryant & Sturgis, Boston, sent or took three nephews and five grand-nephews named Sturgis to the East between 1804 and 1844. They belonged to one or more of five different companies in East Asia: Perkins & Co., Russell & Co., Russell & Sturgis (Manila), Russell, Sturgis & Co. (Canton), or James P. Sturgis & Co. As if to reinforce the family alliance with a double dynastic marriage, two Perkins sisters married Sturgis brothers, Russell Sr. and Josiah. Russell produced three sons who went to China, Henry (d. at Macao, 1819), James Perkins, and George W. (d. 1826). A fourth son, Russell Sr.’s eldest, Nathaniel Russell, produced five sons who went to China: Russell Jr. (of Russell, Sturgis & Co., later Russell & Co. and ultimately of Baring Brothers & Co., London), Henry Parkman (a founder of Russell & Sturgis and of Russell, Sturgis & Co.), Samuel, George, and Robert Shaw. This connection with the Perkinses was critical. Colonel Thomas Handasyd Perkins was William Sturgis’s brother-in-law and first employer. Both made fortunes early—in the trade to China and the Northwest Coast. Captain Sturgis then settled in Boston and established one of the two chief stateside family companies—Bryant & Sturgis. Colonel Perkins, meanwhile, sent out four nephews: John Perkins Cushing and the three Forbes brothers, Thomas Tunno, Robert Bennet, and John Murray. In Canton they all joined one of the family companies there, that is, Perkins & Co., or Russell & Co. Still another branch of the Forbes family, headed by James Grant Forbes, an uncle of the three brothers, was based in New York. Paul Sieman, the latter’s son, joined Russell & Co. in 1844, and at least three members of the New York branch’s next generation were admitted later.

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Colonel Perkins and his brother James had an even more complicated relationship with the Paines of Worcester, another family that produced China traders. James Perkins’s wife was Sarah Paine, whose nephews, Frederick William and William Fitz Paine, both apprenticed in J. & T.  H.  Perkins, Boston, and later went to China for the firm. Moreover the colonel’s niece Ann (daughter of his sister Elizabeth and Russell Sturgis, Sr.) married Frederick William Paine. A daughter of this last union became the second wife of her first cousin, Henry Parkman Sturgis (q.v.). Thus the Perkins brothers were granduncles to both Henry Parkman and to his wife. As if this mixture of blood and business were not confusing enough, the complex extended to families with still other surnames. Kinship groups were large and intricately interrelated in early nineteenth-century New England. Both John Perkins Cushing’s sister, Ann, and Colonel Perkins’s younger brother, Samuel G., married Higginsons, children of the well-known Boston merchant, Stephen Higginson. Each marriage was prolific, and several Higginsons appeared in China (e.g., Henry Sr., Stephen Perkins, and John Babcock) at various times during the period. Moreover the nephew of Major Samuel Shaw, the pioneer of the trade, was Robert Gould Shaw, a prominent trader in his own right. He married a sister of Nathaniel Russell Sturgis’s wife (Susan Parkman) and conducted his trade through the Concern’s houses in the East. He also supplied Russell & Co. with its most controversial partner, his former apprentice, Joseph Coolidge. When Coolidge was ousted, Shaw’s business followed him to Augustine Heard & Co. Thus at least twenty of the allied families’ members (as well as a number of friends) in three generations went to East Asia directly engaged in one or another of the various family enterprises. Of course this accounting does not begin to enumerate those who conducted the Concern’s affairs from the United States or other places without ever venturing beyond the capes. Several of Colonel Perkins’s daughters married men who ultimately took part in the China trade also. One of these, the dyspeptic Samuel Cabot, became the soul of the Perkins firm in the 1820s, after the colonel’s interest began to turn elsewhere, and the sons in the direct line proved either uninterested or unsatisfactory. Nor does this listing take into consideration later generations of the family. Henry Sturgis Grew, William’s great-grandnephew, for example, joined Russell & Co. in the 1850s.2 Younger Forbeses who eventually became partners in the China firm included James Murray, Edward Cunningham (Robert Bennet’s grandson-in-law), and John Murray, Jr. Probably foremost among the group of merchants who directed the trade from locations other than Canton or Boston was Joshua Bates, who was married to the daughter of Captain Sturgis’s younger brother, Samuel. Bates served as a partner in Baring Brothers & Co., the great London merchant bankers who financed much of the Concern’s China trade. Bates3 was succeeded in this position by Russell Sturgis, Jr., Captain Sturgis’s grandnephew. Hence the family influence extended from Boston to Canton to

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London, giving the allied firms an extraordinary advantage in commanding credit, market, and shipping facilities on three continents. It is, perhaps, not surprising that Russell & Co. was the Barings’ favorite correspondent in Canton, and that the China company received credits when it most needed them—in 1837 during the panic and again upon old Howqua’s death in 1843.4

The Olyphant & Company Family Connection David Olyphant’s family in America was not large. His father, a Jacobite refugee after the Battle of Culloden, settled in Newport relatively late in life. Nevertheless he married into the prolific and influential Vernon family of that city and thus allied himself with the Kings, at least two of whom later became in-laws. It was Samuel King Jr., a first cousin, once removed, who first employed David Olyphant (in 1805) in his New York firm, King & Talbot. The other partner in this concern, George W. Talbot, became very close to Olyphant, especially after King apparently became deranged in 1809. Hence the Kings and Talbots who appeared in China, either as members or employees of Olyphant & Co. or of Gordon & Talbot, were almost all relatives. In addition some of those with different surnames were also related, albeit more distantly, like William H. Morss and James Bancker. At the New York end of the trade, the families created and maintained similar bonds through Talbot, Olyphant & Co. and Gordon & Talbot. The only nonfamily figure in the group, apparently, was Oliver H. Gordon (who may have been a collateral relation—I have not investigated his connections). The alliance persisted for years after the first generation returned from China. As with the Boston concern, family fortunes acted to cement the members’ allegiance. Charles N. Talbot seems to have become a private investment broker for the rest of the group (including Gordon). He placed members’ capital in the most dynamic sectors of American economic development, most importantly, perhaps, in the Delaware & Hudson (a canal that became a railroad), in which company a number of descendants appeared as executives later in the century.

The Carrington-Hoppin-Wetmore Family Connection The Russells were a Connecticut Valley family who had settled in Middletown. Samuel Russell’s grandmother was a Wetmore, and Russell apprenticed with his kinsman, Samuel Wetmore. The Wetmores were also intermarried with the Whittleseys, of which family Edward Carrington’s mother was a member. Thus the three Middletown kinship groups were more or less allied. Judging from the history of the Carrington and Wetmore firms, the ties were reasonably binding.

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Two Wetmore brothers, Samuel and Willard W., became partners in Edward Carrington & Co., Providence, and two members of the next generation, Samuel’s son, Samuel Jr., and William Shepard, his nephew, apprenticed at the Providence concern, as did Carrington’s sister Betsy’s son, Isaac Miles Bull. When William S. organized his own firm at Canton, he took in his cousin Samuel Jr. but did not accept Isaac Bull, who had a history of mental disturbance but who was mightily offended at the exclusion. His resentment can only be understood if one realizes the strength of family and marriage ties in early nineteenth-century business relations. Carrington, who had also come from the Connecticut Valley, further complicated matters by marrying the daughter of Benjamin Hoppin, partner in B. & T. C. Hoppin, a Providence firm with which (together with that of Cyrus Butler) Carrington was commercially allied most of his life. Benjamin  Hoppin’s wife was a Warner of Middletown, the family of Samuel Russell’s mother and of Samuel Wetmore’s wife. Hence it was no accident that sent the Russell brothers to Providence. There Samuel joined the Hoppin firm, and Augustus apprenticed in Edward Carrington & Co. Benjamin Hoppin, Jr. also clerked in the Carrington house. Both he and Augustus went to Canton in the 1820s, where they worked for time in Russell’s firm. When young Hoppin returned, he and Samuel Wetmore, Sr. established the firm of Wetmore & Hoppin in New York City, sponsored by Edward Carrington & Co. Thus at least eight people in two generations of the allied families went to China: one Carrington, one Bull, one Hoppin, two Russells, and three Wetmores (William S., Samuel Jr., and Josiah F., William’s first cousin). Both the Providence and the China firms were still further interconnected by marriage, because William’s first wife was his uncle Samuel’s daughter, Esther. Marriage also cemented William Wetmore’s South American houses, because his partners had married kinfolk: Joseph Alsop’s wife was Lucy  Whittlesey, while John Cryder (later of Morrison & Cryder, London, and still later of Wetmore & Cryder, New York) had married Samuel  Wetmore’s eldest daughter, Mary Wright, who was both a cousin and sister-in-law of William Wetmore. Although it would probably be presuming too much to call these marriages “dynastic,” yet it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that interest and affection were not as distinct in the early nineteenth century as they seem to be today. Certainly in the dry genealogical record, the line seems a fuzzy one.

Appendix 6: Robert Bennet Forbes’s Correspondence with Warren Delano, 1879 In the late 1870s Robert Bennet Forbes began writing what he called “a  history of R & Co.,” a work that ultimately was added to the later editions of his Personal Reminiscences. In the process he interviewed or wrote former partners in the concern. The excerpts below are taken from his letters to Warren Delano, now at Hyde Park (Frederic A. Delano Papers). 26 February 1879 The retirement, to use a mild word[,] of Coolidge, & some passages between you & PSF must be very carefully treated, & I would not on any a/c quote what I find written in my journal to John about the man with the sour visage—JCG. All must be as near “couleur de rose” & at the same time [as] true as I can make it. E. Cunningham [Edward Cunningham, partner, 1850– 57), P.S.F. & Ned Beckwith [Nelson Marvin Beckwith, partner, 1857–60] in response to my circular of the 18th have made objection to what they call a “publication” of the history. The[y] seem to have got the idea into their heads that I am going to give life portraits of all the members & quotations from Hunter, Low, King &c. with a critique on J.C.G.’s features & yours after tasting and smelling Canton made Teas! Warden [Henry H. Warden, partner, 1870–72] & Mr. Sam Russell & Murray [James Murray Forbes, partner, 1869–72], D. O. Clark [David Oakes Clark, partner, 1861–69] seem to be well pleased also A. A. Low, who gives me valuable facts as to W. H. Low &c. John has not yet said anything & I suppose he is looking up data; if  he objects, he would have come out before this. The only thing I fear is that in giving a sketch of the causes & effects of the opium traffic & our imprisonment I may say too much, & so when somebody goes into the history . . . he may spin out more than I want to print as I must wait for responses from China there will be time enough to make an interesting not Huntavian [i.e., like Hunter’s work] pamphlet. 28 February 1879 After seeing the objections, of P.S.F., N.M.B., E.C., Murray . . . suggests that when we get answers from all survivors at home & in China we can determine, in general consoo, if it will be advisable to print anything or not.

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If not, then we intend to put the history into ms book form for our own eyes, & then anyone caring for it can copy it. 9 March 1879 John . . . entered a solemn protest against my printing & circulating any thing like a history of R & Co. Under a misapprehension of my intention (like PSF & NMB) he comes out so strongly that I have in deference to his opinion given up all idea of printing any thing; but I shall go on collect & arrange my facts, & write out in a book all I wish to say—Then any one who may be sufficiently interested my [sic] read it, or take notes. 12 March 1879 Hubbel [probably Henry W. Hubbell, supercargo occasionally in Canton in 1830s and 1840s, also agent for Howland & Aspinwall after 1840] says the first opium troubles began at the time a Sailor was executed at Whampoa & that at the time Turkey opium smuggling at Whampoa was not rare.  .  .  .  During my early visits to Whampoa I never heard of any opium smuggling there & I suppose it was on a small scale & not countenanced by regular houses. 31 March 1879 Since my last I have recd from John strong evidence of contrition for his brusque condemnation of my idea of printing anything about R & Co. for anybody. He now offers me $500 for the copyright of my personal reminiscences, & wants me to prepare my R & Co. sketch to add to it & offers me besides a fair royalty on all sales—the condition being that he is to use scissors wherever he chooses in cutting out objectionable parts. I have accepted his offer. 22 April 1879 I received yesterday a letter from Hunter dated on the 2d from 60 Avenue Friedland Paris, in which he provides information. It seems that he had some time ago thought of writing a sketch of R & Co., but had been discouraged by P. S. Forbes. Now he is going to put into type “reminiscences of 40 years in China” hoping to make it pay. . . . I have advised him to stick closely to facts embellishing them as much as he pleases. 4 May 1879 I have found in the N.Y. Evng Post of 28 May 1824 the announcement of the formation on the 23 Nov. 1823 of the house of R & Co. beginning 1 Jany 1824. . . . I have done nothing of late in writing up the sketch because John has not been well enough to look at what I have already written. I suppose

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I have informed you about my bargain with him—& I do not desire to waste pen, ink & brains unless he approves of the matter already written. 13 July 1879 I believe I have informed you that J. M. Forbes has bought the copyright of my memoir; not to destroy the plates as one would have suppose[d] who knows of his dead-set against the printing of any thing about Russell & Co. but in order to add a chapter on that renowned house. His only condition is that he may use scissors in cutting out what he calls irrelevant private matters. I know not when he will submit them to any others of the old members.

Appendix 7: A Note on Sources For

much of the information in this book, I have relied on published and unpublished journals, diaries, business records, and commercial correspondence saved by families whose ancestors took part in the trade. It is not entirely clear to me why people save old documents, particularly business records. Clearly these families attached some importance to their progenitors’ roles in the Eastern trade, an attitude possibly related to the exotic appeal of China or to the fact that the commerce often provided the basis of the family fortune. Of course the practice of saving documents is a very good thing for historians, who delight in combing through primary materials, and new collections are continually turning up (and delaying publication). Such discoveries are always exciting. I have found sizeable collections in the most unlikely places—secreted in a sea chest in a boarded-up corner of an attic, on a cellar shelf together with a fortune in overlooked Canton blueand-white export ware, behind the false back of a closet under a staircase, in the trash of a Newport “cottage” after the auction of its contents, and in the back of closets belonging to people who happened to see one of my articles. But most of the archival treasures are lying, more or less forgotten, in the libraries of state and local historical societies, university library manuscript divisions, and in public libraries. Finally there are collections in the files of firms or families who are often imperfectly aware of their importance. Reportedly one old Boston company and a major city chamber of commerce library recently destroyed collections which, alas, were probably of major importance. Some families and family firms are still sensitive about their ancestors’ reputations, but more often they are pleased with the interest and are very generous in permitting scholarly access to their papers. Institutions also, possibly because they are overly conscious of their responsibility for valuable family documents with which they have been entrusted, can make it difficult for a scholar to use materials that hold no hint of scandal. Sometimes they forbid reproduction, require prior certification of a scholar’s character, intentions, or the right to approve anything destined for publication. In  one extreme case, a repository demanded that an employee be present to watch me all the time I was using the papers in the vault. Most recently it has become common both for repositories and for publishers to insist on

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written permission to quote from collections used. This problem is becoming so critical as to threaten an historian’s First Amendment rights. Although such caution can be a help to a researcher who must spread his/her work over a number of years (changes occur in repositories, collections are reorganized, and whatnot), one can only hope that the unreasoning fear of misquotation (or liability suits) will ease or that some impeccably respectable organization will someday persuade the watchdogs to permit microfilming of all collections. I have provided a selective bibliography of printed sources, though it is by no means complete. For an idea of the volume and variety of resources available in America, the best overview is still Kwang-Ching Liu’s Americans and Chinese (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), though it needs updating. Of the manuscript collections I have found most valuable, undoubtedly the Jardine Matheson Archive at Cambridge University Library is the largest, despite the fact that the Americans at Canton were not the chief interest of those who produced these records. They have been surveyed by several authors: Michael Greenberg (British Trade and the Opening of China [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951], 226–27); Edward LeFevour (Western Enterprise in Late Ch’ing China [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968], 200–201); and most recently by W.  E.  Cheong (Mandarins and Merchants [London and Malmö: Curzon Press, 1979], 276–77). Also impressive in its size and coverage but even less directly concerned with the Americans is the great British East India Company library at India House in London. Because Morse has done so complete a job (Chronicles of the East India Trading to China), I have not found it necessary to consult these records very often. A brief guide is to be found in Cheong (Mandarins and Merchants, 273–74). The holdings of the Library of Congress, the Boston area institutions, the Providence, Salem, New York, and Philadelphia repositories are also vast, informative, and, of course, more focused on the Americans in China. One of the most useful body of manuscripts for the 1820s and 1830s is the “Russell & Company” collection in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, now located in the new James Madison Building on Capitol Hill. “Russell & Co.” is a misnomer, and I have called it the Russell Papers in the notes, following K. C. Liu’s precedent. It consists largely of the papers of Samuel Russell (including those of his earlier firm Samuel Russell & Co., a fact that may explain the confusion). The Latimer Papers at the same location are also very good for the same period, but they are arranged by date (and lot) of acquisition. This is no collection for one who is easily discouraged. A letter may be found in any of several places, but for the persistent, the papers will yield quantities of data found perhaps nowhere else. I say “perhaps” because the University

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of Delaware has a similar (Latimer) collection, and the university has photocopied material in Washington, which was apparently lacking in Newark. The Edmund Roberts diary, which contains more information than the published account of his embassies, is also at the Library of Congress. A richer source for this work is the Low-Mills Family Collection, which includes materials on a number of family members, including Abiel Abbott, Edward Allen, and Harriet. Especially noteworthy is Harriet’s charming, nine-volume diary to be found in Boxes #13 and 14 (one volume is missing). The diary is also available in typescript (also at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem). A useful companion to the diary is Arthur Hummel’s lengthy addendum. Finally in the same building are the Caleb Cushing Papers. Cushing kept a very careful personal record of the first official mission to China, together with letters, publications, and a series of delightful watercolors by George R. West (and a few by Cushing himself). The Cushing Collection’s completeness makes it one of the best records of political, diplomatic, and social events at Canton in 1843 and 1844. For a more detailed description of documents at the library, see my “The Caleb Cushing Papers and Other China Trade Materials at the Library of Congress” (in Jonathan Goldstein, ed., Association for Asian Studies, Inc., Committee on East Asian Libraries Bulletin 86 [February 1989]: 1–7). Only a few blocks away, the National Archives houses an enormous amount of official material: the Canton Consular Letters (now on microfilm), the various communications to and from the Department of State, the letters of naval officers in the area, and the like. Some of these documents are available on microfilm, as is an edited version of the Cushing Papers. Baltimore, within driving distance of Washington, contains the Maryland Historical Society, a small treasure trove of documentary information. The Dallam Papers, the Buckler Papers and the (Brantz) Meyer, and the Mayer and Roszel Papers all contain largely unexploited material in this period.1 Metropolitan Philadelphia boasts some very substantial collections, which have been well surveyed by Jonathan Goldstein (see his Philadelphia and the China Trade, 1682–1846 [University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1978] and more recently his “Resources on Early Sino-American Relations in Philadelphia’s Stephen Girard Collection and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania” (Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i IV: 3 [June 1980]: 114–29).2 For the present work, the most important Philadelphia collections have been the Talbot Papers, the Girard Papers (on microfilm—the originals are in the Girard College Library and are difficult to use), and the James Bancker Papers at the American Philosophical Society and the Joseph Archer Letterbook, the John Dorsey Sword Papers, the Cadwalader Collection, the Etting Papers, and some of Nathan Dunn’s papers, including his will at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The Waln Family Papers are at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and there are also numbers of documents at the Maritime

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Museum of Philadelphia. Nearby, in Greenville, Delaware, the Eleutherian Mills Historical Library also houses some small collections and a particularly helpful staff who are aware of almost all the materials in the Chesapeake area. New York City, oddly enough, needs more exploring. Murray A. Rubinstein has written a useful description of some of the city’s libraries in “Olyphant’s Island: China Trade Materials in Manhattan Library Collections: The New-York Historical Society, the Union Theological Seminary and the Research Division of the New York Public Library” (in Jonathan Goldstein, ed., Association for Asian Studies, Inc., Committee on East Asian Libraries Bulletin 86 [February 1989]: 8–16). The New York Public Library contains the Constable-Pierpont Collection, some logs and an autobiography of Samuel  Hill, a few Astor Papers, the William Edgar and the William Law Papers, some early William H. Low papers (see also the Josiah O. Low Papers), a letterbook of Gouverneur & Kemble, a letterbook of Edward Goold & Co., Oliver Wolcott’s business records, and other resources. The New-York Historical Society has the American Fur Company Papers, some Constable and Rucker documents, papers of Edward Goold & Co., some business records of Oliver Wolcott, and papers of John Marsden Pintard, Solomon Townsend, a number of ship logs, the diary of Catherine Hyde Butler (1836– 37), and miscellaneous other material, including one 1823 account book of Thomas H. Smith. The New York Society Library has the Benjamin Goodhue Papers, and the Pierpont Morgan Library has the Henry Knox Collection. The city must have other collections somewhere. I regret that I have not yet investigated the Missionary Research Library, which is housed at the Burke Library of the Union Theological Seminary. I  know that it contains a typescript of some letters of D. W. C. Olyphant, and it must have other treasures. In any case New York had outdistanced Philadelphia as an entrepôt well before the War of 1812, and by 1820, it was clearly the most important China trade port in America. Even firms based in other cities maintained agents or affiliated firms in New York. One hopes that the South Street Seaport Museum and the other repositories will be as aggressive as the city’s reputation in the work of collecting and preserving the commercial record of our largest and most important seaport. Up the Hudson River, at Hyde Park, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library houses the records of various Delanos, including Edward Delano’s diary, which I have found invaluable especially for the 1840s, the papers of Warren Delano, Franklin H. and Frederic A. Delano, as well as the Delano Family Collection. Among the smaller cities on the Eastern seaboard, Providence and Salem contain treasuries of manuscripts, and I do not believe that anyone really knows how rich they are. In Providence, the Rhode Island Historical Society boasts the valuable and easily used Carrington Papers, the NightingaleJenkes Papers, some Sullivan Dorr Papers, the Carter-Danforth collection,

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miscellaneous documents of other China traders such as William F. Megee, Samuel Snow, and numbers of others. The Brown & Ives Papers are at the John Carter Brown Library on the Brown campus, a short walk away. Possibly even more important for future work, Providence boasts a body of intelligent and informed citizens who have rescued and preserved quantities of manuscripts, logs, paintings and memorabilia. Thus, some Talbot Papers, Wetmore Papers, and Sullivan Dorr material are in reliable private hands, and I am informed that a large quantity of Dexter Family Papers has recently come to light. I am confident that Providence documents will be preserved in good condition for future researchers. Easily reached from Providence is Mystic Seaport, which houses the Nathan Dunn Letterbook. The Old Dartmouth Historical Society at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford is also within easy driving distance. It contains letterbooks of Francis Hathaway and some papers of Gideon Nye, including a useful necrology kept in his old age. A repository of considerable promise, particularly for the earlier period, is the Newport Historical Society, although I have not been able to investigate it very thoroughly. Another candidate for historical snooping is New Haven, where Yale’s Divinity Library and the Sterling Memorial Library, which houses the [S. Wells] Williams Family Papers, can surely provide more missionary and Olyphant data. Finally the Yale Medical Library houses a substantial Peter Parker Collection. Salem is a scholar’s delight, both for the number of collections in its two fine institutions (recently combined into one—the Peabody Essex Museum) and for the ease of access and pleasant surroundings it offers. The Essex Institute section of the museum is a major source of documents, including the Derby Papers, the Kinsman Papers (from which many letters were published in the Essex Institute Historical Collections in the late 1940s and the 1950s; see bibliography under Munro), Low family letters (some of which appear in the same volumes), the Benjamin Shreve Papers, and probably the largest collection of ship logs in America. Worth special mention is the library’s priceless Bryant P. Tilden diary “Father’s Journals,” which exists both in cursive and typewritten copies, and which deserves publication in its entirety. Across the street the Peabody Museum section has added a magnificent China trade wing, which arguably contains the most extensive collection of China trade art in this country. Taken together with Salem and Providence, the Boston area easily is the most important single location in America for the study of early SinoAmerican contacts. The Massachusetts Historical Society contains the very large and useful Thomas Handasyd Perkins Collection, the Samuel Cabot Papers, some papers and logbooks and lecture notes of William Sturgis, the Forbes Family Papers (formerly at the Museum of the American China Trade), the Appleton Family Papers, J. & T. H. Perkins & Company’s business records, Robert Haswell’s logs of the Columbia’s voyages as well as John Hoskins’s, the Hooper-Sturgis Papers, and any number of other manuscript

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collections. This listing by no means exhausts the relevant holdings of that splendid old institution. At the Boston Athenaeum is W. C. Hunter’s journal of the 1939 “captivity” of the factories by Commissioner Lin. Although the journal has been published, it should be reprinted in more readily available form. The Athenaeum also has some John Perkins Cushing Papers, which include most of John Cushing’s diaries after 1834 and a letter written to his grandmother on the eve of his departure for China. A new acquisition is a collection of letters between Russell Sturgis in Canton and his wife, Mary, at Macao from 1834 to 1836. The Robert Bennet Forbes House Museum in Milton was once the site of the Museum of the American China Trade. The manuscript holdings of the former museum have gone elsewhere, but it would be a mistake to miss the Robert Bennet Forbes Museum. The building is a document in itself. Most of the holdings have gone to the Massachusetts Historical Society. Among these collections are the Forbes Family Papers (available in microfilm in several places), the Samuel Shaw Papers, and a Howqua letterbook. A Benjamin Hoppin diary is now in private hands. At Harvard the Houghton Library holds the correspondence of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions as well as the largest quantity extant of William W. Wood’s papers. Wood was an editor, publisher, and sometime employee of Russell & Co. in the 1830s. Baker Library, at the Graduate School of Business Administration, across the Charles, houses an impressive number of important collections. Under the astute direction of Robert W. Lovett, Baker amassed the best collection of business manuscripts in the nation. The voluminous Forbes Papers include various kinds of business records, letters, and documents from a number of family members, including Robert Bennet, John Murray, Thomas T., Paul  Sieman, and others.3 Besides the correspondence of the firm, the Bryant & Sturgis Collection contains a Cushing Letterbook, and there is a John Perkins Cushing Collection as well. The Howland & Aspinwall Collection includes the Comstock Brothers’ papers. A Howqua Letterbook (1841–43), the Perkins & Co./Russell & Co. Collection, and the J. & T. H. Perkins account books, which cover thirty-two years, are also of great value. The massive Heard Collection is made up of two parts: the first, or Heard Family Papers, has been very useful in this study and includes diaries, letters, account books, memoirs, and all kinds of other miscellaneous writings. The second part, received from Matheson’s of London via Cambridge University, is concerned with the later period. Other collections at Baker also contain considerable information. Among the more notable are the Hunnewell Papers and the huge Nathan Trotter & Co. Papers. Small collections, individual documents, and hints of other treasures appear from time to time to tantalize one with promises of still greater discoveries. The “Olyphant Papers” (a handful of documents belonging to a

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descendant) is a case in point. Important material is still in hiding. Both L. Vernon Briggs’s History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family, 1475–1927 (Boston: Privately printed, 1927) and J[ames] E[liot] Cabot’s “Extracts from the Letterbooks of J. & T. H. Perkins” (Baker Library, typescript) cite documents that cannot be found in any repository I know of. Although, as Kenneth Scott Latourette noted in 1917, the outlines of the story are so well established that new documents are unlikely to alter it much, they certainly can flesh it out considerably, thereby in some sense altering that outline. China coast newspapers and the Chinese Repository have been very helpful, but particularly the former are scattered and sometimes hard to find. Frank H. H. King and Prescott Clarke’s A Research Guide to ChinaCoast Newspapers, 1822–1911 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965) is very useful. Perhaps someday the Peabody Essex Museum will receive a grant to photograph all of the extant copies of the Canton Register, the Canton Press, the Chinese Courier, the Canton Miscellany, the Anglo Chinese Kalendar, and the others. Finally there are published works that qualify as primary or at least very high-quality secondary sources. Some of these have been faulted, notably Hunter’s books by Philip de Vargas’s “William C. Hunter’s Books on the Old Canton Factories” (Yenching Journal of Social Studies 2, no. 1 [July 1939]: 91–117), Nye’s by a few, and Scoville’s Old Merchants of New  York City (5  vols. [New York, 1870]) by many. Although the biases remain and old memories have occasionally blurred, these works have their uses. Accepting the qualifications of their critics, I have found all three very helpful for developing leads and cross-checking facts. Flaws exist in the most carefully edited work. I have found errors even in Morse. Among the many visitors who wrote colorful accounts of their experiences in old Canton are Edmund Roberts (Embassy to the Eastern Courts  .  .  . [New York, 1837]), Osmond Tiffany (The Canton Chinese [Boston, 1849]), and C. Toogood Downing (The Fan-Qui in China . . . , 3 vols. [London, 1838]). Others among the numerous published sources of more or less immediate impressions are Peter Dobell’s Travels . . . with a Narrative of a Residence in China (London, 1830); William Dean’s China Mission (New  York, 1859); David Abeel’s Journal of a Residence in China (London, 1836); the writings of S. Wells Williams; Elma Loines, China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family (Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing Co., 1953); the anonymous Englishman in China (London, 1860); R. B. Forbes, Personal Reminiscences (Boston, 1882 and 1892); Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844); and many, many articles. Among the latter are a number in the Essex Institute Historical Collections, which quote sections of diaries or letters in toto, especially from the Kinsman and Low papers at the institute. Yet this brief listing only scratches the surface. There are many accounts by sailors, naval officers, traders, missionaries, and other travelers who were fascinated by Canton and took the time to write about it.

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Volumes of published documents like The Letters and Recollections of John  Murray Forbes (2 vols., edited by Sarah Forbes Hughes [Boston, 1899]) and the already mentioned Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (5 vols. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926–29]) by H. B. Morse form another very obvious source of primary material as do the many missionary accounts and biographies. There are a few more specialized bibliographies, which can lead the reader to still more primary sources. I have already mentioned the best and most general—K. C. Liu’s Americans and Chinese (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963) though it limits itself to sources within the United States, and it needs updating. Protestant America and the Pagan World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968) is the best missionary bibliography I know. Contemporary stateside magazines, especially Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine, and missionary periodicals contain letters, reports, and abstracts from Canton diaries, as do eulogies, “Life and Labors” biographies, and similar works. Clearly these are primary sources, as long as the quotations are accurate. With the same caveat, the British Parliament’s investigations of the affairs of the East India Company (1830 and 1831 especially) and several congressional publications of petitions, letters, and other publications are really primary sources producing much firsthand data on the Americans in Canton, on the American trade, and on Chinese-American relations generally. Of course, government publications like the Canton Consular Letters and letters from naval commanders, particularly of the East India Squadron, are also useful. Chinese accounts are not readily available to Western readers unless translated, like Arthur Waley’s The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (New York: Macmillan, 1958), a particularly readable example of such work. For Chinese views, I have relied heavily on Sinologists and historians of China such as Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and J. K. Fairbank in Chapters 4 and 5, respectively, of the Cambridge History of China, X, Part I; H. P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964); Arthur Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Dynasty (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1943); Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven, CT: Far Eastern Publications, Yale University, 1953); Frederic Wakeman’s writings, especially his Strangers at the Gate . . . (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); John K. Fairbank’s many works, but particularly his Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842–1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954); and a number of publications of Chinese governmental documents. Also very useful are Sung An-yung’s partial translation of the “Kwangtung shih-san-hang kao” of Liang Chia-pin (MA thesis, University of Chicago, 1958); Ch’en Kuo-tung’s (Anthony Ch’en) The Insolvency of the Chinese Hong Merchants, 1760–1843 (Nankang, Taipei: Institute of Economics,

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Academia Sinica, 1990); and the works of Wellington K. K. Chan, Tan Chung, Chang Chung-li, Hao Yen-p’ing, Thomas Metzger, Ho Ping-ti, Wolfram Eberhard, Frederic Grant, Randle Edwards, Suzanne Barnett, Derk Bodde, and others. Western secondary sources are far too numerous to mention, although I have already begun to do just that. One could hardly avoid overlooking a number of excellent works. I have found particularly valuable Michael Greenberg’s British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), the most general of the works based on the Jardine Matheson Archive. Also valuable is Edward LeFevour’s Western Enterprise in Late Ch’ing China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968) whose subtitle indicates its content, that is, A  Selective Survey of Jardine, Matheson & Company’s Operations, 1842– 1895. W[eng] E[ang] Cheong’s Mandarins and Merchants . . . (London and Malmö: Curzon Press, 1979) is a more recent work, which begins considerably earlier than LeFevour. It also adds much information on the trade in general, as do the same author’s articles in Business History, but it does not replace Greenberg’s study. Today so many younger scholars are working in the various archives in America and England that it is difficult to keep track of their labor despite the many compilation services and a wide acquaintanceship in the field. Ultimately, I hope, the Peabody Essex Museum, a university, or some other concerned institution will provide a centralized reference service, so that researchers can find each other, share information, and avoid duplication of labor.

Notes

Chapter 1. Old Canton and Its Trade 1. See, for example, Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston, 1817), 408. For an example of how a merchant behaved upon his arrival in Canton, see the experience of the Salem ship Minerva, Thomas W. Ward, master, which visited Canton in the fall of 1809: “Remarks on the Canton Trade and the Manner of Transacting Business,” EIHC 73, no. 4 (October 1937): 303–10. 2. Ibid., 408–9 and BCW to James Monroe, 25 June 1814; CCL-I. 3. Hosea B. Morse, The Guilds of China (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1909), 72. 4. “Imm[ediatel]y on their coming on board they assume charge of the ship, give orders, &c, &c,—consequently our officers always keep near to explain the meaning of their orders, particularly to ‘new Cantons’ [i.e., sailors at Canton for the first time], to whom such language is at first quite unintelligible . . . [e.g.] Ready About!—Make leddy for bout ship. Ship the helm!—Ship lubber.” Bryan Parrott Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 200 (Second Voyage, 22 September 1816). This is a bound manuscript at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. 5. Peter Parker’s journal, 6 September 1835, ABCFM, I: 187, 16–17. 6. At least by the 1840s it had become customary for American ships to drop anchor in the upper part of the Reach, while the English remained together in the lower end. See JH, “Diary, 1891,” 28; HP. 7. For information on the hong merchants, see Ch’en Kuo-tung (also known as Anthony Ch’en), The Insolvency of the Chinese Hong Merchants, 1760–1843, Institute of Economics Monograph Series No. 45 (Nankang, Taipei: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, June 1990). Earlier works are Sung An-yung (or An-yung Sung), “A Translation of Parts of the Kuangtung shih-san-hang k’ao of Liang Chia-pin” (Master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1958); and Ann B. White, “The Hong Merchants of Canton” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1967). Older but still useful works are Morse’s Guilds of China and Henri Cordier’s “Les marchands hanistes de Canton,” T’oung Pao 3 (1902): 282–315. 8. As James Matheson put it in his instructions to James Ryan, who represented Matheson’s firm, Jardine Matheson & Co. in 1939, “it is a point of etiquette, that the Hong Merchant who secures the ship shall be allowed the opportunity of purchasing at least a portion of the Cargo. It need not be very considerable, but the larger it is the better pleased he will be” (30 June 1839; JM Private LB, JMA). 9. At last report, J. L. Cranmer-Byng was working on a study of the linguists. See also WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (London, 1882), 50–53; and John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842–1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 353–54. 10. Robert Bennet Forbes said that “one would as soon quote the opinion of the

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Father of Lies as that of a ‘lingo.’” Although Forbes exaggerated, his view was not unusual. RBF, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844), 17. See also JRL to J. J. Borie & Son, 15 March 1833, LLB. 11. The British East India Company used linguists as the source for its annual reports on the trade as did its successor in this function, the Canton General Chamber of Commerce and the American consul. See Anglo-Chinese Kalendar for  .  .  .  1838 (Canton, 1838), xi–xix, and Consul John H. Grosvenor, New York, to Henry Clay, 5 May 1828; CCL-I. 12. Particularly during the early part of the season, he would wait until several ships could be visited at once before making his appearance at Whampoa. Although most American vessels were far smaller than the towering indiamen, they paid really extraordinary sums. The Hoppo’s cumsha rarely varied from Tls 1950, but the measurement charges fluctuated considerably. A series of ships on which William Bell was supercargo paid the following fees in the period before the War of 1812: America, Capt. Sorby, 1788–89 Washington, Capt. Hodgkinson, 1790–91 Eliza, Capt. Cowman, 1805–6 Eliza, Capt. Murphy, 1806–7 Canton, Capt. Murphy, 1809–10

Tls 1431 1259 869 881 1950

William Bell Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, NYPL, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. For another sampling, see John Boit, “Remarks on the Ship Columbia’s Voyage from Canton” (ms at the MHS). Also in the MHS Historical Collections 79 (1941) and now reprinted in book form in Frederic W. Howay, ed., Voyages of the “Columbia” (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969), 421. The Columbia’s expenses were $7,000. Although they dropped somewhat later, the costs of taking a ship upriver remained substantial throughout the pretreaty years. The Lewis family of Philadelphia sent out a number of ships in the 1830s and 1840s. Edwin M. Lewis stated in a letter to Daniel Webster dated 20 April 1843 that his family’s ships had paid cumshas varying from $1,600 to $2,223 per vessel, while measurement had fluctuated from $1,500 to $2,000. See Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789–1906, RG-59, Microcopy #179, Roll #101, NA. 13. Chang Chung-li (or Chung-li Chang), The Income of the Chinese Gentry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962), 164 and 190 (quoting Hsia Hsieh, Chung-hsi chi-shih [1881], ch’uan 3). Apparently the procedure had not changed greatly since the mid-eighteenth century. See F. Hirth, “The Hoppo-Book of 1753,” Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (new series) 17 (1882): 228–29. 14. CR 11 (June 1842): 331. See also RBF, PRs (Boston, 1882), 42–43 and several affidavits taken by Consul Wilcocks located in the William Law Collection, NYPL. 15. Some of these gifts were truly magnificent. See, for example, the Grand Turk bowl at the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. As a parting cumsha in 1819, the hong merchant Puankhequa paid B. P. Tilden’s export duties, which amounted to something like five hundred dollars; Tilden, I: 363 (Second Voyage, 10 September 1818). 16. The Grand Chop of the ship Astreae (1789) measures 211⁄2 inches by 29 inches, PP. 17. See WCH, Bits of Old China (London, 1885), 217–18 and ED to brothers, 17 December 1840, DP. 18. Tilden gives an amusing description of the ubiquitous crowds of insistent gamins (“Father’s Journals,” II: 182 [Fourth Voyage, 12 January 1832] and II: 33 [Fifth Voyage, 1 August 1833]).

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19. Robert Peabody, The Log of the Grand Turks (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1926), 94. This work contains an excellent description of the measurement ceremony, and because the relevant documents in the Derby Collection at the Peabody Essex Museum have disappeared, this book remains one of the few sources of information on Derby’s early voyages. 20. Even today, under far different circumstances, the perceptive Alberto Moravia has caught Canton’s distinctive Ortsgeist: “Canton is a city of arcades, a kind of Chinese Bologna drowned in the humidity, the sultriness and delirious promiscuity of the tropics.” See Ronald Strom, trans., The Red Book and the Great Wall (New York: Farrar, Slrans and Giroux, 1968), 30. 21. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 32 (Fifth Voyage, 1 August 1833). 22. These insects, incidentally, ruined an undetermined quantity of US consular records at Canton. See Enclosure 3 to State Despatch 51, American Consul General, Canton, subject “Shipment of Canton’s Archives and Records to Washington,” 3. 23. These terraces were removed by order of Commissioner Lin in 1839; RBF to wife, 7 July 1839, RBFP. 24. WCH, “Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton, 1839,” at the Boston Athenaeum. For another resident’s griping at the inconvenience occasioned by coolies’ washing windows, see JRL to Mary R. Latimer, 30 March 1830, LP. 25. “Canton is a much larger place than I expected to find. [T]he factory’s [sic] are very large and commodious buildings, the dining room and the parlours are on the 2d floor, and very large, and nicely furnished and filled with handsome pictures.” WHL II to Josiah O. Low, 5 October 1839, LMFP. 26. Hosea Ballou Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol. I, The Period of Conflict, 1834–1860 (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1910), 71–72. 27. Josiah Quincy, ed., The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (Boston, 1847), 72. There are numbers of paintings of the factories on canvas, paper, wood, and even porcelain. Probably the best collection of such paintings in the United States is to be found at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, but many libraries, historical societies, and private persons own originals that are not catalogued. 28. A number of fine paintings of this disaster are in existence. See especially those at the Peabody Essex Museum. 29. Dorr to John and James Dorr, 15 February 1800, Dorr Letterbook I. In 1831 Tilden comments on many of the same sights. See Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 162–63 (Fourth Voyage, 25 November 1831). 30. David Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China (London, 1836), 76–77. John D. Sword, a Philadelphia merchant, stated that the streets were five to eight feet wide. J. D. Sword to Mary Parry, 17 January 1836, Sword Papers, HSP. Cf. WHL to Seth Low, 26 October 1839, LMFP. 31. W[illiam] W. Wood, Sketches of China (Philadelphia, 1830), 95. 32. William F. Mayers, N. B. Dennys, and Charles King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan (London, 1867), 144 and 151. 33. Edmund Roberts, Embassy to the Eastern Courts of Cochin-China, Siam and Muscat (New York, 1837), 156–57. 34. Webster, Canton, to Caleb Cushing, Macao, 30 March 1844, Cushing Papers, L/C. 35. Wood, Sketches of China, 94 and WHL II to Seth Low, 26 October 1839, LMFP. 36. Wood, Sketches of China, 215. 37. Shaw, Journals, 183. 38. WCH, Bits of Old China, 4.

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39. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (London, 1882), 108–9. 40. Edmund Roberts’s Journal, Roberts Collection, L/C. 41. Mayers, Dennys, and King, Treaty Ports, 158. 42. Wood, Sketches of China, 141. 43. Howay, Voyages of the Columbia, 423. 44. Sullivan Dorr to Joseph and John Dorr, 21 January 1800, Dorr LB I. 45. JRL to Mary Latimer, 30 March 1830, LP; and NK to wife, 15 December 1844, KP. 46. £91,343, to be exact. Parliamentary Papers, H/C, 1830, Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, V: Appendix IV, 590–91. 47. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 279–81 (Third Voyage, 24 September 1818). 48. 30 July 1844, HP. 49. JRL to Henry Latimer, 26 January 1831, LLB. See also NK to wife, 15 December 1844, KP. 50. John Heard III, “Diary, 1891,” 33–34. See also Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 466; and WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 53–54. For the best study of the comprador, see Hao Yen-p’ing (also known as Yen-p’ing Hao), The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970). 51. See WCH, Bits of Old China (1855; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1976), 217–18; ED’s diary, 2 April 1842; and Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II:  329–31 (Third Voyage, 1 December 1818). Puankhequa, like Howqua, came from a mercantile family and was no nouveau riche, though the family fortunes waxed and waned. Hunter once reported that his wealth was $20 million. Tilden said his estate was $10 million (Fourth Voyage, 28 October 1831). See also White, “Hong Merchants,” 47–79, passim and Arthur W. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1943; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1972), 505–606. 52. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 199–207 (Third Voyage, 1 December 1818). 53. For further information on the expensive lifestyle of the Chinese gentry, see Ho Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962), 154–61. 54. WHL II to Josiah O. Low, 5 October 1839, LMFP. 55. S. Wells Williams to his father, 21 January 1838, quoted in Frederick W. Williams, Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams (New York, 1889), 107–8. This, it might be noted, was a missionary’s breakfast. Cf. Rebecca Kinsman Monroe, “Life in Macao in the 1840’s,” EIHC 86, no. 1 (January 1950): 17. 56. Osmond Tiffany, The Canton Chinese (Boston, 1849), 229–30. See also JH to parents, 5 March 1844, HP. 57. Gideon Nye, The Morning of My Life in China (Canton, 1873), 33. 58. WHL to SR, 11 July 1833, RP. 59. A sizeable collection of his letters is to be found in the Knox Papers, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. 60. See my article “A Study in Failure: Hon. Samuel Snow,” Rhode Island History 25, no. 1 (January 1966): 1–8. 61. See my article “Bad Luck in the China Trade,” Rhode Island History 25, no. 3 (July 1966): 73–80. 62. See my article “The Edward Carrington Collection,” Rhode Island History 21, no. 3 (January 1963): 16–21 and my reports in the Year Book of the American Philosophical Society, 1961, 359–60 and for 1963, 390–91, 298–300. 63. Van Braam, An Authentic Account of the Embassy of the Dutch East India Company (2 vols., London, 1798), see introduction. 64. Peter Dobell, Travels in Kamchatka and Siberia with a Narrative of a

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Residence in China (2 vols., London, 1830), passim and “Peter Dobell on the Massacre of Foreigners in Manila, 1820,” NYPL Bulletin 7 (June 1903): 198–200. 65. George Chinnery is a fascinating figure, and, until recently, he has been much underappreciated as an artist. He was prolific, and his paintings are to be found in museums and private collections in America, Britain, India, and China. 66. JRL to James Latimer, 30 September 1832, LLB; and BCW to JRL, 8 May 1828, LP. 67. JRL to James Latimer, 30 November 1833; and JRL to Mrs. Warnack, same date, LP. 68. Abeel inspired many other missionaries. See Williams, Life of Williams, 61 n, and Edward T. Corwin, Manual of the Reformed Church in America, 3rd ed. (New York, 1879), 161–63. 69. Roberts was a most peculiar man. Latourette describes him as “strikingly uncouth” and possessed of “marked eccentricities”; DAB VIII, Part 2, 8. 70. George H. Danton, The Culture-Contacts of the United States and China: The Earliest Sino-American Culture Contacts 1784–1844 (1931; reprint, New York: Octagon Press, 1974), 83. 71. His efficiency was evident everywhere. In the Wetmore Papers is an invitation to W. S. Wetmore dated 12 July 1841. Wetmore was visiting London at the time, and Parker seized the opportunity to invite him to a meeting of friends of the Medical Missionary Society. To the invitation he added a personal note urging Wetmore to attend. Parker was in the midst of a very successful campaign to organize a regular system of financing medical missions in China. Such personal touches were second nature to Parker, who rarely overlooked an opportunity to promote the institutions to which he had dedicated his life. 72. Corwin, Reformed Church, 403–4. Cf. William Dean, The China Mission (New York, 1859), 357. 73. Corwin, Reformed Church, 245. Cf. Frederick T. Persons’s article in the DAB III: 389–90. 74. Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1909), 16–17. 75. William Elliot Griffis, A Maker of the New Orient (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1902), 16–17. 76. William Dean, China Mission (New York, 1859), 375. Harriet Low called him “something of a Goth.” See Elma Loines, ed., The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family (Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing House, 1953), 190; and Williams, Life of Williams, 92. 77. Williams, Life of Williams, 19–20, and K. S. Latourette in the DAB X (Part 2): 290. 78. Quoted in Williams, Life of Williams, 474–75. 79. Quote in ibid., 475. 80. Some of these consuls were really British subjects who held their commissions in order to avoid the Hon. Company’s restrictions. See Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 25–28. For an account of the British achievement of domination over the other European nations in the China trade, see Earl H. Pritchard, “The Struggle for the Control of the China Trade in the Eighteenth Century,” PHR III (September 1934): 280–85. 81. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 56–57 (Fifth Voyage, 28 August 1833). 82. Ibid., 58. 83. Tiffany, Canton Chinese, 244. 84. Ibid., 246.

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85. Quoted from Peter Parker’s journal in George B. Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick, The Life, Letters and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter Parker, M.D. (Boston, 1896), 107. 86. Tiffany, Canton Chinese, 20–22; and JH, “Diary, 1891,” 28. Of the many expenses to which Americans were subjected at Canton, clothes were certainly the most negligible. Tiffany says that the trousers and jackets cost only “a little more than a dollar each.” 87. JH to parents, 7 August 1841, HP. 88. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926–29), V: 352–53. 89. See, for example, Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931), I: 140–41. 90. CWK to CNT, 24 April 1837, TP. 91. Shaw, Journals, 179–80 and Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 244–45 (Second Voyage, 12 November 1816). 92. “Literary Notices,” CR IV (June 1835): 96–97. See also CReg, 26 May 1835. 93. E. C. Bridgman to J. Evarts, 16 April 1830; ABCFM, SCM I. See also the catalog in Amoy Mission, ABCFM, and [A.] Raymond Irwin and Ronald Staveley, The Libraries of London, 2d rev. ed. (London: Library Association, 1961), 174. 94. JMF to SR, 16 November 1834; and RP and JMF to Mrs. Forbes, 30 April 1836; FP. 95. Rebecca Chase Kinsman, 3 December 1843, quoted in “Life in Macao in the 1840’s,” EIHC 86, no. 1 (January 1950): 34. 96. See JMF to Mrs. Forbes, 25 March 1836 and 30 April 1836, FP. Also JMF, Letters and Recollections, vol. 1, ed. Sarah H. Forbes (Boston, 1889), 86. 97. The Hon. Company’s vessels had conducted boat races at Whampoa long before the Americans took them up. From its inception the Canton Register always reported faithfully on the contests. 98. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 147–48 (Fourth Voyage, 15 November 1831). 99. Ibid., 86–87 (Sixth Voyage, 3 September 1835). 100. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 47. See also Basil Lubbock, The Opium Clippers (Boston: Charles E. Lauriat, 1933), 147–48. 101. Morse, Chronicles, IV: 174. 102. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 128–29 (Fourth Voyage, 11 September 1831). 103. JH to parents, 18 December 1844 and to AH, same date, HP. 104. Wood, Sketches of China, 80. 105. See WCH, Bits of Old China, 176–77 and Wood, Sketches of China, 85–92. 106. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 47 (Fifth Voyage, 1 August 1833). 107. JRL to Mary Latimer, 31 March 1831, LP. In this letter Latimer mentions an incident that demonstrates graphically how this was done, though it must have been humiliating to the callow young Philadelphia supercargo involved. 108. Nathaniel Kinsman notes this practice in his letters to his wife. W. S. Wetmore (not the founder of the firm) reported that this custom was still followed in the 1860s. Seating at meals was very traditional with the head of the house at the head of the table. See JC to AH, 5 January 1840, HP. 109. Nye, Morning of My Life in China, 57–58. 110. Ibid., 33. 111. JH to “Charley” [Brown], 4 April 1845, HP. Harriet Low states that Charles (“Chay,” also known as “Cha”) Beale was illegitimate; Diary, IV: 9 (27 March 1832). John Hart (or Hartt) of Perkins & Co., William C. Hunter and Benjamin Wilcocks

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fathered children by Macaoese or Chinese women; Hart’s will, dated 1828, RP; ED’s diary, 4 and 29 May 1843 and JRL to James Latimer, 30 November 1833, LLB. 112. 26 September 1844; HP. Also ED’s diary, 4 and 29 May 1843; Wood, Sketches of China, 80; and CReg, 3 February 1830. Finally see William Hickey, Memoirs of William Hickey, vol. 1, ed. Alfred Spencer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), 198. Hickey, the scapegrace son of a prominent British lawyer, was in Canton in 1769. At that time he reported that operating out of Lob-Lob Creek, near Whampoa, was a whole class of water-borne prostitutes, whose services presumably helped to calm restless sailors during their “lay-days” at the anchorage; little other information exists on this enterprise. The only substantial reference to Chinese prostitution by an American that I have yet located is in Dobell’s Travels in Kamtchatka and Siberia, vol. 2, 140–41. See also Peter Parker’s journal for 7 September 1835; ABCFM, SCM: 187, 17 (2). There are good reasons for doubting Parker’s authority, but Dobell is another matter. To my knowledge sexual relations between Chinese and Americans were very rare until the Opium War. For the growth of prostitution thereafter, see Peter Ward Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 265 and 322. 113. These were announced in the newspapers. Harriet Low rarely missed a performance, and she reported on everything. 114. CPress, 5 June 1841. This was the so-called Luso Brittanic Theatre. The Portuguese also had amateur theatricals. See CReg, 1 March 1836 and CPress, 29 May 1841. 115. CPress, 29 May 1841 and 22 October 1842. 116. WHL to SR, 29 April and 27 May 1833, RP. 117. CPress, 18 May 1829 and 15 May 1830; and PSF, “Journal,” 26 July 1843, FP. Harriet Low also mentions many horse races. 118. “There are a good many horses from Arabia here & every afternoon you may see a dozen Englishmen mounted on their thoroughbreds—costing from 500 to $1000 each.—”; PSF, “Journal,” 26 July 1843. 119. LMFP, in the Manuscript Division, L/C. 120. Beale’s aviary is mentioned by numbers of writers. See HL’s diary, I: 72–73 (25 October 1829) and II: 20 (19 March 1830). Beale’s aviary, garden, and fish ponds are described by J. Stanley Henshaw in Around the World, vol. 2 (New York, 1840), 198–99. S. Wells Williams gives another sketch in The Middle Kingdom, vol. 1 (New York, 1883), 264–65. Williams states that the birds all died or were dispersed after Beale’s death. Elsewhere he reports that “the birds were attacked by a kind of murrain . . . and most of them died.” See “Recollections of China Prior to 1840,” Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (new series) 8 (1874): 8. 121. On the grounds of the Casa de Horta. 122. “Journal of Rebecca Chase Kinsman on Her Voyage to China in 1843” (typed copy in BL), 38–39. Also EIHC 90, no. 3 (July 1954): 289–308. 123. This was the sumptuous “Arrowdale” to which Edward Delano refers in his diary. The quotation comes from “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman at Macao, China,” EIHC 86, no. 4 (October 1950): 328. For other examples of the kind of dwelling in which Americans lived at Macao, see Williams, Life of Williams, 83. Harriet Low describes many Macao houses including the Casa da Horta where Camoens is supposed to have lived while writing the Lusiads. 124. PSF, “Journal,” 26 July 1843, FP; AH to SR, 12 July 1843; RP and ED’s diary, 4 May and 24 and 25 July 1843, DP. 125. WCH, Bits of Old China, 267–68. 126. The only mention I have found of the Fourth of July other than Harriet Low’s remark on 4 July 1831 (III: 40) that “most of the Americans dine with the

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Consul today” is the comment of P. S. Forbes that the holiday was never celebrated at Canton. PSF, “Journal,” 4 July 1843, FP. It may be significant that there was only an acting consul at Canton in 1831 when Harriet Low mentioned the matter. 127. PSF to wife, 27 December 1843, FP. Cf. CReg, 3 January 1841. 128. John Heard stated that the celebration continued for ten days. JH to “Fred,” 25 February 1845, HP. 129. Tiffany, Canton Chinese, 203–6. For a more extended and accurate account of the festival, see Wolfram Eberhard, Chinese Festivals (Taipei: Orient Cultural Service, 1972), 1–59. 130. NK to Mrs. Kinsman, 12 February 1844, KP. 131. PSF to Mrs. Forbes, 18 February 1844, FP. 132. JH to “Fred,” 26 February 1845, HP. Cf. the anonymous account in The Englishman in China (London, 1860), 102. 133. PSF, “Journal,” 2 June 1843, FP. See Eberhard, Chinese Festivals, 77–104. 134. PSF, “Journal,” 28 July 1843, FP; CR 12 (December 1841): 662–63 and 13 (March 1844): 140. Properly this celebration was part of the New Year’s festivities. See Eberhard, Chinese Festivals, 54–59. Other festivals also appear in the records from time to time, e.g., CR 14 (September 1845): 448 and Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China, 103–7. 135. See below, 162–3, 190–1, and 191–94. 136. Heard and Latimer both seem to have been convinced that Sturgis was the author. See Heard’s diary, 1 October 1833, HP; AH to SR, 28 February 1834, RP; and Latimer’s letter to Sturgis, 18 October 1833, LP. Sturgis’s answer is also very informative: 27 October 1833, LP. 137. The ditty was a work of real malice. It alluded to the fact that two of Mrs.  Low’s brothers had been implicated in a particularly grisly Salem murder. A  copy of the lyrics together with illuminating comment can be found in the Latimer Papers. It is partially quoted in Heard’s diary, 1 October 1833, HP. 138. WHL to SR, 5 April 1833, RP; JMF to AH, 26 December 1834, AH to John J. Dixwell, 4 February 1843, and George B. Dixwell to AH, 3 September 1844, HP. 139. Maurice Collis, Foreign Mud (London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1946; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton, 1968), 250–74. See also Chang Hsin-pao (or Hsinpao Chang), Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 57 and 193–94; Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 110; and Brian Inglis, The Opium War (London: Hodder & Staughton, 1976), 124–26. 140. There were many complaints about Keating’s explosive disposition. His servants seem to have suffered especially. He reportedly beat them and on one occasion refused to pay them. Frank H. H. King and Prescott Clarke, A Research Guide to China-Coast Newspapers, 1822–1911 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), 131 and 160. 141. CReg, 26 February and 8 September 1843, contains a series of letters between Innes and James N. Daniels, a former member of the East India Company’s Canton factory. 142. RBF, PRs, 387. See also WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 112. Harriet Low also delivered a very strong opinion (she seems to have been in love with Wood). See Diary, vol. 4, 20–21 (30 April 1832), LMFP. 143. RBF, PRs, 387. 144. To a man the missionaries lamented the neglect of religion among the merchants at Canton. See Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China, 116–17 or E. C. Bridgman to R. Anderson, 26 March 1835, ABCFM, vol. 1, 112. Rev. W. M. Lowrie compiled a long list of instances of Sabbath-breaking among the merchants and by

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the British authorities. See Walter Lowrie, Memoirs of the Rev. Walter M. Lowrie, Missionary to China (New York, 1849), 268. A number of traders frankly admitted their lack of interest. See JMF to Mrs. Forbes, 30 April 1846, FP; and JH to parents, 10 March 1843, HP. Cf. E. C. Bridgman, Journal, 1 March 1830, ABCFM, vol. 1, 26. 145. RBF to James G. Forbes, 25 December 1820, FP. 146. Parker to R. Anderson, 7 March 1837 (semiannual report); ABCFM, vol. 12, 6. 147. JMF to SR, 16 November 1834, RP. The very modern, secular tone of this letter is especially notable. 148. E. C. Bridgman, Journal, 1 March 1830; ABCFM, vol. 1, 26. 149. Peter Parker to R. Anderson, 7 March 1837, ABCFM, vol. 12, 6. 150. Rev. Karl Friedrich August Gützlaff was a colorful Prussian missionary with an extraordinary facility for languages. Often at odds with the other members of the mission over methods, he penetrated the Chinese mainland on his own, years before other missionaries. The latter were prone to regard him as something of a charlatan, with some justification. 151. From a letter dated in December 1834, quoted in Williams, Life of Williams, 66. 152. CReg, 15 July 1841, and CPress, 17 July 1841. 153. Acting as agent for the American community, Latimer forwarded $900 to the widow and orphans of Francis Terranova, the American seaman executed by the Chinese in 1821. The sum was the result of a subscription taken up among American merchants in Canton. See below, 120–1. JRL to John Broadbent (US consul), Messina, Italy, 26 September 1823, LP. 154. See, for example, the CReg for the summer of 1829. This sort of charity seems to have been discouraged by Chinese officialdom as a general rule. 155. The factories had been looted after the evacuation and prior to the British attack. They were later destroyed by a succession of fires and attacks during and after the war. For the new construction in the Square, see NK to Mrs. Kinsman, 28 November 1843, KP. For further information on Bull, see “Necrology,” in Proceedings of the Rhode Island Historical Society for 1885–86, 75–80. 156. CR 2 (August 1833): 165. Mayers, Dennys, and King report the existence in 1867 of publicly supported homes for the blind, the aged, and orphans (Treaty Ports, 180–81). Cf. Hirth (Hoppo Book, 233), who reports that each ship paid Tls 132 for the poor. Wakeman states that the tax was 3%; Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, Late Ch’ing, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 164–66. Cf. the discussion of the customs administration after the Treaty of Nanking in Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, Appendix B, 58. This document mentions in passing the “Tls 40,000–50,000 a year paid by the Cohong from levies on the trade for the support of various charities.” 157. See Ch’u T’ung-tsu (or T’ung-tsu Ch’u), Local Government, 161. 158. WCH, Bits of Old China, 17. This happened in 1833. At the end of the summer in the same year, there was a record rainfall followed by the worst flood in memory. The following June an even more destructive flood struck Canton. See CR 2 (September 1833): 238–39 and CReg, 24 June 1834. 159. Dorr to J. and J. Dorr, 15 February 1800, Dorr LB I. 160. Chronicles, IV: 64–66. See also CR 4 (May 1835): 34–37; and Samuel Russell & Co. to Daniel Crommelin & Co., 23 November 1822, Samuel Russell & Co. LB, RP. 161. CR 4 (May 1835): 30–37; and CReg, 9 June 1835. 162. NK to Mrs. Kinsman, 1 December 1844, KP. 163. See, for example Anon., The Englishman in China, 32–34.

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164. The first US consul at Hong Kong, Thomas W. Waldron, died of cholera less than twelve months after his arrival. “The Daily Life of Mrs. N. Kinsman at Macao, China,” EIHC 86, no. 3 (July 1950): 280. 165. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 48 (First Voyage, 1 September 1815). 166. In an admirable article Rhoads Murphey has argued persuasively that China at this period was prosperous, productive, and well managed. However foreigners’ exposure to abject poverty would appear to clash with Murphey’s interpretation, at least by American standards, for the Canton area. See “The Treaty-Ports and China’s Modernization,” in Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner, eds., The Chinese City Between Two Worlds (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), 17–71. Indeed such a view flies in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. Cf. Ho Ping-ti, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China, 220–21; and Wolfram Eberhard, Social Mobility in Traditional China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), 228 and 276. See also Howay, Voyages of the Columbia, 422; WCH, Bits of Old China, 15; CR 2 (September 1833): 238–39; and CReg, 24 June 1834. 167. Fitch W. Taylor, The Flag Ship, vol. 2 (New York, 1840), 175–76. See also E. Townsend to “Brother,” 8 January 1799, quoted in “The Diary of Mr. Ebenezer Townsend, Jr.,” New Haven Colony Society Papers 4 (1888): 97. 168. V. K. Wellington Koo, The Status of Aliens in China, Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 1912), vol. 50, no. 2. 169. Fletcher Webster to Caleb Cushing, 7 April 1844, Cushing Papers. 170. See PSF to Mrs. Forbes, 24 November 1843, FP; NK to Mrs. Kinsman, 24 and 27 November 1843, KP; E. C. Bridgman et al. to Rufus Anderson, January 1844 (semiannual report), ABCFM, vol. 1a, and many other accounts. 171. Eliza G. Bridgman, Life and Labors of Elijah C. Bridgman (New York, 1864), 48–49. 172. CR 3 (June 1834): 68–83; and Morse, Chronicles, III: 7–8. 173. Chronicles, III: 116–23, and 144–46. 174. WCH, Bits of Old China, 17–18. 175. “We rowed through streets at least 1–11⁄2 miles—on each side was the boat population of Canton and through the centre were passing to & fro Boats 20 times more numerous & with less confusion than the omnibuses & carriages in Broadway opposite the Astor House”; PSF, “Journal,” 15 May 1843, FP. 176. See the lush descriptions of flower boats given in J. Stanley Henshaw, Around the World, vol. 2 (New York, 1840), 250. 177. Wood, Sketches of China, 56.

Chapter 2. American Business under the Old System 1. Louis Dermigny, La Chine et l’occident: le commerce a Canton au XVIIIe siecle, 1719–1833, vol. 3 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N.), 1161. 2. See Appendix 2 for statistics and their sources. For an updated view of the trade as a whole see Robert Gardella, “The Antebellum Canton Tea Trade: Recent Perspectives,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 261–70. See also Ch’en Kuo-tung (Anthony Ch’en), “Transaction Practices in China’s Export Tea Trade, 1760–1833” (paper presented at the Second Conference on Modern Chinese Economic History, Taipei, Academia Sinica, 5–7 January 1989). Undoubtedly Professor Gardella’s book on the history of the tea trade, Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994) will be the standard work on the subject for some time to come. 3. SW to WSW, 20 August 1837, WP. See also the testimony of Captain Abel

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Coffin, 2 March 1830, Parliamentary Papers, First Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, V: 127, questions 1827 and 1828. 4. Listed in descending order of quality. 5. Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 11 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933), 123. 6. Much of this information is contained in a contemporary account, “Description of the Tea Plant,” CR 8 (July 1839): 132–64. For a recent description of the Canton tea trade, see Robert Gardella, “The Antbellum Canton Tea Trade: Recent Perspectives,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 261–70. See also Professor Gardella’s work mentioned in note 2 above. 7. Bryan P. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 337–38 (Second Voyage, 1  December 1818) and II: 37–38 (Fifth Voyage, 1 August 1833). Also Benjamin Shreve to J. Peabody and G. Tucker, 20 November 1817, Shreve Papers, Peabody Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. See also Sullivan Dorr to John and Joseph Dorr, 20 December 1801, Dorr LB II; and JRL to Smith and Nicoll, 18 April 1826 and to Edward H. Nicoll, 10 December 1833, JRL to JL, 24 March 1832, LLB. Finally see Edward Carrington & Co. to Ephraim Talbot, 26 April 1819, CP. 8. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 189–90 and CR 4, no. 288 (September 1836) contain accounts of two of these “conspiracies” by the “black tea men.” See also Samuel Russell & Co. to A. L. Forestier & Co., 27 November 1821; Samuel Russell & Co. LB, RP. 9. Another firm with a good reputation for buying silks was Olyphant & Co., but little information on that concern’s trade has survived. 10. JRL to James Latimer, 17 April 1832, LLB. 11. See below, 106–8. 12. R&Co to JMF, 17 December and 17 April 1832, FP; Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 146–47 (Fourth Voyage, 15 November 1831) and JRL to JPC, 21 November 1831, LLB. 13. Hunt’s, XIII (September 1843): 298; and Hosea B. Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926–29), III: 329 and IV: 385. 14. Ibid., III: 367 and IV: 385. 15. Although some china reached America during the colonial period, most of the ware with which Americans became familiar arrived after the beginning of the old China Trade (i.e., after 1793). Most export china was mass-produced in recognizable blue-and-white patterns, but Canton merchants were able to order finer porcelain in bespoke patterns, colors, with monograms, ships, scenes or portraits on their china, which was then painted and glazed locally. 16. Randle Edwards, “Ch’ing Legal Jurisdiction over Foreigners,” in Essays on China’s Legal Tradition, ed. Jerome Cohen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 222–23. Edwards has noted elsewhere that the manner in which the People’s Republic carries on foreign trade bears a striking resemblance to the “principles and practices of the old China trade.” See “The Old Canton System of Foreign Trade,” in Law and Politics in China’s Foreign Trade, ed. Victor H. Li (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), 362 and 377. 17. For example, RBF to THP, 12 December 1831, RBF’s LB, RBFP. 18. Morse, Chronicles, IV: 300. Edward Farmer traces the origins of the “Eight Regulations” back to the visit of the presumptuous English merchant, James Flint. See Farmer’s “James Flint versus the Canton Interest,” Papers on China (East Asian Research Center, Harvard University) 17 (1963). 19. CR 3: 580–84 (April 1835); WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (1882; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1970), 28–30, and Hosea B. Morse, International

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Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol. 1, The Period of Conflict, 1834–1860 (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1910), 69–71. 20. S. Wells Williams, “Recollections of China Prior to 1840,” Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (new series) 8 (1874): 1–21. 21. William Hickey, Memoirs of William Hickey, vol. 1, ed. Alfred Spencer (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), 218. 22. See the letter from the Select Committee to the Court dated 2 March 1830; Parliamentary Papers, Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, H/C, 1830, V: 657 and 658; and Morse, Chronicles, IV: 234–41. 23. Gideon Nye, The Morning of My Life in China (Canton, 1873), 28. 24. A useful guide to provincial administration is Ch’u T’ung-tsu, Local Government in China under the Ch’ing (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962). 25. See above, esp. note 7. The standard Chinese source is Liang Chia-pin, Kwangtung shi-san-hang k’ao [A study of the thirteen hongs of Kuangtung] (Taipei, 1960). In English see Ann B. White, “The Hong Merchants of Canton” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1967). The most recent work is Ch’en Kuo-tung (also known as Anthony Ch’en), The Insolvency of the Chinese Hong Merchants, 1760– 1843, Institute of Economics Monograph Series No. 45 (Nankang, Taipei: Institute of Economics, Academia Sinica, June 1990). 26. Trade was apparently viewed with such distaste in the Confucian order that gentry members were barred from becoming brokers. Yet at least some members of the Cohong were of gentle origin. They seem to have avoided the consequences of their actions by the custom of employing different names as gentry and as hong merchants. The famous Howqua, for instance, was Wu Ping-chien, and the two Puankhequas known to Americans after 1796 were P’an Yu-tu and P’an Cheng-wei. Some scholars have questioned the view that the Ch’ing bureaucracy was unsympathetic to commerce. See, for example, Thomas Metzger, “Ch’ing Commercial Policy,” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 1, no. 3 (February 1966): 4–10; and White, “Hong Merchants,” passim. For succinct accounts of Chinese ambivalence on the subject, see Wellington K. K. Chan, Merchants, Mandarins and Modern Enterprise in Late Ch’ing China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), 15–27; and Frederic Wakeman, Jr., The Fall of Imperial China (New York: Free Press, 1975), 39–40. 27. “Only when wealth was combined with political power could  .  .  .  people secure protection for themselves and their families.” Ch’u, Local Government, 185. See also Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 45. Yet some scholars believe that there was much crossing of the line between the gentry and the merchants—so much so that a class of “gentlemen-merchants” had emerged, at least some of whom were developing an urban, bourgeois culture. See Wolfram Eberhard, Social Mobility in Traditional China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), 216–17, 245–47, 263, and 265. 28. Hunter describes it in some detail and calls it “one of the ‘sights’ of the suburbs.” Bits of Old China (1885; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1976), 172–73. “The building’s grandeur is the more notable since other public structures could be severely functional.” Cf. J. G. Keer, “Description of the Great Examination Hall at Canton,” Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (new series) 3 (December 1886): 63–71. 29. See Frederic Wakeman, Jr., in Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, Late Ch’ing, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 164–66. Wakeman says that a 3 percent tariff on all imported articles (called the hang-yung) supported the Consoo Fund. Certainly there were duties on many kinds of goods. Charles

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Marjoribanks of the British East India Company’s factory once compiled a list of forty-six different dutiable articles. See his testimony, 23 February 1830, Parliamentary Papers, H/C, 1830, V: question 655. See also Greenberg, British Trade, 52 n. 3. 30. Edwards, “Old Canton System,” 375. 31. See White, “Hong Merchants,” 161–68 and Greenberg, British Trade, 67–69. 32. Greenberg, British Trade, 52–58, and the testimony of Charles Marjoribanks, op. cit., especially questions 681–85. 33. Hao Yen-ping, The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970). 34. See above, 22–23. 35. See Derk Bodde, “Basic Concepts of Chinese Law: The Genesis and Evolution of Legal Thought in Traditional China,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107, no. 5 (October 1963), 375–98, passim. 36. Ch’u, Local Government, 26. 37. CR VII (July 1838): 57. 38. Greenberg, British Trade (quoting W. S. Davison before the Select Committee of the House of Lords in 1830), 71. 39. JRL to Smith and Nicoll, 27 September 1825, LLB. 40. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (1882; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1970), 48. This has been estimated to worth $52 million. See Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Strangers at the Gate (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), 44. 41. See Account Book of the Ship Eliza, New York to Canton, 1805, William Bell Papers, Constable/Pierrepont Collection, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, NYPL, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 42. Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, ed. Josiah Quincy (1847; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1968), 183. 43. RBF, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844), 19. See also JH to parents, 18 December 1844, HP. 44. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 40. 45. The richest hong merchants lived very well indeed. See White, “Hong Merchants,” 157–58. Some of the best accounts are to be found in Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” especially I: 61–63 (First Voyage, 1 October 1815), which describes a party at Conseequa’s house and 193–207 (Third Voyage, 1 December 1818), which tells of an evening at Howqua’s. A very full narrative of Tilden’s entertainment by Puankhequa is reprinted under the title “An Old Mandarin Home,” ed. Laurence Waters Jenkins, EIHC 71, no. 2 (April 1935): 102–19. 46. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 212–13 (Second Voyage, 1 December 1818). 47. BCW to JRL, 18 March 1829, LP; and Nye, Morning of My Life, 32. Best known of the Chinese artists was probably Lamqua, who is said to have modeled a figure of Commissioner Lin for Madame Tussaud. See Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (New York, 1958; pb ed. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968), 11. The most recent study of Chinnery is Robin Hutcheon, Chinnery: The Man and the Legend (Hong Kong: South China Morning Post Ltd., 1975), and most beautifully and completely, Carl L. Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, 1991), Chapter 3, “Lam Qua—‘Handsome Face Painter,’” 72–105. 48. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 880 (Fifth Voyage, 8 December 1833). 49. ED’s diary, 20 January 1842. See also PSF, “Diary,” 14 May 1843, FP. Mrs.  Kinsman reported to her sister that Howqua’s son had given an elaborate dinner of thirty courses for his foreign friends in “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman in China, 1846.” EIHC 88, no. 1 (January 1952): 73–74.

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50. This same closeness also appeared between Americans and some “outside merchants.” The exchange of commercial information, aid in collecting debts from delinquents of one’s own nationality, and other manifestations of friendship were common, as were gifts. William R. Talbot wrote his brother in New York in 1836 asking him to purchase a pair of hanging lamps for three hundred fifty dollars to five hundred dollars. He specified that they be “showy as possible and plenty of chased gilt work about them, with long, glass drops triangular shape, etc. etc.—as [a] present for Moushing [sic].” WRT to CNT, 16 March 1836, TP. 51. RBF, Personal Reminiscences (Boston, 1882), 370. 52. See Tilden’s amusing account of a hong merchant’s use of one foreigner to write his letters and another to read them in “Father’s Journals,” I: 374–75 (following Third Voyage, “Boston, 1820”). Carrington enjoyed a close relationship with Conseequa at least until 1811. 53. PSF, “Diary,” 9 September 1843, FP. 54. RBF to JMF, 13 March 1850, RB Forbes Microfilms, Reel 14, Frame 393, quoted in Duncan Yaggy, “John Forbes, Entrepreneur” (PhD diss., Brandeis, June 1974), 188 n. 84. 55. JMF to Howqua, 5 August 1843, FP. 56. James and Thomas H. Perkins Accounts Current and other record books, PP; JMF to Mrs. Forbes, 11 July 1835, FP; AH to B&S, 25 February 1835, AH’s LB, 5 February–3 August 1835; HP and JMF, Letters and Recollections, vol. 1, ed. Sarah Forbes Hughes (Boston, 1889), 101. During the Opium War, Howqua left very sizeable funds with his American friends until “after this English business is settled”; Howqua to JMF, 28 June 1840 and Howqua’s LB, 1840–43 (typescript), BL. 57. Notes on Russell & Co. by Carl Crow in FP index, BL. 58. JRL to James Latimer, Jr., 30 September 1832, LLB. See also Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 42–50; and Howqua to JPC, 1 June 1840, Houqua’s LB, 1840–43. 59. For example, JH to “Mr. Thayer,” 2 December 1844, HP. 60. See Karl Polanyi, “The Economy as Instituted Process,” in Karl Polanyi, Conrad Arensberg, and Harry W. Pearson, Trade and Market in the Early Empires (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957), 255. 61. Edward Carrington & Co. and Cyrus Butler to SR, 7 June 1819, RP. 62. Testimony of Charles Marjoribanks, see note 29 above. Of course the poverty of many hong merchants reduced their ability to hold out. 63. Letter to Ebenezer Dorr, 21 November 1799, Dorr LB. 64. H. B. Morse, International Relations, vol. 1 (London and New York: Longmans Green & Co., 1910), 85. Here Morse’s enthusiasm got the better of his accuracy. The commercial record belies his comment on written contracts. He may have meant that larger firms often did not bother with contracts. For further information, see below 400 esp. note 132. Cf. Robert Gardella, Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757–1937 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1994), 36–37. 65. William B. Weeden, Early Oriental Commerce in Providence (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1908), 20. This is reprinted from MHS, Proceedings, 3d series, I (December 1907): 235–87. 66. “Stephen Girard,” Hunt’s 4, no. 4 (April 1841): 364–65. Tilden confirms this story in an unusual manner. On his first voyage to Canton (1816), his ship was stopped by the British admiral from whom the Montesquieu had been ransomed. The latter’s complacent reminiscing about the incident checks pretty closely with the account in Hunt’s. See also Henry Arey, “Girard College and Its Founder,” North American Review 100, no. 85 (January 1865): 70–101. The letters of Girard and others to the State Department requesting permission to ransom the vessel mention the figure of

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$180,000. See Girard to James Monroe, 1 April 1813; C. J. Ingersoll to Monroe, 1 April 1813; and General Joseph Bloomfield to Monroe, 14 April 1813, Miscellaneous Letters to the Department of State, RG-59, M-179, NA. 67. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 174 (First Voyage, 14 April 1816). 68. 25 February 1830, First Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, Parliamentary Papers, H/C, 1830, V: 84, question 1046. 69. At least two men, Rodney Fisher (with Macvicker & Co.) and Charles Blight (with Dent & Co.), both Philadelphians, made their fortunes as members of British firms at Canton. 70. See Part II, Chapter 6, 236ff titled “The Uses of a ‘Competency’: The Later Lives of Canton Residents.” 71. R. B. Forbes had three tours in Canton. These second and third trippers are counted only for their first fortune. 72. Quoted from the subtitle of Anon., Our First Men (Boston, 1846), which contains facts, gossip, and some downright untruths about Boston’s elite. Unfortunately it was not glaringly different from other such compendia in this regard. 73. Wealth was the sole criterion. According to the anonymous author of Our First Men, the only qualification was the reputation of having at least one hundred thousand dollars. In some other compilations the minimum went as low as fifty thousand dollars. 74. JMF to AH, 22 August 1836, HP. The word lac was pidgin, derived, apparently, from lakh (British India). 75. WHL to SR, 8 January 1832, RP. After his second sojourn in China, Forbes admitted to having one hundred ten thousand dollars or one hundred fifteen thousand dollars. See RBF to PSF, 10 November 1843, FP. 76. JH to parents, 14 May 1844, HP. 77. JRL to James Latimer, 2 August 1831, LLB. 78. JH to parents, 23 December 1842, HP. 79. W. A. Smith to JRL, 28 November 1828, LP. 80. “Journal,” 26 July 1843, FP; and ED’s diary, 4 May 1843. 81. Dixwell to Baring Brothers, 15 July 1844, HP. It is indicative but perhaps not surprising that Dixwell had been in China only three years at this time. 82. The Canton residents were hardly unique. Norman S. B. Gras, in describing several functions of the merchant in this period, unwittingly lists a number of sideline businesses developed at Canton. He specifies nine such functions, viz., importing-exporting, wholesaling, retailing, transportation, storage and warehousing, communications, banking, pawn-brokering, and insurance. Business and Capitalism (New York: F. S. Crofts, 1939), 75–80. 83. Susan Mann Jones, “Finance in Ningpo: The ‘Ch’ien Chuang,’ 1750– 1880,” in Economic Organization in Chinese Society, ed. W. E. Wilmott (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1972), 47–77. 84. John Francis Davis, The Chinese, vol. 2 (London, 1836), 396. Gras says that the European rate at this time varied between 6 and 8 percent a year (Gras, Business and Capitalism, 148). 85. “This was not exorbitant, under the circumstances in which it was given. The current rate of interest, with the best security, was 1 per cent. per month on running accounts, while 2 to 3 per cent. on temporary loans per month was common” (The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 39–40). 86. Greenberg, British Trade, 153. Greenberg gives a creditable account of the fluctuations in the interest rate and banking operations generally. See ibid., 152–70. 87. J. & T. H. Perkins to P&Co, 13 May 1807; J[ames] E[liot] C[abot], “Extracts from the Notebooks of J. & T. H. Perkins  .  .  .,” 164–65. Clearly in this kind of

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business, supercargoes could not compete effectively because of the transient nature of their business and their limited funds. 88. This was a common form of mercantile credit, especially in the early period. In respondentia the creditor advanced the loan on the security of the cargo. When the goods reached market, the principal and interest came due, but if the ship was lost, the loan was canceled. This kind of credit was understandably attractive mainly to merchants who lacked capital, for the interest was high. Its early popularity may be judged from the fact that an early name for a section of the Square was “Respondentia Walk.” See Greenberg, British Trade, 158. Advances to correspondents were a form of respondentia, because they were made with the cargo as collateral, although repayment was expected regardless of the fate of the cargo. 89. Difficulties did arise, of course. Cheong discusses this and several other forms of credit at Canton in the 1820s, see his “China Houses,” especially 71–72. Also see his “Beginnings of Credit Finance on the China Coast  .  .  .  ,” Business History 12, no. 2 (July 1971): 87–103. 90. BCW to “Holly” (Hollingsworth Magniac), 12 June 1828 or BCW to JRL, 29 June 1828, LP. 91. That is, the Canton Insurance Co., a British-owned concern. By 1844, there were twenty-five marine insurance agencies at Canton. Of these Jardine’s and Dent’s (Dent & Co., another large British opium-trading firm) represented eleven. John K. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842–1854 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 238, n.d. 92. See P&Co to B&S, 9 January 1817, Hooper-Sturgis Collection, MHS. 93. Ludlow and Goold, New York, to Elias Hasket Derby, Salem, Mass., 28 May 1787, Derby Papers, P&E. 94. Ludlow and Goold to Derby, 21 May 1787, Derby Papers, P&E. 95. WHL to SR, 23 December 1831, RP. 96. There is an insurance rate sheet in the Latimer Papers. 97. Hunt’s 3, no. 166 (August 1840). These rates compared very favorably with those charged on voyages to England and Europe. Two pages later, the same source lists the rates from US Atlantic ports to one port in Britain, France, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and the Mediterranean west of Sicily as 1–11⁄4 to 2 percent. 98. See also Sullivan Dorr to his brothers, 1 August 1801, Dorr LB. 99. Sullivan Dorr to Samuel Snow, 28 February, 18 October, and 30 November 1801, Dorr LB I. 100. Sullivan Dorr to Joseph & John Dorr, 28 July 1802; ibid. 101. China Account Sales Book, CP. 102. WHL to SR, letter beginning 13 August 1831, RP. 103. BCW to JRL, letter beginning 20 April 1829, LP. 104. The officers of the General Washington (Captain Jonathan Donnison, Providence), which arrived at Whampoa in 1788, shared Major Samuel Shaw’s factory from October until January 1789, for which privilege they paid him $944.55; Account Book of the General Washington, 29, RIHS. Ebenezer Townsend noted that it cost him $800 to rent a factory for only 28 days a decade later. Hence, “we took possession of our factory in company with Capt. Swift, which lessens the expense”; Townsend to “Brother,” 26 December 1798, quoted in “The Voyage of the Neptune,” Papers of the New Haven Historical Society 4, no. 85 (1888). 105. For more information on Megee, see my article, “The Merchant as Gambler: Major William Fairchild Megee,” Rhode Island History 28, no. 4 (Fall 1969): 99–110. 106. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” I: 201–2 (Second Voyage, 26 September 1816). See also J. H. Rabinel to EC, 31 October 1815, CP. “Country” referred to India.

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Thus, the country trade was the trade to China from India, and country captains commanded vessels coming from India. 107. SR to Edward Carrington & Co. and Cyrus Butler, 1 January 1823, Russell LB II, RP. 108. Morse, Chronicles, III: 236. 109. Like Captain Megee, Pitman & French also served as auctioneers. The firm had extensive ambitions in the 1820s, but with the death of Pitman in 1832, the company ran into difficulties that ended in a Hawaiian court a decade later. French seems to have had particularly bad luck with partners. His next one went insane. See below 157. 110. John Phillips to JRL, 16 April and 24 May 1832 and “Papers Relating to the Affairs of the Late George Dowdall,” LP. See also Samuel Russell & Company’s “Account Book, 1819,” passim, RP; and Morse, Chronicles, IV: 129. 111. These later English companies were most enterprising. They ventured into the hotel business at Macao, auctioneering, scheduling a packet boat between Canton and Macao, storekeeping, and even running an abortive postal service. 112. Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston, 1817), 41–42. 113. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 128–29 (Fourth Voyage, 11 September 1831). 114. CR V: 427 and 430. Hunter mentions this man as the builder of Jardine’s Harriet, a one hundred-ton opium clipper of considerable notoriety. See WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 71. 115. CR II (May 1833): 6–7 ; and Morse, Chronicles, III: 209. 116. The standard work on journals published by foreigners in China is Frank H. H. King and Prescott Clarke, A Research Guide to China-Coast Newspapers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965). The earliest dated item printed at Canton is a price current of 12 March 1822, RP. 117. CR II (May 1833): 7 ; WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 109; and Samuel Couling, Encyclopaedia Sinica (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, Ltd., 1917), 459. Robert Morrison noted, upon the appearance of this paper, that the proportion of space devoted to the price current was extraordinary. “There is so much ‘price current’ that the paper will not be very current any where [sic] but with the trade,” he complained. At least the main purpose of the sheet was clear. Eliza Morrison, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison, D.D., vol. 2 (London, 1839), 393–84; and King and Clarke, Research Guide, 42–43. 118. Despite the claim of James Matheson, who soon took control, to objectivity (King and Clarke, Research Guide, 16), it remained “an organ of Jardine, Matheson” throughout the pretreaty period; Chang Hsin-pao (also known as Hsin-pao Chang), Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), 245, n. 110. For one American’s disgust with the Register, see JCG to SR, 13 June 1835, RP. See also King and Clarke, Research Guide, 17–19. 119. It was edited first by W. H. Franklyn, but he was soon replaced by Edward Moller, a Prussian merchant residing in Canton. The first issue appeared 12  November 1835, and it continued there until it was transferred to Macao in 1839; it expired in 1844. See Couling, Encyclopaedia Sinica, 459; and King and Clarke, Research Guide, 48. Like the Register the Press was edited by former servants of the East India Company and for some time supported the policies that the old Select Committee had pursued prior to 1834, even to the condemnation of the opium trade. Ultimately the Dent faction came to support the Press along with most Americans. See King and Clarke, Research Guide, 19 and 46–48. 120. HL’s diary, III: 51 (15 August 1831), LMFP; Morse, Chronicles, IV: 356; and Williams, “Recollections of China Prior to 1840,” 17. See also King and Clarke,

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Research Guide, 17–18 and 45. The paper was published from 1831 to 1834 and certainly is more appealing to a modern reader than either of the hardier journals. Another ephemeral publication was the Canton Miscellany, whose title aptly describes the contents. 121. The missionary-linguists obtained much information from the so-called Court Circular or Canton Gazette (Yuen-Ming-Pao), which was printed from wooden blocks and sold in Canton for two cash. It appears to have been the only regular Chinese publication in Canton prior to the introduction of the missionary presses. 122. Letter of instruction to Bridgman from the Prudential Committee of the American Board, 9 October 1829, quoted in Eliza J. G. Bridgman, Life and Labours of Elijah Coleman Bridgman (New York, 1864), 20. 123. Suzanne Wilson Barnett, “Protestant Expansion and Chinese Views of the West,” Modern Asian Studies 6, no. 2 (1972): 149. Cf. Ellsworth C. Carlson, The Foochow Missionaries, 1847–1880 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), 165–69. 124. George H. Danton, The Culture Contacts of the United States and China: The Earliest Sino-American Culture Contacts, 1784–1844 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 53. Because Parker’s hospital was so effective as a missionary vehicle, it is remarkable that it was not even more widely imitated. See Carlson’s analysis of the Foochow mission in this respect (Foochow Missionaries, 168). 125. It became evident very early to both Christians and non-Christians that the splintered nature of Protestantism was crippling missionary activity. American denominations, for the time being, dropped their quarrels in order to cooperate overseas. Some have even suggested that here was the origin of the ecumenical movement. 126. The earlier custom was still common at the turn of the century. Our second consul, Samuel Snow, felt himself under considerable pressure to leave, but the governor of Macao refused to permit him to remain in the Portuguese colony. See Snow’s letters requesting the State Department to intervene with Lisbon (CCL-I). 127. Osmond Tiffany, Jr., The Canton Chinese (Boston, 1849), 223. 128. Tiffany, Canton Chinese. See also WHL to SR, 11 July 1833; RP and JH to “Charley” [Brown], 2 December 1844, HP. 129. For a good recent description of “outside work” in America, see Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston: Colonel T. H. Perkins, 1764–1854 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 146–48. 130. On 5 October 1839 William H. Low II wrote to Josiah Low about the Russell & Co.’s arrangements: “The counting rooms are arranged in fine style, the front one being for the partners and the back ones for the clerks, each one has a desk for himself, and if you want anything you have only to ring your bell, and your boy is at your side,” LMFP. See also ED’s diary, passim, DP. 131. Young John Heard, who had been aboard ship several years, began as the firm’s outside man. In his diary he makes a startling confession: “I knew my work thoroughly, all except buying teas. These I tried hard to learn but I never succeeded worth a cent, indeed, I think there is a good deal of humbug about it. I never let on that I did not know them, and this answered about as well”; “Diary, 1891,” 54, HP. His admission says volumes for the discrimination of the American market. 132. See the articles by Frederic D. Grant, Jr., “Failure of the Li-chu’an Hong: Litigation as a Hazard of Nineteenth Century Foreign Trade,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 243–60; “Hong Merchant Litigation in the American Courts,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 99 (1987): 44–62; and “Merchants, Lawyers and the China Trade of Boston,” Boston Bar Journal 23, no. 8 (September 1979): 5–16.

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133. WHL II to Josiah O. Low, 5 October 1839, LMFP. 134. RBF to THP, 21 July 1831, RBF Papers. 135. RP. 136. Clerks’ salaries varied from about five to fifteen hundred dollars in Russell & Co. More experienced help received up to five thousand dollars a year. See Samuel Monson’s contract, RP. Cf. JH to parents, 14 May 1844, HP; the account current of Edward A. Low, LMFP; and ED’s diary, passim; DP. 137. Heard reports that William H. Low II went home with fifteen thousand dollars after only two years as a clerk with Russell & Co., a job that paid five hundred dollars a year. See JH to parents, 14 May 1844, HP. One way he made money was to ship goods abroad using money loaned to him by his brother, Abbott. See WHL II to Mrs. Harriet Hilliard, 14 February 1840, quoted in Elma Loines, The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family (Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing Co., 1953), 79–80. Possibly a more dramatic example is that of Asa Whitney, bookkeeper for Wetmore & Co. Although he had been established in New York earlier, he seems never to have been admitted to partnership in China. Nevertheless he left Canton after only two years “with a substantial fortune which gave him a comfortable income for the rest of his life.” Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (1950; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1957 and 1971), 12. 138. That is, Lintin Island and other spots occupied by station ships that supplied the illegal trade. 139. Rebecca C. Kinsman to parents, 15 December 1843, quoted in “Life in Macao in the 1840’s,” EIHC 86, no. 1 (January 1950): 36–37. 140. William H. Mason, “Log of the Ship Hope,” 22 October 1802, RIHS. 141. The instructions were dated 23 August 1816, CP. 142. Edward Carrington & Co. to Isaac M. Bull, 28 December 1833, CP. 143. T. P. Bucklin to SW, 26 August 1834, CP. See also Richardson & Whitney to JRL, 18 May 1832, LP. 144. 5 February 1834, RP. 145. JCG to SR, 11 February 1837, RP. 146. Isaac Heylin to JRL, 12 April 1830, LP. 147. James Latimer to JRL, 17 September 1830, LP. 148. WHL to SR, 23 June 1832, RP. 149. Edward Carrington & Co. and Cyrus Butler’s instructions to SR, 26 December 1818, RP. 150. JRL to Henry Toland, 15 March 1831, LLB. 151. JRL to JPC, 22 November 1831, LLB. 152. Girard Papers. 153. JRL to Smith and Nicoll and Smith and Bailey, 9 October 1822, LLB. 154. CReg, 15 November 1836. 155. The first elections put three Americans into office: William S. Wetmore, head of Wetmore & Co.; John C. Green, chief of Russell’s; and Charles W. King, resident partner of Olyphant & Co. Two years later Green was chairman and Warren Delano, then of Russell, Sturgis & Co, and William R. Talbot, of Gordon & Talbot, were members of the Committee. See Anglo-Chinese Kalendar . . . for 1838, xi–xiv. During the opium crisis of 1839, William Wetmore was chairman. 156. CReg, 29 November 1836. 157. CR VI (May 1837): 44. 158. The annual reports of the Chamber are printed in Chinese Repository and Anglo-Chinese Kalendar. 159. The Latimer Papers contain various documents pertaining to referrals of disputes. One labeled “Decision on Reference, Russell & Olyphant” was signed by

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Latimer and Nathan Dunn, 27 October 1826. There had been a bad debt problem for years by this time. Carrington’s friend Conseequa seems to have owed his misfortunes to American merchants who failed to meet their obligations to him. In 1814 he petitioned President Madison to aid him in the collection of debts owed to him by Americans. See Fu Lo-shu (Lo-shu Fu), A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966), vol. I: 391–93. For an account of his litigation in the United States, see Frederic D. Grant, Jr., “The Failure of the Li-ch’uan Hong: Litigation as a Hazard of Nineteenth Century Foreign Trade,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 243–60. 160. CR VI (November 1837): 332–33. 161. Joseph Archer suspected Jardine of attempting to use the Chamber to destroy competition. See Archer to WSW, 3 February 1838, WP. 162. CR VI (November 1837): 330. The Chamber’s policy statements bear a striking resemblance to the policy of the American community and to the views of Dent’s and the Parsees. Upon reflection the probable reason is obvious—this was evidently the lowest common denominator. Had the Chamber passed anything stronger, the Jardine faction would have found itself alone in the organization. 163. CPress, 20 April 1839 (supplement). The British organized their own chamber of commerce the following August. CR VIII (August 1839): 221.

Chapter 3. Opium Transforms the Canton System 1. Most of these items are identified in James Snyder, “Spices, Silks and Teas—Cargoes of the Old China Trade,” Americana 36 (1942): 7–26. 2. Kenneth Scott Latourette, “The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 1784–1844,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 12 (August 1917); Foster Rhea Dulles, The Old China Trade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930); Sydney and Marjorie Greenbie, The Gold of Ophir (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1925); Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921); and other well-known works have covered the field generally. Most of these authors have been charmed by the color and exotic appeal of the trade. While I have no wish to derogate this attraction, there is always a danger that historical accuracy may compete with literary effusion. 3. Decidedly the best thing in the field is Timothy Pitkin, A Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States of America (Hartford, Conn., 1816), especially the more inclusive edition of 1835. See Appendix 2 “Statistics and the American Trade.” 4. Pitkin, Statistical View, 251. Pitkin got his information for the period from June 1800 to January 1803 from Sullivan Dorr, who was acting American consul at the time and must have known, especially because he was probably the leading American fur dealer in Canton. From 1803 to 1818, however, Pitkin has no data. Robert Bennet Forbes gives figures for 1804 to 1813, and because his uncles (his employers), James and Thomas H. Perkins, were among the foremost merchants in the Northwest Coast trade, he was in a position to know more than almost anyone except his own relatives. See his Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844), 28. 5. For more information on the commerce, see Adele Ogden, The California Sea Otter Trade, 1784–1848 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941); James Kirker, Adventures to China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), 2 vols.; and the works of Judge Frederic W. Howay.

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6. Porter, John Jacob Astor, I: 155–248. 7. Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 268 and 316. 8. Both Latourette (“History of Early Relations,” 29, n. 7) and Snyder (“Spices, Silks and Teas,” 21) recognize this fact. Nevertheless, Snyder’s coverage of the specie trade is nil, and Latourette devotes about two pages to this commerce and the bill trade altogether. Both of these authors, by contrast, stress the fur trade heavily. Latourette gives it fifteen pages! Hosea B. Morse, whose interest in the American trade was only peripheral, did far better. The last three volumes of The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926–29) are perhaps still the best source of data on the subject. 9. See Yang Lien-sheng (Lien-sheng Yang), Money and Credit in China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 48–49. 10. JM to James Ryan, 23 May 1840, Macao Letters, JMA. 11. Yang, Money and Credit, 47. 12. W. L. Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1939). Chang Hsin-pao (Hsin-pao Chang) also presents a good discussion of the silver problem in China (Commissioner Lin and the Opium War [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964], 37–46). But undoubtedly the most complete coverage of the financing of the old China trade, including silver importations, is to be found in the various articles of W. E. Cheong: “Trade and Finance in China, 1784–1834,” Business History 7, no. 1 (January 1965): 34–56; “The Beginnings of Credit Finance on the China Coast,” Business History 12, no. 2 (July 1971): 87–103; and “China Houses and the Bank of England Crisis of 1825,” Business History 15, no. 1 (January 1973): 56–73. 13. Cheong, “Beginnings of Credit Finance,” 92. 14. British private traders were eager to get the East India Company out of the China trade altogether. Once the charter had been revoked, Matheson, at least, was vehemently opposed to the retention of Company exchange facilities at Canton. When John Harvey Astell, the Company’s financial agent, took his final leave of China at the end of 1839, Matheson rejoiced. See his letters to John Anderson, Manchester, 8 December, and to Charles Lyall, Calcutta, 14 December 1839; JMA. Matheson had been complaining about Astell’s presence for some time, alleging that it was a violation of the will of Parliament. At least some Americans also welcomed the Company’s exit from Canton. See Francis S. Hathaway to Thomas S. Hathaway, New Bedford, 29 January 1839; F. S. Hathaway LB, Whaling Museum, Old Dartmouth Historical Society, New Bedford, Massachusetts. 15. Nightengale-Jencks Papers, RIHS. 16. Morse, Chronicles, III: 141, 179; and Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1851), 161. The Select Committee remarked on the great advantages to Indian capitalists offered by the American bill trade. 17. Cheong, “Beginnings of Credit Finance,” is the best treatment of this crisis. 18. Select Committee Report, 5 September 1815, EICoA. 19. For the English and American figures, see Morse, Chronicles, IV: 384, 388. The Spanish estimate was given in a reply to the Select Committee’s inquiry. See Select Committee report, 31 March 1830, EICoA, and above, Appendix 3 “A Note on the Silver Trade.” 20. See Greenberg, British Trade, 159–67; and Cheong, “China Houses.” 21. There probably was also an increase in respondentia, though this is harder to trace. The Jardine Matheson Archive contains much evidence that at least the largest British house in China financed American cargoes in order to remit to London

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via America. This device, however, was vulnerable to fluctuations in the American market and, indeed, was one of the causes of the crisis of the mid-1820s. See Cheong, “China Houses,” 58–62. 22. Archer’s Letterbook for this period is particularly interesting, because Archer was not yet in the opium traffic and thus felt the pinch worse than did the drug merchants. Having to rely on the sale of his bills for silver, Archer understandably viewed the Calcutta failures with great trepidation. See Archer to John  A. Brown, 5 and 7 November 1833, AL. See also R&Co to JMF, 4 March 1839, FP. 23. Greenberg, British Trade, 162–67. 24. His papers are at the Baker Library. Others in the mid-1830s were John N. Gossler, New York agent for Thomas Wilson & Co., and Robert Hooper for Timothy Wiggin. Prime, Ward and King, Goodhue & Co., and other major American firms also served as the agents of British banks. 25. Ralph Hidy, “The Organization and Function of Anglo-American Bankers, 1815–1860,” Journal of Economic History I (Supplement, 1941). Another article that shows the operation of these houses when confronted with a crisis is Hidy’s “Cushioning a Crisis in the London Money Market,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 20, no. 4 (October 1946): 131–45. 26. This was precisely the difficulty that ruined Edward Carrington, who had been one of the greatest China traders in the United States. Although he generally avoided opium, he was quick to employ the device of bills. He established his nephew, Isaac M. Bull, in Canton as his agent and empowered him to draw on Timothy Wiggin & Co. in London. Bull did just that, and, by the recession of 1834, Carrington found himself over a quarter of a million dollars in debt to Wiggin at a time when the latter was hard-pressed for cash. Carrington was worth around eight hundred thousand dollars, but most of his capital was tied up in real estate, manufacturing, bank or insurance company stock, and other investments that were hard to convert into cash. Even had Carrington been able to sell his property at a favorable price, the exchange rate would have cost him dearly. For a while Robert Hooper, Wiggin’s American agent, accepted Carrington’s holdings in pledge, but the crises that led to the depression of the late 1830s compelled Hooper to demand hard money. In December 1836 Wiggin was forced to ask for aid from the other American merchant-bankers in London, and Carrington was doomed. 27. Peter Temin thinks that the stopping of the specie trade was one of the causes of the American inflation of the 1830s. See “The Economic Consequences of the Bank War,” Journal of Political Economy 76 (1968): 257–74. 28. Joseph Scoville says John McCrea, a large Philadelphia shipowner, got his letters of credit on London through Rogers & Co. of New York. The latter firm was a central link in a series of interlocking partnerships based on the tobacco trade of the American Upper South. It included Warwick & Claggett, London; Rogers, Harrison & Gray, Richmond; James Gray & Co., New Orleans; and Lewis Rogers & Co., Havre. See Walter Barrett (pseud. for Scoville), The Old Merchants of New York City (New York, 1863), I: 47–48. McCrea was also close to John N. Gossler, scion of the great Hamburg trading family and New York agent for the American merchant bank in London, Thomas Wilson & Co. For more information on the interconnection of US and British merchants, see N. S. Buck, The Development of the Organisation of Anglo-American Trade, 1800–1850 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925), and Leland Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927). 29. Morse, Chronicles, II: 189. 30. Amales Tripathi, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency, 1793–1833 (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1956), 88.

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31. Greenberg, British Trade, 112–17. Why the Chinese suddenly began to accept increasing quantities of the drug is something of a mystery. Perhaps the enormous quantity of untouched Chinese archives recently opened for research will provide the answer. See Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “China’s New Historical Archives,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 283–85. 32. See Appendix 2, table “American Trade in Turkish Opium” on page 355 for the speed of the American response to the new demand. 33. Frank Edgar Bailey, British Policy and the Turkish Reform Movement . . . 1826–1853 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1942), 97–98. 34. Literally, “opium black castle.” The town was originally called Kara Hisar, or “Black Castle,” but the Afyon (Turkish afyun, meaning opium) was added to distinguish it from other Kara Hisars in Turkey. It was so called because of the principal crop of the area. See Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill, new ed., 1960), I: 243. 35. THP to JPC, 15 January 1825, SCP. See also “Memo of Opium Shipped from Smyrna,” CP. 36. For further information, see Samuel Eliot Morison, “Forcing the Dardanelles in 1810,” New England Quarterly I (April 1928): 208–25; A. L. Tibawi, American Interests in Syria, 1800–1901 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 8; and Stith’s letters in the Dallam Collection, MS1205, Maryland Historical Society. Probably the best secondary source of data on the American community at Smyrna is David Finnie, Pioneers East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 20–33. 37. Charles C. Stelle, “American Opium Trade to China Prior to 1820,” PHR 9, no. 4 (December 1940): 430–31. Also see R. Wilkinson, Smyrna, to James Madison, 15 January 1806, United States Consular Letters (henceforth CL) CL-Smyrna, I. 38. Wilkenson to Madison, loc. cit. and JRL to Mary R. Latimer, 30 March 1830, LP. 39. CL-Smyrna, I. 40. Read’s letters dated 27 November 1805 and 9 January 1805, Willings & Francis Collection, HSP. The latter date is Read’s error. It should read 1806. 41. J. & T. H. Perkins to JPC, 19 June and 23 September 1805, in JEC, “Extracts,” 116 and 122. 42. Girard to Mahlon Hutchinson, Jr., and Myles McLeveen, Trieste, 2 January 1805, GP. 43. Hutchinson and McLeveen to Girard, 30 March 1806, GP. 44. Blight to Girard, 4 March and 21 November 1807, GP. 45. Much has been written about the ginseng trade but little of scholarly merit. The subject warrants thorough study, because it involved more than the mere exchange of goods at Canton. North American Indians and frontiersmen were enlisted in gathering the root, and Philadelphia seems to have been the major city in the trade. A most complete study of the Chinese ginseng trade is Van Jay Symons, “The Ch’ing Ginseng Monopoly” (PhD diss., Brown University, 1975). 46. See James Kirker, op. cit. 47. There is next to nothing of a general nature on the sandalwood trade, although a very good study of the Australian branch of this commerce is Dorothy Shineberg, They Came for Sandalwood (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967). 48. Letter dated 24 June 1807, quoted in Morse, Chronicles, III: 72–73. 49. Greenberg, British Trade, 110. 50. The most complete study of the East India Company’s reliance on opium is Brian Inglis, The Opium War (London: Hodder & Staughton, 1976). Inglis views the war as the product of the Company’s opium policy. 51. The product was called “Turkey opium,” or, more simply, “Turkey,” at the time.

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52. Morse, Chronicles, III: 339. 53. Edward Hayes and LaFontaine, Smyrna, to Girard, 20 September 1818, GP. 54. Greenberg, British Trade, 119, and Chronicles, III: 339–40. 55. There is some evidence in the JMA that dealers were pushing Malwa at the expense of the Bengal drug for this reason. 56. Morse, Chronicles, III: 72–73. 57. Greenberg, British Trade, 221. 58. Bengal Commercial Reports, quoted in Tripathi, Trade and Finance, 181. 59. Greenberg, British Trade, 220. 60. Ibid., 119. 61. Ibid., 137–38. Both Magniac & Co. and Yrissari & Co. were predecessor firms of Jardine, Matheson & Co. 62. Jonathan Spence has traced opium smoking in China back to 1626, stressing the more or less gradual increase and changes in the habit. He cites a number of motives for using the drug: medicinal (as an antidiarrhetic or febrifuge, especially during the cholera epidemic of 1821), sexual (in the early eighteenth century it was regarded as an aphrodesiac), recreational, psychological (relief from stress), intellectual (students believed it helped them in examinations), social (“greater social ease”), etc. Yet only the dulling of the pain of overwork and other more plebian motives would seem operative among the masses of lower class Chinese who smoked opium. Ultimately he confesses that we cannot tell. See “Opium Smoking in Ch’ing China,” in Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 143–73. Why the habit grew so fast at the end of the Napoleonic Wars is particularly perplexing. Certainly population growth must have increased social stresses, but this is guesswork. Wakeman suggests that the increased availability of the drug was an important factor (The Fall of Imperial China [New York: Free Press, 1975], 125–26). Undoubtedly it was, but perhaps the vast Ming-Ch’ing archives, which have recently been opened, may contain the answer to this question. See Frederic Wakeman, Jr., “China’s New Historical Archives,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 283–85. 63. Arthur Grelaud to Girard, 28 October 1816, GP. 64. Law to Byrnes and Harrison, 22 December 1816, William Law Papers, Constable-Pierrepont Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, NYPL, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. 65. Of course this dynamic made for much cynicism among American smugglers, who commonly cited this corruption as justification for their own illegal activities. 66. BCW to secretary of state, 22 September 1817, CCL; and Morse, Chronicles, III: 318–20. 67. Morse, Chronicles, III: 320; and BCW to secretary of state, 22 September 1817, CCL. See the governor-general’s report and the emperor’s reply in Fu Lo-shu (Lo-shu Fu), A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966), vol. I: 408–13. The governor-general reported that he would burn the captured opium in front of the American factory, but Western sources do not report such an incident (Fu, I: 411). 68. J. & T. H. Perkins to Woodmas & Offley, 11 February 1818, quoted in L. Vernon Briggs, History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family, 1475–1927 (Boston: Privately printed, 1927), II: 561. See also J[ames] E[lliot] C[abot], “Extracts from the Letterbooks of J. & T. H. Perkins” (typescript). 69. Circular and attached letter both dated 26 October 1818, CP. 70. Howqua was by this time an indispensable ally of Perkins & Co., and he refused to have anything further to do with the drug, though he continued to import

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opium through his trusted American friends. He apparently remained in the trade until 1821, investing jointly with Perkins & Co. See J. & T. H. Perkins & Company’s remaining books at the MHS; and below. 71. Circular dated 1 July 1828, CP. A letter from R&Co, dated 24 January 1828, accompanied the circular, explaining very pointedly that the new firm is “patronized by Messrs Perkins & Co. & receives all their business” [in Manila]. 72. See summation of BCW’s accounts current, 1825–27, LP. The following notation appears there: “Jany 1824 Hormuzjee Dorabjee of Bombay in 1823 made a consignment of Opium to John Cushing which he declined accepting and assigned it to Wilcocks recommending to H. D. to continue the business to W. which he did.” 73. Very little has been written about this important merchant though the Maryland Historical Society certainly has the resources adequate to the purpose. 74. Letter to Macintosh & Co., 15 June 1822, Yrissari & Co. LB, JMA. 75. A closer study of this incident will be forthcoming. Reportedly one of the officials involved had a grudge against Howqua stemming from the Wabash incident six years earlier. See Secret Consultation, 11 November 1821, EICoA. 76. Morse, Chronicles, IV: 48 and 49; Greenberg, British Trade, 121; and Charles C. Stelle, “American Trade in Opium to China, 1821–1839,” PHR 10, no. 1 (March 1941): 58. Stith seems to have made a handsome profit despite all his difficulties. See Stith to Francis Dallam, 11 January 1822, Dallam Papers, MS1250, Maryland Historical Society. 77. Samuel Shaw, The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, ed. Josiah Quincy (Boston, 1847), 238–39. 78. In 1791 and 1792 a British country ship anchored in Lark’s Bay (on the western side of Montanha, an island west of Macao) to sell opium. See Morse, Chronicles, II: 188–89 and 199–200. See also Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston, 1817), 43; and Frederic W. Howay, Voyages of the Columbia (New York: Da Capo Press, 1961), 420–21. 79. See testimony of W. S. Davidson, 8 March 1830, Second Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, Parliamentary Papers, H/C, 1830, V: 166, beginning with question 2525. Davidson was the founder of a firm that ultimately became Dent & Co., and he was intimately acquainted with the marketing of opium. Because he had come to China in 1811, he was in a particularly good position to describe the earlier days of the traffic. 80. Stelle, “American Trade in Opium,” 59–61. From 1825 to 1828 the firm’s storeship was the Levant, Captain Robert Edes. The Levant was replaced by the Tartar, Captain James Sturgis. 81. See P&Co to J&THP, 17 November 1821, P&Co LB. 82. Jeremiah N. Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac (New York, 1835), 353. See also WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (London, 1882), 65–73. 83. R. B. Forbes states that this business was handled by an association of about forty opium brokers at Canton. See his Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston, 1844), 46. 84. David E. Owen, British Opium Policy in China and India (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934), 115. 85. For Astor’s participation in the traffic, see Porter, John Jacob Astor, II: 599–600 and Stelle, “American Trade in Opium,” 440. 86. Discussing the price to be charged for his drug, James Matheson remarked to his partner in 1829, “In Turkey you must be guided by what Russell does” (to William Jardine, 3 April 1829, JMA). 87. JRL to G. G. and S. Howland and Elisha Tibbets, 12 September 1833, LLB.

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88. 2 January 1826, JEC, “Extracts.” See also J. & T. H. Perkins & Co. to JPC, 16 July 1824 and 15 January 1825, FP. Perkins’s agents in England, Samuel Williams and Charles Everett, seem to have been instrumental in this overordering, but the colonel assumed full responsibility. 89. Stelle estimates about the same. He says, “An irreducible minimum of 1,733 piculs [was] shipped to Canton between January 1824 and August 1825” (“American Trade . . . 1821–1839,” 67–68, n. 42). Cases, chests, and piculs were used interchangeably. Each contained about 1331⁄3 pounds of opium. 90. Morse was far too careful a scholar to have made such an error casually. He warned his readers about the inaccuracy of Turkey opium figures and later revised his totals upward. See his International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol. 1, The Period of Conflict, 1834–1860 (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1910), 210; and Morse, Chronicles, III: 323 and 339. Central to the problem of obtaining reliable figures on the commerce is the fact that both Perkins & Co. and its successor, Russell & Co., guarded their commercial intelligence very closely, especially information on Turkey opium. Indian drug deliveries to British station ships, on the other hand, were promptly and precisely published by a press on board one of the British storeships at Lintin, Magniac & Company’s Hercules. Latimer even accused Russell & Co. of giving out short figures deliberately. See his letter to G. G. Howland and Elisha Tibbits, 12 September 1833, LLB. With resources somewhat better than Morse’s, we can still judge only roughly. Americans must have sold over one thousand cases of Turkey every year from the early 1820s until the cancellation of the East India Company’s charter in 1834. Stelle estimates one thousand to fifteen hundred each year from 1824 to 1830 (“American Trade in Opium . . . 1821–39,” 67–68, n. 42). This estimate probably should be taken as a floor, but the fact that this figure amounts to over 90 percent of the estimated Turkish annual production speaks volumes for the importance of the American trade, especially Perkins & Company’s share of it. See my article, “American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800–1840,” BHR 42, no.  4 (Winter 1968): 431 n. 48. Possibly the most reliable data comes from the notebook of R. B. Forbes. He states, “The season 27 & 28 the consumption increased very much in consequence of the limited quantity & consequent high price of Malwa. It amounted to at least 16–17 hund. Piculs altho’ the returns do not show more than 14 or 1500 owing to the 230 or 240 Pcls imported on Spanish acct not having been included in the acct of deliveries. This is an increase of 331⁄3 or 50 pr ct above the consumption of any former year. . . . In 28–29 the Import of Turkey amtd to about 1500 Pcls & in 29–30; near Pcls [sic].” Forbes’s estimate of the increase of Turkey opium in the season 1827–28 seems rather inflated. However he was an intimate of all the members of the Boston Concern, and as master of the Lintin storeship in 1830–31, he was in a position to know what he was talking about. He continued, “There is no record of the consumption of Turkey Op for a series of years & it is therefore impracticable to make any tolerably exact estimate.” He then proceeds to flout his own injunction. See Notebook #2, “Remarks on Quality and Packing of Goods China & Manilla Markets,” FFP. There are no comparable figures for the period after 1834, but a “Reader” in the CR remarks in the October 1837 issue that the annual supply was two thousand chests. On the other hand Hunt’s insists that the annual consumption did not exceed one thousand chests (III [October 1837]: 471). See table “American Trade in Turkish Opium” in Appendix 2. 91. P&Co to J. & T. H. Perkins, 15 July 1821; P&Co Letterbook, BL. 92. THP to JPC, 15 January 1825, SCP; J. & T. H. Perkins & Sons to P&Co, 28 April and 6 and 7 May 1824; and J. & T. H. Perkins to F. W. Paine, 24 March 1818 and to Woodmas & Offley, 16 June 1819; JEC, “Extracts.” Cf. “Memo of Opium Shipped from Smyrna, 1823,” CP and WS to AH, 15 November 1832, HP.

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93. JPC to EC, 15 November 1811 and EC to B. and J. Bohlin, Philadelphia, 28 September 1809, CP. 94. James Matheson, Bombay, to M. Larruleta & Co., Calcutta, 20 May 1820, JM’s LB. Matheson himself made a similar attempt two years later. See his letters from December 1819 through the spring of 1820. 95. The largest collections of his letters so far discovered are in the LP at the Library of Congress and at the University of Delaware. 96. JPC to EC, 1 January 1815, CP. Cushing’s choice of words is interesting, because smuggling was the means by which he amassed his own very large fortune. 97. Morse, Chronicles, III: 237. The Select Committee’s report is more complete, EICoA. 98. See summary of Wilcocks’s account in LP. His prosperity notwithstanding, Wilcocks could never have retired without an extraordinary act of generosity by Howqua. See p. 43. 99. JRL to Mary Latimer, 30 March 1830, and 28 March 1831, LP. For an account of Latimer’s life, see Joan K. F. Thill, “A Delawarean in the Celestial Empire” (unpublished MA thesis, University of Delaware, June 1973). 100. JRL to Philip Ammidon, 6 December 1831 and to BCW, 10 February 1831, LLB. The ship had formerly been part of Edward Thomson’s fleet. The Scattergood’s profits were increased by the elimination of the competition when the Boston Concern’s storeship, the Levant, was wrecked. A number of Latimer’s Philadelphia correspondents even sent funds to India to be invested in opium for the China trade in order to benefit from the lucrative commerce from the subcontinent. 101. From the vantage point of the city of Providence, the American opium trade can be seen as still another chapter in the gamy history of Rhode Island merchants, driven by circumstance to find an economic raison d’être, from piracy to the illegal commerce in molasses and rum, to the slave trade, and finally to the China opium traffic. 102. The method of financing the Indian opium trade was somewhat similar to the bill trade via London. It, too, was based on draw-bills, with the difference that in the Indian trade the speculator drew against a Canton commission house when he purchased his opium in Calcutta. The bill went to China with the drug and was payable thirty to sixty days sight. 103. See below 155–56. 104. See R&Co’s opium account in the Forbes Papers, BL. R. B. Forbes, who, as captain of the Lintin, kept the cumsha and demurrage account, notes at least twenty Parsees who shipped to R&Co in the spring of 1831, most of them very small operators. P&Co was by far the largest drug shipper in these records. 105. See Augustine Heard’s incoming letters from Calcutta and Bombay for the 1830s. Among Heard’s friends were Jehanjee Cursetjee and Leckie & Co. of Bombay and the fabulously rich Ashootos Day of Calcutta. 106. He visited India in 1833, 1835, and 1836 and possibly other times. 107. Different sources give estimates from one thousand to two thousand cases. See Appendix 2, table “American Trade in Turkish Opium” on page 355. 108. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 146. See also Hunter’s “Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton,” at the Boston Athenaeum. RBF said that most of Russell & Company’s surrendered narcotic was the property of small Parsee merchants (PRs, 159). 109. RBFP. 110. A good review of the development of this rice trade can be found in Sir John Francis Davis, The Chinese (London, 1835), II: 450. Joseph Archer noted that a vessel of four hundred tons saved $3,016 if she carried three hundred to thirty-five

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hundred piculs of rice upriver. See Archer to John Cryder, 24 October 1833, Archer LB, HSP. 111. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 46 (Seventh Voyage, 26 December 1836). Even Chinese junks from neighboring districts bought rice at Lintin according to RBF. See his Notebook #2, RBFP. 112. Morse, Chronicles, IV: 107. 113. Select Committee report, 16 November 1829, EICoA. 114. Ibid. 115. CR II (May 1833): 46. Davis estimated as early as 1830 that, taking the total value of the China trade, “one half may be surreptitious,” testimony of Sir John Francis Davis, 22 February 1830, Parliamentary Papers, H/C, First Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, question 483. At least by the season of 1832–33, the ships at Lintin had developed their own intercommunications system. The Canton Weekly Price Current ran advertisements for some time during that season for Robert Edwards’s A Signal Book for the Use of the Lintin Fleet, a supplement to Marryat’s Code. 116. Several issues in October 1841. 117. Matheson blamed it on “the jealousy of the mandarins here [Canton] and at Macao” (Greenberg, British Trade, 139). 118. See Sturgis’s letter dated May 1827, Macao Letters, JMA; and Morse, Chronicles, IV: 150. 119. Morse, Chronicles, IV: 331. 120. Greenberg, British Trade, 139–40. The Sylph, which went furthest north, did not do so well, but it had penetrated unprepared territory. 121. 14 July 1841, Hong Kong Letters, JMA. 122. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 67–70. 123. The rigor of enforcement increased until the war, when sales on credit or even barter became necessary to conduct trade at all. 124. Jardine to Jamsetjee JeJeebhoy, Bombay, 1 January 1839, WJ’s Private LB, JMA. 125. Cushing knew and commented on it with some frequency. See, for example, his letter to the Perkinses of 20 October 1830. Later writers also made gloomy predictions of the results of the drug trade. See, for example, JRL to Isaac Heylin, 15 April 1830, 29 January 1831, and to Henry Toland, 14 April 1831, LLB. Cf. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Fall of Imperial China, 127–29; and Spence, “Opium Smoking in Ch’ing China,” in Frederic Wakeman, Jr. and Carolyn Grant, eds., Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 142–73. 126. Jardine had so much confidence in the Chinese opposition that he anticipated rebellion. See his letter cited in note 124. 127. Chang Hsin-pao, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964): 99–101. Even earlier governors had made serious attempts to enforce the law. W. H. Low wrote Samuel Russell in 1831 that the viceroy was “a radical who won’t be bribed into civilization.” See letter beginning 8 January 1831, RP. 128. H. B. Morse, The Trade and Administration of China, 3d rev. ed. (London: Longmans Green & Co., 1921), 336. 129. Greenberg, British Trade, 112. From the days of the old China trade until the Second World War, the denunciations of Ch’ing bureaucrats by opium traders were apparently taken at face value. The scholarship of Greenberg and Chang seems to have been the beginning of a reconsideration of these indictments. More recently Thomas Metzger has questioned not only these charges but also the judgments of sociologists who have attempted to explain the “failures” of Chinese officialdom.

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He challenges both facts and interpretations, asserting that members of the mandarinate were not mere corruptionists. Many were morally upright, practical public servants. “Ch’ing political culture involved a basic set of coherent, abstract, universalistic ideas which transcended the status quo. . . . The Confucian subject felt a heavy sense of responsibility to improve his [own] character and reform the world.” In proper scholarly fashion, he concludes more cautiously, “Certainly more work is needed before a balanced position on this issue can be developed.” See Thomas Metzger, The Internal Organization of Ch’ing Bureaucracy: Legal, Normative, and Communication Aspects (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 412–14. 130. Chang notes, “According to Elliot’s estimate, an unsurpassed amount of opium—50,000 chests—was ready for the Chinese market, where the annual consumption had never exceeded 24,000 chests” (Commissioner Lin and the Opium War). He also points out that Russell & Co., in its 4 March 1839 letter to John Murray Forbes (FP), had estimated the amount still higher. Although no figures are absolutely trust-worthy, all agree that the year Lin arrived, the quantity of opium coming to China was higher than ever before. Moreover, this increase came at the very time Teng was engaged in the strictest antiopium campaign in Chinese history, and the same policy obtained all along the coast. Matheson remarked on 22 March, “Not a chest has been sold in Canton for the past five months [sic]” (quoted by Chang, 165). Chang believes that the resultant glutting of the market provided Elliot with a strong incentive to surrender the opium to Lin. The action cleared the market. 131. See Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1943), 511–14; and Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 36–37. 132. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, 117. He is paraphrasing W. C. Costin, Great Britain and China, 1833–1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 60. 133. WCH, “Journal of Occurrences,” 11–12. See also letter of Charles Patterson, 10 August 1839, quoted in its entirety in Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War, Appendix D, 229–30. 134. 12 January 1839, RP. Bryant & Sturgis got the message. On 27 September 1839 that firm wrote R&Co that it had collected “upwards of $100,000, Mexican,” in anticipation of its needs (B&S LB, BL). 135. Abandoning the traffic seemed to sharpen R&Co members’ moral sensitivities. It is interesting that no sooner did the firm decide to stop its opium trade than members commenced speaking of the drug trade as “disreputable.” A. A. Low clearly expressed his relief in a letter written to his sister on 17 April 1839: “I am glad we are done irrevocably with a branch of business, that of late has seemed actually disreputable,” he wrote (quoted in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 72). See also my article “Fair Game: Exploitive Role-Myths and the American Opium Trade,” PHR 41, no. 2 (May 1972): 145, esp. n. 31. R. B. Forbes even prevented the sale of the company’s schooner Rose, formerly used in the coastal opium trade, for fear that she might be returned to that very employment (RBF to SC, 3 March 1840, SCP). And Warren Delano conjectured that the end of the drug trade would mean that “the character of foreigners [will] stand higher in the estimation of the Chinese” as a result (WD to Franklin H. Delano, 30 January 1839, DP). 136. FP. 137. “Memorial of R. B. Forbes and Others,” H/R Doc. #40, 26:1. 138. “Communication from Thomas H. Perkins and a Great Number of Other Merchants of Boston and Salem, Mass.,” H/R Doc. #170, 26:1. 139. Even Matheson’s approval was not wholehearted, though he supported Elliot in general. In this opinion he differed with Jardine, who held the chief superintendent

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in contempt. Matheson’s opinion had changed in 1839, after Elliot had assumed responsibility for delivering the opium to Lin. “Though at the time and long after I had doubts as to the judiciousness of what Captn Elliot had done, now that I have been able to review its progress & probable prospects more dispassionately I am inclined to regard it as a large and statesmanlike measure, more especially as the Chinese have fallen into the snare of rendering themselves directly liable to the British Crown” (JM to Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Bombay, 3 May 1839, JM Private LB). Moreover, Matheson was convinced that Elliot meant “to connive at the opium trade being carried on with the same freedom as before” (JM to WJ, 22 January 1840, JMA). 140. [George Dent?], 24 May 1841 entry in “Diary of a Tea Merchant,” in the Guildhall Library, London. 141. Warren Delano was detained by Chinese soldiers on 17 March and taken before a high military official (probably Yang Fang, one of three men who replaced Ch’i-shan). The interview is reported in Delano’s letter to Hunter and King, 8 March 1831, DP. See also his letter, apparently to Elliot, of the same date and Yang Fang’s report in Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 61–63. 142. See Wakeman, Strangers at the Gate, 56–58. Cf. John J. Nolde, “Xenophobia in Canton, 1841–1849,” Journal of Oriental Studies 13, no. 1 (January 1945): 1–22. Nolde believes xenophobia was not so much popular as official in Kwangtung at this time. 143. JM to Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Bombay, 3 June 1841, JM Private LB, JMA. 144. 25 May 1841. See also James Ryan, 4 June 1841, Canton Letters, JMA. 145. Coolidge delivered the news to the Cohong: “I communicated to Howqua early, who seemed much pleased with it, as did others of the Hong Merchants, but not all of them. Some seemed to feel that the Emperor had greatly lost face in granting terms so much more favorable to foreigners than he had been willing to ratify when promised by Kishen.—a few expressed their doubts about the permanency of peace on such terms” (JC to JM, 11 September 1842, Canton Letters, JMA). 146. ED’s diary, 9 September 1842, DP. 147. JC to JM, 11 September 1842, Canton Letters, JMA. 148. Second letter, same date, JMA. 149. AH to George Hayward, 10 May 1842, HP. 150. AH to A. F. Seebohm, Hamburg, 10 May 1842, HP.

Chapter 4. The Dominant Firms 1. The term “supercargo” became almost synonymous with agent as its usage was extended. The British East India Company’s resident agents at Canton were commonly called supercargoes, for instance. In speaking of Americans, however, I use the term to refer only to the transient ship’s businessman. 2. Josiah Quincy, ed., The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw (1847; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1968), 218. 3. See Shaw & Randall, Canton, to Joseph Barrell, 18 December 1789, quoted in Frederic W. Howay, Voyages of the Columbia (New York: Da Capo Press, 1961), 130. There are also a number of references in the Henry Knox Papers, MHS, and in the Dorr Letterbooks. Although numbers of secondary works also generally accept the firm’s existence (Samuel Eliot Morison, Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1787–1860 [1921; reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961], 66; and Louis Dermigny, La Chine et L’Occident: le commerce a Canton au XVIIIe siecle, 1719–1833 [Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1964], III: 1169), neither partner was in China long enough to make the concern anything but a temporary arrangement.

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4. Astor did so. Nicholas G. Ogden served the longest (ca. 1817–23), but he was succeeded by Benjamin Clapp, who stayed only one season. 5. WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (London, 1882), 15. Also see below, 199–201. 6. For example, Henry Hubble was variously a Howland & Aspinwall agent and a member of Peele, Hubble & Co. of Manila. Samuel Comstock was also an agent for Howland & Aspinwall; A. A. Ritchie for Alsop & Griswold of New York; and Hollingshed, Platt of Philadelphia. 7. See John Boit’s “Remarks on the Ship Columbia’s Voyage from Boston,” 8  and 9 December 1792 and John Hoskins to Joseph Barrell and others, 22 December 1792, in Howay, Voyages of the Columbia, 420–21 and 489. 8. Amasa Delano, Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston, 1817), 41. 9. Hosea B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926–29), II: 285. 10. William F. Megee also entered into some kind of agreement with a Dutch East India Company supercargo. See my article, “The Merchant as Gambler: Major William Fairchild Megee,” Rhode Island History 25, no. 1 (January 1966): 4. 11. Dermigny, La Chine, III: 168–69. 12. See my article, “A Study in Failure: Hon. Samuel Snow,” Rhode Island History 25, no. 1 (January 1966): 4, and above, 39–41. 13. He dealt with his half-brother, Peter Blight, a well-known China merchant of the time (George Blight Estate Papers, Cadwalader Collection, HSP; also W. A. Smith to JRL, 22 November 1828, and James Latimer to JRL, 3 February 1833, LP). 14. Unfortunately information on this firm is scarce. It appears to have been close to Dent & Co. and in the late 1830s may have been absorbed by the British firm. Charles Blight, incidentally, married the daughter of Robert Fulton, according to Joseph Scoville. See The Old Merchants of New York City, 5 vols. (New York, 1863), vol. 3: 82–83. 15. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California (San Francisco, 1886), I: 539. 16. Dorr also served as vice consul in Samuel Snow’s absence, from 1 February 1801 until he turned the office over to Edward Carrington and left China in the spring of 1803. 17. Sullivan Dorr to John and Joseph Dorr, 28 December 1800, Dorr LB I. 18. Dorr’s estimate. Dorr to Henry Dorr, Macao, 20 November 1800, Dorr LB I. 19. Dorr to James and T. H. Perkins, 21 December 1802, Dorr LB I. 20. See my articles in Rhode Island History (January 1963): 16–21 and in the Year Book of the American Philosophical Society (1961): 359–61 and (1963): 390–92. 21. Conseequa (the Li-ch’uan hong) had become a hong merchant in the early 1790s and for a number of years did very well. He seems to have had increasing difficulty in collecting some American debts, however, and in 1823 he went bankrupt and died. For the most complete account of Conseequa’s difficulties, see Frederic D. Grant, Jr.’s “The Failure of the Li-ch’uan Hong: Litigation as a Hazard of Nineteenth Century Foreign Trade,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 243–60. 22. Morse, Chronicles, III: 109–10. 23. Ammidon took passage home despite the war and returned to Canton as supercargo of the privateer, Rambler, under Captain S. B. Edes, in September 1814, and he sailed again the following January. For evidence that this period of enforced idleness bred the American trade in Indian opium, see above, 124–26. 24. John Ledyard, A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean (Hartford, Conn., 1783). 25. See young Cushing’s rather callow letter to his grandmother, dated 7 July 1803, at the Boston Atheneum.

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26. Bumstead fell ill and died before he could well organize the Canton business. Hence Cushing was in charge almost from the beginning. In the consular records retained by Carrington, there is a copy of a blanket power of attorney from the Perkinses to Cushing dated 22 June 1805. At that time Cushing was eighteen years of age. 27. William Sturgis, a brother-in-law of the brothers, had been very successful as a Northwest captain for the Perkinses for a number of years. Between 1798 and 1808, he had made four voyages to the coast. 28. Testimony of Joshua Bates, 15 March 1830, Second Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, Parliamentary Papers, H/C, 1830, V: 220, questions 3242 and 3243. Bates estimated that his firm could deliver the tea used by Britain “for one-third less than the Company’s sale prices in London,” a striking challenge to the efficiency of the monopoly. See V: 230, question 3423, and the testimony of Charles Everett, 8 March 1830, V: 183–93. Everett’s testimony includes an abstract of Perkins & Co.’s trade in British textiles from 1819 to 1829. 29. Called I-ho yang-hang. 30. Howqua’s elder brothers were all government officials, and one had published a book of poetry. 31. For a study of the Howqua (Wu) family, see Wolfram Eberhard, Social Mobility in Traditional China (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962), 82–84. 32. He died in 1788. See Ann B. White, “The Hong Merchants of Canton” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1967), 158–59; and Arthur W. Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1943), 605. Puankhequa III (P’an Cheng-wei) may also have been as independent. 33. Hunter says that Howqua also grew teas on his “family estates” in the Wu-i country (Fukien) (The “Fan Kwae” at Canton [London, 1882], 49). According to Robert Gardella, both the Howqua (Wu) and Puankhequa (P’an) families owned tea-producing property in the Wu-i area. See Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757–1937 (Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1994), 35. 34. Samuel Russell & Co. to EC and Cyrus Butler, 22 October 1820, Samuel Russell & Co. LB, RP. 35. R&Co to Baring Bros. & Co., 1 October 1834, John M. Forbes LB, 11 August 1834–20 November 1836, RP. 36. The exception was pidgin. A Boston Concern representative acted as his amanuensis and foreign business manager from as early as the War of 1812. At  first it was Cushing, then Thomas T. Forbes, John Murray Forbes, Augustine Heard (briefly), and others. 37. Ephraim Bumstead & Co., Journal, and E. Bumstead & Co. to J. and T. H. Perkins, 26 May 1804, PP. 38. J. and T. H. Perkins LB, April 1807–January 1815, MHS, for example, to Forsyth, Black & Co., 7 May 1813. See also Howqua’s letters in the SCP and Bryant and Sturgis to EC, 5 October 1814, B&S Papers. Howqua wrote one H. Tingley on 28 January 1814 that J. and T. H. Perkins were his “general agents,” and the hand is Cushing’s. See also Howqua to Benjamin D. Jones, same date, PP. 39. CR V (April 1837): 551. 40. The Perkins Papers contain a J. and T. H. Perkins Accounts Current, 1819– 1827 book. One of the accounts is headed “Perkins & Co. and Houqua Opium Account Current.” It appears that Howqua continued investing in the drug until about 1821 (the year of the Emily incident). I have been unable to find any indication that Howqua participated in the opium trade thereafter. The Chinese government’s

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antiopium drive very probably frightened him into abandoning even this indirect connection to the illegal traffic. 41. CP. For another such testimony, see Robert Waln, Jr., to Robert Waln, 9 October 1819, Waln Family Papers, HSP. 42. “[T]he old gentleman gives us the privilege of choosing from the teas which he has prepaired [sic] for the Company,” JPC to EC, 24 November 1815, CP. 43. Hunter says he estimated his own fortune at $26 million in 1834. For comparative purposes, Stephen Girard’s wealth at the time of death was only about $7 million. See John B. MacMaster, Life and Times of Stephen Girard, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1918), II: 461. Astor, who lived until 1848, was probably not even in the same class as Howqua. Estimates of his fortune vary from $8 million to $25 million. See Kenneth Wiggins Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931), I: 1097 and 1129, n. 31. Whatever the true figure, Howqua’s $26 million, fourteen years earlier, was considerably more impressive. 44. Note Book #2, “Remarks on Quality and Manner of Packing Goods, China & Manilla Market,” RBFP. Perkins & Co. realized something like $2 million largely from this trade in this period (1812–28). See JPC to SC, 20 October and 18  November 1830, quoted in L. Vernon Briggs, History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family, 1475–1927 (Boston: Privately printed, 1927), I: 319 and 321. 45. Although this term was used by the members of Russell & Co. to refer to a temporary, more or less formal alliance, I use it to designate the Perkins-ForbesCushing-Sturgis combination generally. 46. Duncan Yaggy, “John Forbes, Entrepreneur” (PhD diss., Brandeis, 1974), 30. 47. Herbert Heaton, “Benjamin Gott and the Anglo-American Cloth Trade,” Journal of Economic and Business History 2 (November 1929): 159 n. 48. Cushing’s balancing of profits against danger has been noted earlier. An  excellent example of his reasoning process can be found in his letter to J. and T. H. Perkins dated 17 November 1821, immediately after the Emily incident frightened so many Americans away (partially quoted on p. 122). 49. A copy of this circular is in the CP. Yaggy has discovered that William Sturgis was the source of this firm because he felt his orders were not getting Cushing’s first attention (Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 649–50). 50. Bryant and Sturgis LB, 1819–24, passim, and Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 651. 51. His relationship to Sturgis was close. The phrase “protege of Mr. Sturgis” is used in a contemporary document. See In Chancery: Proceedings of the Court of Oahu on the Removal of the Funds of William French and Francis J. Greenway . . . (Honolulu, 1844), in the Boston Athenaeum. In 1817 Sturgis was shipping tea to Boston for Pitman because the latter had “no friends in Boston who are in business” (Sturgis to B&S, 29 February 1817, Hooper-Sturgis Collection, MHS). 52. They succeeded William F. Megee in this business. 53. In Chancery: Proceedings, loc. cit. RBF says that French left Aborn without sufficient funds to pay drafts, RBF to G. W. Russell, 18 February 1831, RBFP. 54. Columbian Centinel, 13 October 1832. 55. See below pp. 168–70. 56. Edward Carrington was another. It seems to have been partly on the basis of his discovery of one Carrington letterbook from this period (the rest were scattered about the old Carrington house at the time) that Earl C. Tanner came to the conclusion that Providence had a major trade with Latin America in the early national period. See “The Early Trade of Providence with Latin America” (PhD diss.,

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Harvard, 1950). See table “Destinations of American Exports from Canton, 1818– 32” in Appendix 2 for some idea of the size of this commerce. 57. William Davis, in Henry Simpson, Lives of Eminent Philadelphians, Now Deceased (Philadelphia, 1859), 20. An English trader stated in 1830 that he believed the Americans first entered the woolens trade in 1817. See Abraham Dixon’s testimony, 9 March 1830, Second Report . . ., V: 197, question 2981. 58. For more on Dunn, see below, 209. 59. Testimony of Charles Everett, 9 March 1830, Second Report . . ., V: 192, questions 2893–2906. 60. RBF, Note Book #2, RBFP. Yaggy cites a similar profit on an actual shipment mentioned in the P&Co letterbooks (JPC to F. W. Paine, 25 September and 16 November 1820, quoted in Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 668, n. 81). 61. See testimony of Charles Everett (9 March 1830, Second Report . . . , V: 192) and Abraham Dixon (9 March 1830, V: 193–94). Dixon’s testimony includes a partial statement of the importation of British woolens at Canton, 1818–26 (V: 199). 62. Heaton, “Benjamin Gott,” 148–49. Three Perkins vessels, the Robert Edwards, the Ophelia, and the Canton Packet, were stopped in London by the East India Company in 1820 on the seemingly solid grounds that they were violating the Company’s monopoly of the trade. They were released only on the intervention of the American minister, Benjamin Rush (R&Co to EC & Co., 12 November 1820, RP). Thereafter the trade boomed until 1825. See Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston: Colonel T. H. Perkins, 1764–1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 336. 63. Williams’s bankruptcy was to some degree the result of his heavy acceptances of the Perkinses’ drafts. That year he had accepted £90,000 on their account. When he stopped payment, the Perkinses were only temporarily inconvenienced. Colonel Perkins happened to be in London at the time, and Timothy Wiggin and the Barings were quick to pick up the Boston firm’s obligations. Ultimately the Barings became the Boston Concern’s London bankers. For a short discussion of the effect of Williams’s failure on the Perkinses, see Seaburg and Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston, 331–33. 64. Testimony of Everett and Dixon, Second Report . . ., V: 192 and 197, loc. cit. 65. See Cushing’s description of how woolens could be eased through Chinese customs by bribery (P&Co to J. and T. H. Perkins, 12 November 1920, P&Co LB, BL). 66. See Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800– 1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 182; and Arthur Redford, Manchester Merchants and Foreign Trade, 1794–1858 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934), especially Chapter IV, “Trade with the Far East,” 108–18, for a review of Manchester’s struggle against the East India Company’s monopoly. Leeds, Birmingham, and other Midlands cities conducted the same kind of campaign. Interestingly, over a decade later, the US minister in London, Edward Everett, reported that American success in the textile trade was also being used as an argument against the Corn Laws! See his despatch of 14 May 1844, extract in Everett to Caleb Cushing, 1 June 1844, Cushing Papers. 67. To D. Macintyre, Singapore, 10 September and to Coleville, Jutting & Co., Batavia, 26 September 1822, Yrissari & Co. LB, JMA. See also Select Committee reports for 1821, 1822, 1824, 1825, 1826, 1828, and 1832, reported in Morse, Chronicles, IV: 5–6, 71, 91–92, 105, 124, 169, and 330. 68. A. H. Sargent states that this trade from America was “the strongest argument in support of the cause of the private British merchant against the monopoly of the Company” (Anglo-Chinese Commerce and Diplomacy [Oxford, 1907], 19).

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Apparently the Boston Concern continued shipping substantial quantities of cottons to China after the demise of Perkins & Co., Canton. See EC to SW, New York, 5 April 1834, CP. American unbleached sheeting was especially cheap. Nathan Appleton reported in 1830 that it was 20 to 331⁄3 percent cheaper than Chinese cloth. See his letter to JPC, 10 July 1929, Nathan Appleton Collection, MHS. 69. Greenberg, British Trade, 185–86. See also Caroline F. Ware, The Early New England Cotton Manufacture (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 192–95; and H. B. Morse, Trade and Administration of China, 3d rev. ed. (London and New York: Longmans Green & Co., 1921), 309–11. 70. T. T. Forbes (1803–29) was the eldest of the three brothers. Cushing had been looking for a relative to succeed him for some time. RBF states that when he was in Canton as a common seaman, Cushing had offered him the position, but he turned it down in favor of his elder brother. See PRs, 55 and 88. 71. Earlier JPC had had a “chief clerk” named John Hart (also Hartt) of Boston. This man became Ammidon’s partner about 1820. See SR & Co. to Ephraim Talbot, 16 July 1821, RP. Hart was never taken in as a partner, and in 1833, RBF described him as “in the most deplorable state imaginable, little short of alienation of mind as well as body.” See RBF to JRL, 7 March 1833, LP. 72. Circular dated 1 January 1828, CP. 73. In 1830 Cushing reported that since the last reorganization of the firm, the firm’s “nett gain” was $916,144.54 (JPC to SC, 30 October 1830, SCP). 74. THP to JPC, 18 May 1827, JEC, “Extracts from the Letterbooks of J. and T. H. Perkins & Co.,” 321. 75. Briggs, History and Genealogy, I: 281–287, and the forbidding portrait in vol. II, frontispiece. Old Cabot glares out of the picture, thin-lipped and disapproving. 76. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 596. 77. To PSF, Rio Grande [do Sul], 28 November 1829, RBFP. For the thinking of JPC, see his LB at BL, especially his letters to T. T. Forbes and to Howqua, 10 February 1829. 78. RBF to PSF, 29 November 1829, FP. Cushing’s advice to Forbes is to be found in the RBFP and in published form as “Memo for Mr. Forbes Respecting Canton Affairs” (Business History Review 40 [1966]: 98–107). 79. RBF to JPC, 30 November 1830, FP. 80. RBF to James P. Sturgis, 10 May 1830, FP. 81. 18 November 1830, SCP. 82. Articles of agreement are to be found in the CP and RP. According to Warren Delano (ms to RBF on the founding of R&Co, dated 18 February 1879, Box 9, DP), Carrington ordered Russell to load a ship on credit from the hong merchants, promising to have a second ship at Canton with the necessary specie within a specified period. When the second vessel failed to appear when promised, Russell’s embarrassment was intense. Apparently he continued in these difficult circumstances until Cushing suggested that he join with Ammidon in a new firm. Cushing’s purpose was to have a reliable agent to “manage the drug business of the Perkins & Bryant & Sturgis.” See RBF to WD, 9 March 1879, DP. Thus, if Forbes’s sources are to be trusted, opium was a primary object in the formation of the largest American firm in China. 83. During the 1820s Carrington reduced his China trade considerably. When his interest resumed in the early 1830s, he sent out his nephew, Isaac M. Bull, to conduct his business. 84. SR to Ammidon, 8 January 1831, RP. Ammidon’s reply was bitter. See Ammidon to SR, 2 August 1831, RP. RBF visited Ammidon and commented on the latter’s

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ill health. He stated that the man was suffering from “premature old age” (RBF to JPC, 30 November 1829 and RBF to THP, 28 January 1831, RBFP). 85. JPC to SC, 30 November 1830, SCP. See also RBF, PRs, 131–133 and RBF to THP, 28 January 1831, RBFP. 86. The Chinese name for Russell & Co. is given as Ch’i Ch’ang. 87. See Low’s letters to Russell in 1831 and 1832 and AH to SR, 10 November 1832, RP. For a defense of the policy of speculating on house account, see S. G. Checkland, “An English Merchant House in China after 1842,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 27 (1953): 167–68. 88. AH to SR, 16 March 1834, RP. 89. This included Girard and Astor. Others, like Brown & Ives and Carrington, had cut their trade drastically. John Donnell had died, but his sons were carrying on his trade. 90. For a short description of Smith and Thomson’s debacle, see next chapter, pp. 199–201. 91. WHL to SR, 3 January 1832, RP. 92. RBF to WS, 25 November 1831 and to JPC, 7 February 1832, RBFP. 93. WHL to SR, 21 March 1832, RP. Cf. RBF to JPC, 7 February 1832, RBFP for a somewhat differing view. 94. Sturgis could be a formidable antagonist. See above, p. 55. 95. WHL to SR, 24 October 1833, RP. For a particularly gloomy description of the health of members of the house, see Joseph Archer to John Cryder, 24 October 1833, AL or JC to SR, 20 May 1834, RP. 96. JRL to James Latimer, 23 October 1831, LLB. Russell’s offer of a onethird interest did not arrive until the fall of 1833 (SR to JRL, 14 April and 3 May 1833, LP). Late the previous year, Russell had sounded out James Latimer as to JRL’s continued willingness to accept the offer. James reported that he had replied that “sufficient inducement” might tempt JRL to stay, though he planned on an early retirement (JL to JRL, 6 February 1833, LP). 97. JRL to JPC, 11 November 1833, LLB. 98. JRL to Matthew Ralston, 16 October 1833, LLB. Cf. JRL to JL, 23 October 1831, JL. Latimer’s letter declining the offer (on grounds of health) is dated 15 October 1833, LLB. When Latimer left in 1834, he was not on very good terms with the Canton members of R&Co who were annoyed with him for breaking a pricing agreement. They also suspected that he was going to India to drum for their competition. See AH to SR, 14 January 1834, HP. 99. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 175, n. 86. 100. David Low to SR, 10 and 27 December 1832, RP. 101. DAB IV: 551–52 and Necrological Reports  .  .  .  of Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton, NJ, 1891), I (24 April 1872): 5–7. A circular announcing Green’s admission is in the RP. 102. JMF to AH, 5 May 1836, HP. 103. JCG to SR, 13 December 1834, RP. 104. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 51–55. 105. AH to SR, 15 January 1834, or JMF to SR, 16 November 1834, RP. 106. JC to SR, 28 May 1834, and JCG to SR, 29 September 1835, RP. 107. RBF to SR, 12 January 1939, RP. 108. JC to SR, 1 November 1836, RP. By contrast Coolidge states in the same letter that John Forbes, with whom he was on very friendly terms at the time, was also essential to the firm, not because of any great ability but because of his close connection with Howqua. 109. Thomas Wren Ward to SR, 16 May 1832, RP. Cf. Ralph W. Hidy, The House

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of Baring in American Trade and Finance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 353. Hidy states that the first time the Barings granted uncovered credits to an American house in Canton was to Heard & Co. in 1843, yet the arrangement with Russell & Co. was concluded over a decade earlier. However the firm had to draw through Russell, so Hidy may be technically correct. 110. JRL to James Latimer, 12 November 1833, LLB. 111. JMF to SR, 24 December 1835, RP. 112. B&S was now managing the China trade of the Concern. In fact the Boston Concern was now calling itself “the 7/7ths Concern,” an allusion to the division of shares in their joint business. Perkins & Co., Boston, held three shares, while B&S and John Cushing had two shares each. 113. For a more complete exposition of this matter, see Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 44–46. The footnotes are at least as important as the text in this reference. I have accepted this version of Forbes’s joining Russell & Co. on the testimony of both Forbes brothers and Mr. Yaggy, whose explanation I find persuasive. However there is a document in the Forbes Papers that remains unexplained. It is a bill of sale of Russell’s interest in Russell & Co. to the Forbes brothers and the Perkinses dated 24 February 1834, one week before John Forbes sailed for Canton on the Logan. If it is genuine, as it appears to be, Forbes must have arrived in Canton with considerably more cards in his hand than he admits. One can only wonder if William Sturgis knew about this document. 114. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” Part I, 57–59. Yaggy gives an example of the manner in which John Forbes was able to turn the tables on an important defector: “When Joshua Bates [of Baring Brothers & Co.] sent Russell and Co. only one ship of three during the 1834–1835 season, Forbes responded with a long series of friendly letters, soliciting business, but then consigned to a London competitor the ships Russell & Co. was loading with Houqua’s goods for England. As Houqua had shipped heavily to the Barings in the years previous, the slight was doubtless noticed, but Forbes never mentioned it.” 115. Both had apparently tried, but for one reason or another their relations had gone elsewhere. 116. Although A. A. Low, a nephew of the waspish W. H. Low, had been born in New York, the family had come from Salem, and it maintained its New England outlook, religion, and personal ties. He was Harriet’s brother after all. 117. JCG to SR, 30 November 1836. See also articles of copartnership, 5th establishment, 29 November 1836, RP. Green had had a one-half share before he surrendered one sixteenth to Hunter. 118. Circular dated 1 June 1839. At least two other persons were considered for membership in the firm while Green was head of the house—a “Mr. Bacon” and a “Mr. Lawrence.” The latter abruptly replied to an overture saying that “nothing would induce him to live here.” John Forbes responded, “He’s a sensible man.” See JMF to SR, 5 April 1836, RP. 119. See above, 55–56 and 92. For a study of Wood, see Paul Pickowicz, “William Wood in Canton: A Critique of the China Trade before the Opium War,” EIHC 107 (January 1971): 3–34. 120. The cancellation of the Hon. Company’s charter brought a great many new problems. See Greenberg, British Trade, 191–195. 121. OHG to CNT, 13 February 1836, TP. 122. This includes Forbes, Forbes & Co., and the Rothschilds. See RBF, PRs, 165. Also see JMF to William Sturgis, 26 October 1835 and to JPC, 13 March 1836, FP. 123. The true clipper was, of course, still some years in the future, yet the opium trade encouraged radical experiments in design as early as the late 1820s. See Peter

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W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 51. 124. R&Co to SR, 31 October 1835, RP. 125. JMF to JPC, 13 March 1836, FP. 126. Bryant P. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 123–24 (Seventh Voyage, 4 March 1837). 127. R&Co to SR, 14 May 1835, RP. See also Joseph Archer’s griping at R&Co’s advantages in his letter to WSW, 22 and 24 April 1837, WP. 128. To AH, 27 January 1836, HP. 129. Tilden, “Father’s Journals,” II: 123–24 (Seventh Voyage, 4 March 1837). 130. For example, JMF to SR, 23 August 1836, and JC to SR, 20 October 1836, RP. 131. See Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 91–95 for a fuller discussion, especially from JMF’s viewpoint. 132. Baring Bros. to SR, 13 May 1837; JMF to BB and Forbes, Forbes & Co., 29 July 1837; and JCG to SR, 15 November 1837, RP. Also WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 133–34. 133. JCG to SR, 12 January 1839, RP. 134. JCG to SR, 30 November 1836, RP. Cf. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 60. 135. JCG to SR, 12 January 1839, RP. 136. PSF to wife, 3 July 1843, FP. This was the best the firm ever did according to Bennet Forbes (RBF to SC, 4 December 1839, SCP). 137. Joseph Archer to WSW, 12 February 1838, WP. 138. AAL to JC, 18 November 1838, quoted in Elma Loines, The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family (Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing Co., 1952), 65–66. 139. JCG to SR, 15 November 1838, RP. Forbes wrote that he “only consented to receive a fraction less than 1⁄4 at his [Howqua’s] suggestion” (RBF to SR, October 31, 1839, RP). 140. JCG to SR, 15 November 1838, RP. Cf. WD to “Brother Franklin H. Delano,” 11 November 1838, DP. Edward King also was admitted at this time but was not announced. See Circular, 31 December 1839, DP. 141. RBF to SR, 31 October 1839: RP 142. WCH, “Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton,” 4, Boston Athenaeum. 143. “Our Mr. Green . . . about a year ago wrote to our Indian friends ordering them not to advance a dollar on Opium & thus we are by the greatest good fortune almost alone & cannot be affected by the unfortunate state of things” (RBF to wife, 11 March 1839, RBFP). Later RBF confided to his wife that Russell & Co. had lost twenty-five thousand dollars in commissions on the opium seized but had earned fifty thousand dollars on other trade in the first five months of 1839 (4 June 1839, RBFP). 144. RBF, PRs, 149–50. 145. JM Private LB gives all of these. Jardine’s protected itself by charging the cost to its constituents. See JM to Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Bombay, 16 October 1839, JMA. 146. To Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Bombay, 16 October 1839, JMA. 147. 6 August 1841, Canton Letters, incoming, unbound, JMA. 148. Account Current, Coolidge & Ryan (rough), JMA. 149. RBF, PRs, 161–63. Forbes’s memory was pretty accurate. See Howqua to JMF and RBF, 28 June 1840, Howqua’s LB, 1840–43; WD to RBF, 20 June 1840, DP; JC to AH, 27 March and 22 January 1840, HP. Also note RBF to SC, 3 March 1840, quoted in Briggs, History and Genealogy, I: 322–25 and eight or ten letters written between 3 August 1839 and 28 February 1841 from Isaac M. Bull to EC Jr.,

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CP. Toward the end of this latter correspondence, Bull falls into the understandable habit of referring to the combination as “the Concern of Houqua, R&Co, JPC, & Forbes.” Others, including Nye, Parkin & Co., and Wetmore & Co., shipped for their own Chinese friends “to an unprecedented extent” (Alexander Matheson to Donald Matheson, 23 November 1844, Macao Letters, unbound, JMA). 150. Howqua’s share was $1 million, according to Hunter and eight hundred fifty thousand dollars according to Coolidge and the CR X (July 1841): 356. Russell & Co. and Dent & Co. advanced the money to the hongs, though Coolidge remarked that Russell & Co.’s loan was “probably Houqua’s money.” Puankhequa paid, $250,000; Saoqua, Footae, Gowqua, and Samqua, $70,000 apiece; and Mowqua, Mingqua, Kingqua, and Poonhoyqua, $15,000 each. See WCH, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 45–46, and JC to JM, 1 December 1841, Canton Letters, JMA. 151. NK to wife, 26 January 1844, KP. See also WD’s second letter to Franklin of this date marked “private,” DP. 152. JC to AH, 2 May 1841, HP. 153. Apparently this was excellent tea. Matheson later noted that “several of our neighbors are urging their home agents to use their influence with the Govt to prevent their being admitted; Capt. Elliot refusing to sign their manifests on the ground of it’s being foreign property” (to Charles Lyall, Calcutta, 14 December 1839, JMA). 154. JC estimated that the Lintin cleared about twelve thousand dollars a trip. See JC to AH, 5 January 1840, HP. The Delano Papers give more precise figures for the Cambridge/Chesapeake. See WD to Franklin [H. Delano], 3 December 1839, DP. 155. The Chesapeake was later sold to the Chinese. See Hunter, The “Fan Kwae” at Canton, 90–93; Arthur Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (New York: Macmillan Co., 1958), 87; and Samuel Couling, Encyclopaedia Sinica (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1917), 77–78. The Rose went down in a typhoon in July 1841. Howqua himself bought the old Lintin for the Chinese government in October 1842 for fifteen thousand dollars, but this was after the Treaty of Nanking; ED’s diary, 26 October 1842. 156. To Mrs. Harriet [Low] Hilliard, quoted in Loines, 79–80. 157. 4 December 1839, SCP. 158. JC to AH, 2 May 1841, HP. 159. Gilman, who was from Exeter, New Hampshire, had arrived in China in the mid-1830s and had become a clerk in the firm, apparently at Lintin, where his brother Daniel had succeeded F. W. Macondray as captain of the station ship Lintin in 1838. 160. This Perkins seems to have been unrelated to the Boston Concern family. At least he was not a close relation, though he was from the Boston area. He had worked as a bookkeeper before coming to China. 161. Russell Sturgis had them moved back to Canton on 1 January 1844 (ED to Franklin H. Delano, 23 January 1844, DP). 162. One J. S. Durran, a Frenchman, worked there at least part of the year. 163. Daniel Nicholson Spooner, a native of Plymouth, had arrived in China in 1838 and had worked as a clerk in R&Co ever since. 164. ED’s diary, 1 January 1843, and ED to WD, Macao, 20 March 1843, DP. Young Delano had been a clerk in the firm since December 1840. 165. Perkins proved to be a wastrel and was discharged in short order. 166. Low was another nephew of W. H. Low; he was a younger brother of Harriet and Abbot. 167. ED to F. H. Delano, 23 January 1844, DP. 168. ED’s diary, 16 June 1841. 169. Ibid., 15 and 27 December 1841.

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170. Edward King’s younger brother William had arrived in 1840 and was now a clerk in R. & Company’s Macao hong. 171. ED’s diary, 19 August 1842. 172. FP. 173. ED’s diary, 15 January 1843, DP. 174. ED to “Warren,” 20 March 1843, DP. 175. Ibid., 30 April 1843, DP. 176. ED’s diary, 25 May 1843. By November Davidson had failed and a Dane, N. Dans or Duns, replaced him. Shortly thereafter Bush, Halsted & Co. became the firm’s agent on the island. 177. Ibid., 17 July 1843. 178. Ibid., 13 May 1843. 179. There is some evidence that PSF may have been correct in his suspicion that Sturgis did not approve of his candidacy. See ED’s diary, 11 November 1843. See also PSF and Edward King to RBF and JMF, 12 July 1843, FP. However Sturgis did not press his case because he planned to retire. 180. 6 April 1843, FP. 181. See especially the furious entry of 17 May 1843, shortly after his arrival (PSF’s Journal, FP). 182. Cf. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 122–25. 183. Entry dated 16 September 1843. 184. RBF to PSF, 30 March 1843, FP. 185. Samuel W. Comstock to Howland and Aspinwall, 12 November 1843, Comstock LB, BL, and ED’s diary, same date. 186. It netted one hundred thirty thousand dollars in 1842 (WD to Russell Sturgis, 4 April 1843, FP). 187. The letter was dated 22 April 1844, FP. 188. 27 May 1844. 189. ED’s diary, 30 August 1846. The articles are in the FP. Compare the results with Bennet Forbes’s advice to Paul Forbes of 8 December 1843, FP. See also JMF to PSF, 30 March 1843, FP. Gideon Nye was quite specific about Forbes’s ejection of Delano. Nye’s brother Clement told him that Delano had appeared at the factory (Nye Parkin & Co.), “saying that he must tax their kindness as he was compelled to leave R&Co’s. Clement adding that Paul Forbes had threatened that if ED did not accept $150,000 & leave R&Co he would kick him out.—a specimen truly of the freaks of that enfant terrible who a year or two before [in a similar circumstance] had told Bull . . . that he would be damned if Pierce should remain connected with the house, that he always had had his own way & he should then have it.” See Nye’s “Necrology,” New Bedford Whaling Museum.

Chapter 5. The Other Houses 1. Circular in the Carrington Collection. Perit & Cabot would soon fail, leaving one of its partners, John Webster Perit, free to join a new combination. The other partner, Samuel Cabot, a son-in-law of Colonel T. H. Perkins, entered J. & T. H. Perkins & Sons. Perit was a Yale graduate (1801) and a brother of Peletiah Perit, partner in Goodhue & Co., a major China trading firm in New York. He later became one of the American sponsors of Yung Wing, one of the first Chinese to be educated in the United States. 2. Sturgis was a dangerous man to cross. See p. 55. 3. 25 June 1831, LP. 4. Latimer declined politely. See JRL to PA, 6 December 1831, LLB.

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5. Circular dated 31 December 1835, DP. Among Delano’s connections was his brother, Franklin Hughes Delano, of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., who ultimately married into the Astor family. 6. It was an adventure of this Delano that inspired Herman Melville to write Benito Cereno. See Delano’s Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (Boston, 1817), 21–40, for the voyage of the Massachusetts and 318–53 for the incident that formed the basis of Melville’s story. 7. RBF to SR, 31 October 1839, RP. 8. Russell Sturgis to Mary Sturgis, 19 July 1835, RS Papers. 9. Cushing had refused to act as referee. See AH to SR, 28 June 1838, JMF to SR, 11 July 1839, and later letters, RP. Coolidge, who should have known, put the split still earlier—from their differences over a minor matter involving the reception of a naval officer even before Green joined the house. In any case the acrimony was of long-standing. See JC to SR, 1 November 1836, RP. 10. JMF to AH, 26 December 1834, HP. That Forbes subsequently voted to retain him as a partner raises questions about Forbes’s motivation. Yaggy sees Forbes as the “peacemaker” between Green and Coolidge. He had the foresight to seek the proxies of Heard and Russell in the reorganization of 1836 (Duncan Yaggy, “John Forbes, Entrepreneur” [PhD diss., Brandeis, 1974], 61– 62). 11. JCG to SR, 31 December 1836, RP. 12. AH to SR, 14 April 1837, RP. 13. RBF to SR, 28 and 31 October 1838, RP; and R&Co to JMF, 17 September 1838, FP. For Bates’s change of mind, see JCG to SR, 7 January 1840, RP. 14. JMF to SR, 17 June 1839, RP. Probably the most complete set of documents on this matter is in the Delano Papers. 15. AAL to JC, 18 November 1838, quoted in Elma Loines, The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family (Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing Co., 1953), 65–66. 16. RBF to SR, 31 October 1839, RP. Cf. AAL to JC, 18 November 1838, quoted in Loines, China Trade Post-Bag, 65–66. RBF’s letters to his wife contain much information on the negotiations with Coolidge. See especially 9 October–2 December 1839, RBFP. 17. RBF to SR, 12 January 1840, RP; and JC to AH, 13 December 1839, HP. At the time Coolidge estimated his fortune at about two hundred thousand dollars, a very substantial sum for the era. See JC to AH, 19 December 1839, HP (there are two letters, similar in content, of the same date in the collection). 18. AH to JC, 29 June 1839, HP. 19. JC to AH, 13 December 1839, HP. 20. For the Kinsman episode, see Coolidge’s letters to AH from 29 November to 19 December 1839, HP. 21. JC to AH, 19 December 1839, HP. 22. HP. 23. 8 May 1840, PRs, HP. 24. PRs, 155–56. Cf. James Matheson to James Ryan, 30 May 1840, Macao Letters, JMA. This letter makes it appear that John Shillaber suggested Coolidge. JM & Co. had been using Ryan in this capacity for about a year, but the business was too large for one, rather inexperienced man. 25. JC to AH, 22 December 1840, and AH to J. W. Alsop, Jr., 10 January 1842, HP. 26. JH to parents, 3 June 1844, HP. 27. AH to J. J. Dixwell, 4 February 1843, HP. See also JM to JC, 9 March 1841,

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JM Private LB, and JC to JM, 16 August 1841, Canton Letters, JMA. It should be remembered that for the first year the firm split commissions with James Ryan. 28. John Heard stated in his “Diary, 1891” (37) that the British firm paid Heard & Co. commissions on “much over $10,000,000 a year.” To judge from the first year or so, however, this sum seems rather exaggerated. See JH to parents, 18 November 1841 and the letter beginning 20 February 1843, HP. 29. Heard, “Diary, 1891,” 31–32. 30. CPress, 11 December 1841. 31. Partnership agreement, 28 April 1842, dated back to 1 June 1841, HP. 32. Heard, “Diary, 1891,” 37–38. 33. See Dixwell’s letter to Heard dated 27 July 1845, HP. 34. Heard, “Diary, 1891,” 37–38. 35. Ralph W. Hidy, The House of Baring in American Trade and Finance (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 353. 36. 27 July 1845, HP. 37. AH to Joseph Lee, 10 February 1842, HP. 38. Earlier vessels apparently were owned only in part. Dixwell estimated that the Don Juan alone would produce about eight thousand dollars (Dixwell to AH, 29 March 1845, HP). 39. RBF, Personal Reminiscences (Boston, 1882), 378–80; and John Heard to parents, 13 December 1842, HP. 40. Heard, “Diary, 1891,” 37. 41. HP. Bennet Forbes had predicted Heard’s change of attitude toward Coolidge (RBF to SR, 16 January 1840, RP). 42. JH to parents, 3 June 1844, HP. 43. That is, Augustine II, Albert Farley, and George W. 44. In 1844 there was some discussion of amalgamating with Russell & Co. in the fashion of Russell, Sturgis & Co., but it came to nothing. See Dixwell to AH, 26 December 1844, HP. For the later history of the concern, see Stephen  C. Lockwood, Augustine Heard & Company, 1858–1862 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 45. See the article by Kenneth Scott Latourette in the DAB VII, Part 2, 34. A very thorough family history is presently in process, and it should be published shortly. 46. The Ward family was particularly distinguished. The governor’s son was Colonel Samuel Ward, supercargo of the first Rhode Island vessel in the China trade. Colonel Ward’s son, Samuel Jr., was one of the founders of the important New York banking house, Prime, Ward & King. His children were Samuel Ward, the Gilded Age lobbyist; Julia Ward Howe; Louisa Ward Crawford, wife of the sculptor Thomas Crawford; and Ann Ward Maillard, wife of Adolphe Maillard, a large landowner in California and a cousin of Prince Joseph Bonaparte. 47. Derby to Goodhue, 3 February 1790, Goodhue Collection, New York Society Library, NYC. 48. For a contemporary description, see Hunt’s, X: 2 (February 1844), 154–57. 49. Walter Barrett (pseud. for Joseph Scoville), The Old Merchants of New York City (New York, 1863), I: 32. 50. See testimony of Joshua Bates, 15 March 1830, Parliamentary Papers, Second Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, H/C, V, especially questions 3413, 3415, and 3229–3232. Also see Richard Milne’s testimony, 25 February 1830, First Report on the East India Company’s Affairs, V: 85, questions 1054 and 1060. 51. Allegedly the government lost over eight hundred fifty thousand dollars in the failure. See House Doc. #137, vol. 137, 19: 1. There are scattered descriptions

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of the trial of Smith & Nicoll, Thomson’s New York agents, in Wilcocks’s correspondence with Latimer, LP. Latimer, by the way, was Smith & Nicoll’s agent in Canton. For an idea of the incident’s effect on the market, see Worthy P. Stearns, “Foreign Trade of the United States from 1820 to 1840,” Journal of Political Economy 8, no. 4 (September 1900): 470–71 and Appendix. Stearns makes the important observation that American tastes also were affecting the trade. The annual per capita tea consumption fell off about 15 percent in the second half of the decade, while the consumption of coffee rose from about eight to fourteen pounds per person. 52. Consul John R. Thomson (Edward’s son) reported to Secretary Henry Clay on 23 March 1826 that in the season of 1824 Smith shipped a total of $1,311,157.22 in goods to China, $894,000 of which was specie. The following season it was $1,739,304.45, of which $1,110,300 was in silver (CCL-I). 53. Jacob Couvert, sometime head of Smith’s Canton factory, reportedly received nine thousand dollars a year, had plenty of help, factory expenses, furniture, etc., all paid for by Smith. See JRL to Smith and Nicoll, 18 October 1824, LP. William C. Hunter, Smith’s youngest apprentice, was sent to the missionary school at Malacca to learn Chinese. Hunter was the only American merchant during the entire period of the old China trade to become at all proficient in the language. This fact, in itself, is a commentary on the extent of Smith’s ambition. There is more information on Smith’s factory in the early pages of W. C. Hunter’s The “Fan Kwae” at Canton (London, 1882). 54. Typewritten document on the Olyphant & Co. ships prepared by Sylvia Bennet, a descendant. 55. Other Smith employees included Oliver H. Gordon, John Grosvenor, Thomas Bloodgood, and others mentioned earlier. 56. I have been unable to locate either circulars, advertisements, or copartnership agreements that would settle the matter. Olyphant himself, writing from Canton in March 1851, stated, “It is now about 20 years since I have been steadily engaged with it [the China trade]—and it is 20 years since my name has stood for a House in it.” Unfortunately this reference is so vague that it could refer to the announcement in 1832, which in the absence of other information I take as the formal beginning of Olyphant & Co. 57. Rev. Elijah C. Bridgman and Rev. David Abeel. 58. King’s birthdate is not precisely known. Different sources give 1808 and 1809. 59. Circular dated 10 September 1832, LP. See also the comment by W. H. Low in his letter to Russell dated 30 April 1832, RP. 60. According to W. H. Low, Gordon, who had worked both at Russell & Co. and Olyphant & Co. since the demise of the Smith firm, told him that he (Gordon) had been offered a partnership in Olyphant & Co. but that he had declined because he planned to leave the country soon (W. H. Low to SR, 30 April 1832, RP). Olyphant’s opium-trading enemies promptly dubbed Gordon King’s “drynurse” (JRL to JPC, 6 May 1832, LP). 61. TP. 62. WHL to SR, 23 December 1831, RP; and JRL to James Latimer, 24 March 1832, LP. The quotation is from the latter source. See also Carrington’s congratulations to Talbot on these voyages, 10 October 1831; Carrington LB VII: 252, CP. 63. JRL to JPC, 24 April 1832, LP. See also JMF to SR, 16 November 1834, RP. 64. Hidy, House of Baring, 352. Hidy says that another reason for the refusal was that “the junior partners were disagreeable.” 65. See pp. 208–9. Perhaps a factor in Olyphant’s decision was some correspondent’s desire to send opium to China. Heard charged Olyphant & Co. with selling a small parcel of the drug shortly before leaving the commission business (AH to SR,

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4 February 1833, RP). The firm would ultimately reverse the decision to abandon commissions. When the company failed in 1879, newspaper accounts described it as an organization of commission merchants, especially in silks, teas, and firecrackers. 66. CWK to CNT, 30 January, 19 February, and 7 May 1837, TP. See also Olyphant’s complaint in a letter to Talbot the previous 22 August, “You want a new Noviciate [sic] here for the new order of things and I am getting old,” TP. 67. For Teng’s campaign, see 132–33. 68. Olyphant & Co. was able to employ this device both in Canton and London. The firm used its connections to sell off cargoes in smaller lots, thus making it easier to get rid of inventories that might otherwise have produced a fall in price and a sacrifice. 69. CWK to CNT, 10 February 1837, TP. 70. CWK to CNT, 7 May 1837, TP. 71. The Diary of George Templeton Strong, vol. 1 (New York: Macmillan, 1952), I: 62, under date 3 May 1837. Also see SW to EC, 10 August 1837, CP. 72. The circular is in the Calendar of the American Fur Co. Papers, #6782. 73. The coverage of this incident in the Canton Press, 29 May 1841, is probably the handiest contemporary account. 74. Indeed he was the only member of the firm whom the opium traders did not regard as a censorious bore. See JC to AH, 20 January and 27 February 1840 (same letter); HP and NK to wife, January and February letters, 1844, KP. 75. James Matheson understood this dependence very well. At one point he became so exasperated by King’s “missionary cant” that he exploded in a letter to Jardine: “I begin seriously to think, of discarding our friend King whose business subsisting as it does, exclusively by his extensive negotiations with us, would be extinguished were we to drop him. Let him then say how he could get on without the aid of the drug, against which he is waging so unfair a crusade” (17 February 1840, JM Private LB, JMA). 76. OP. 77. WHL to SR, 21 October 1832, RP. 78. 28 August 1832, HP. 79. That is, Robert Morrison, pioneer [English] Protestant missionary at Canton. 80. BCW to JRL, letter beginning 20 April 1828, LP. 81. The only exception I have found is a remark in the latter mentioned n. 65, this chap. 82. Olyphant was a Presbyterian, and he worked with the American Board, which was largely Congregational and Reformed. The other religious influence on him, according to his biographer, was Moravian, oddly enough. 83. For example, see Russell Sturgis to Mary Sturgis, 14 January 1835, and Mary Sturgis to Russell Sturgis, 20 February 1835, RS Papers. Russell Sturgis repeatedly warned his wife against talking to Olyphant’s son (who remained at Macao when his father was in Canton) about business, because he feared Olyphant would misconceive such talk as coming from her husband. 84. This policy may have been unconscious, though I doubt it. Cf. fn. 60 above. 85. This possibility was suggested by Sylvia Bennet, a descendant, who, at last contact, was working on a study of the Olyphants in the New World. When it appears, her work should be as definitive as the extant sources permit. 86. CWK to CNT, 5 June 1837, TP. 87. WRT to Richard Arnold, 6 September 1835, TP. 88. CReg, 2 February 1836. 89. WRT to CNT, 17 May 1836, TP. William Talbot was working in his father’s countinghouse in New York by 1828; George R. Talbot to EC, 20 December 1828, CP.

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Later letters in the same collection seem to indicate that young Talbot had his own business by the early 1830s. Thus by 1836 he had had considerable experience. 90. See the opium receipts he signed, apparently for R&Co dated 1 January 1832 and 14 April 1830, LP. Also JA to George D. Carter, 25 January 1834, ALB. 91. William Jardine to OHG, 28 January 1937, and Dent & Co. to OHG, 24 January 1837, TP. 92. See especially OHG to CNT, 5 May 1836, and CWK to CNT, 30 January 1837, TP. 93. 27 February and 3 March 1840, HP. See also WRT to CNT, 5 May 1837, TP, and the comments of WHL Jr. to Seth Low, 26 October 1839, LMFP. 94. HL’s diary, IV: 32 (3 June 1832). See also I. M. Bull’s letter of introduction for Gordon to Thomas P. Bucklin, 3 January 1835, CP. Bull estimated Gordon’s fortune at one hundred fifty thousand dollars. 95. Except for Blight & Co. There were, of course, resident Philadelphians, like Wilcocks, Latimer, Sword, etc., but no organized permanent firms that survived their own period of residence. 96. Circular in CP. 97. Archer’s biographer states that he was probably the first to send American cottons to Asia in any quantity (Joseph Jackson in the DAB I: 341). According to Tyler Dennett, Archer was one of four American merchants who conducted seven eighths of the United States–China trade in this period. Although almost surely an exaggeration, this statement gives some idea of Archer’s importance. See Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia (1922; reprint, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963), 18. Also see pp. 157–58. 98. John C. Brown, A Hundred Years of Merchant Banking . . . Brown Brothers and Company (New York: Privately printed, 1909) and Frank R. Kent, The Story of Alexander Brown & Sons (Baltimore: Privately printed, 1925). Also see the testimony of Capt. Abel Coffin, 2 March 1830, Parliamentary Papers, First Report . . . , H/C, 1830, V: 129, question 1857. 99. JA to Cryder, 4 November 1833, AL. Cryder may have succeeded. See WSW to John Cryder, 14 October 1834, WP. It is interesting that inside the cover of his 1838 notebook, James Matheson carefully noted the name of Wetmore & Company’s Manchester agent—Jones, Gibson & Co., JMA. 100. He sailed on 6 January 1831 aboard the HCS Canning (CReg, 17 January 1831). 101. JRL to James Latimer, 2 August 1831, LP. At his death thirteen years later, his estate totaled four hundred eighty-five thousand dollars. Dunn’s will and related legal papers are located at the HSP. 102. Circular dated 1 June 1833, LP. 103. 6 December 1833, ALB. John Cryder seems to have made a settlement with Jenkins. See WSW to Cryder, 14 October 1834, WP; and JA to Cryder, 30 January 1834, ALB. 104. Hidy, House of Baring, 195. Cryder had married Wetmore’s cousin, Samuel Wetmore’s daughter, Mary Wright. Her younger sister, Esther Phillips, became Mrs. William Wetmore in a ceremony at Cryder’s London house on 24 October 1837. Here was a business alliance cemented with personal, familial bonds in a very traditional, centuries-old pattern. 105. These were invariably Philadelphia merchants, including Hollingshead, Platt & Co., Henry Toland, and John R. Brown. 106. JRL to J. J. Borie & Sons, 2 January 1834, LP. Although Latimer’s remaining trade was largely with Philadelphia merchants, he had a few New York correspondents

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as well. In his later years Latimer had not sought American business, so Wetmore & Co. may not have benefitted much from this source. 107. JPC to SR, 11 December 1832, RP. 108. Archer to Dunn, 3 February 1834, ALB. 109. Announcement in Canton General Price Current, 18 February 1834, et  seq. Wetmore arrived on the chartered vessel, Richard Alsop. He had sailed from America the previous year and came around Cape Horn to Lima, where he contracted dysentery. He was still very ill when he arrived in China on 28 January 1834 (JA to John Cryder, 30 January 1834, ALB). 110. SW Jr. to T. P. Bucklin, 13 July 1834, CP. See also the correspondence of I. M. Bull for this period, CP. 111. Lord Napier, the first Superintendent of British Trade, supplanted the Hon. Company’s Select Committee at Canton. Napier was a hard-headed Scottish peer who conducted a short hectic diplomatic duel with the Chinese authorities in the summer of 1834. He arrived at Macao on 15 July 1834 and died the following 11 October. The combination of Palmerston’s unworkable instructions and his lordship’s ignorance and rigidity accomplished nothing but to reinforce the preexisting images of each other held by the Chinese and a majority of the foreign community. For a concise account of his mission, see Peter W. Fay, “The Napier Fizzle,” Chapter 6 in his Opium War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 67–79. For a short description of Napier’s funeral cortege at Macao, see Mary Sturgis to Russell Sturgis, 15 October 1834, RS Papers. 112. WSW to Alsop, 26 October 1834, WP. 113. Ibid. and WSW to Cryder, 15 September and 14 October 1834, WP. 114. 26 October 1832, WP. Samuel Archer had done the same, causing his son to lose twenty thousand dollars. 115. WSW to Richard Alsop, 26 October 1834, and Archer to WSW, 4 September 1834, WP. 116. JMF to JPC, 22 December 1834, Forbes LB, FP. 117. Archer to WSW, 10 July 1837, WP. 118. SW Jr. to WSW, 31 March 1837, WP. 119. SW Jr. to WSW, 8 February 1838, JA to WSW, 20 February 1838, and William R. Lejee, Calcutta, to WSW, 4 May 1838, WP. 120. William R. Lejee to WSW, 4 May 1838, and Archer to WSW, 20 February 1838, WP. 121. Archer to WSW, 20 February 1938, WP. The third parties with whom Archer placed money were Veiga and Dent & Co., both opium-trading firms. They returned the funds early in 1838. As a further precaution Archer took the firm out of the insurance offices to which it had previously subscribed. See Archer to WSW, 12 February 1838, WP. 122. Ralph W. Hidy, “Cushioning a Crisis in the London Market,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 20, no. 4 (October 1946): 131–45. Although Morrison & Cryder survived the first shock of the depression, it lasted only until 1839, when Cryder left the partnership to return to New York. The successor firm, Morrison & Co., was no longer in the American trade. 123. See especially Samuel Wetmore, Jr.’s criticism of Archer’s performance in his letters to W. S. Wetmore, 8 February, 4 April, and 22 April 1838, WP. 124. To WSW, 3 February 1838, WP. 125. Ibid. and 31 March 1838, WP. 126. 14 November 1838, RP. Latimer probably assessed the situation accurately in a letter to Russell written the following day: “Wetmore is here again, fat, hale, and eager for gain. He has bought out Archer, takes in two of his clerks [as partners—

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Legee and Couper] on the First of next February, leaves them with Sam [Wetmore, Jr.] to manage here, and goes home himself, retaining the chief share of the income of the house. He aims evidently at a great fortune” (LLB, LP). 127. See “Memorandum of stipulations to be introduced into the articles of Agreement for a limited Copartnership” dated 1 February 1839, WP. It should be noted that this is not the articles themselves, but except for the provisions concerning Archer, the stipulations seem to have been adopted as they appear in the memorandum. 128. WSW to Cryder, 10 August 1839, WP. 129. See WSW to SW Jr., 29 August 1839, WP. In the “Memorandum of stipulations,” each of the junior partners and Joseph Archer was to get two twelfths, while William Wetmore was to receive four twelfths. Apparently the final document increased the elder Wetmore’s share by more than Archer’s two twelfths, because each of the junior partners seems to have had only one tenth. A postscript to the letter cited reads: “If the interest of the acting partners is increased to oneeighth after three years, your interest in the house will then be 221⁄2%.” Although Wetmore’s mathematics are a bit complicated for the present writer, obviously it had become necessary to redivide the partners’ equity in the firm when Archer quit, and, in the process, William Wetmore’s share seems to have grown from four twelfths to seven tenths. Of this formidable property, he gave Samuel Jr. another tenth before leaving China. 130. WSW to W&Co, 29 August 1839, WP. This flexibility was reduced somewhat, because the firm immediately authorized Wetmore to take one hundred thousand dollars of his capital out of the firm if he chose to do so. According to the “Memorandum,” Wetmore’s investment was two hundred thousand dollars, but it may have been larger after Archer’s withdrawal. See W&Co to WSW, 29 August 1839, WP. 131. Commodore George C. Read to WSW, 15 May 1839, WP, and more particularly, T. P. Bucklin to EC, 1 February 1840, CP. 132. CPress, 20 April 1839. 133. Read to WSW, 15 May 1839, WP. 134. Bucklin to EC, 2 September 1841, CP. 135. Asa Whitney in 1843. Whitney retired soon after with a fortune although he was never a member. 136. SW Jr. to WSW, 23 March 1841, WP. 137. Nathaniel Kinsman refers to it occasionally in his correspondence from Canton to his wife at Macao, KP. 138. Kinsman, Couper, and Lawrence in 1843. 139. In the early 1840s a “Mr. Bourne.” Earlier it had been Warner Varnham, an Englishman and a painter of some note. 140. William Moore, a “Mr. Codman,” Charles Howe, and Joseph Anthon. In 1844 a Mr. Gilett (also known as Gillette) was added to the tea department, and Jacob Rogers and Stephen Baldwin joined the staff as clerks in 1846. See “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman in Macao, China,” EIHC 76, no. 4 (October 1950): 312 and EIHC 87, no. 2 (April 1951): 135. 141. It should be noted that the firm was between organizations at this time. Couper and Lejee would soon leave for home and Lawrence would die. On the other hand both Wetmores would arrive and swell the ranks of the principals. Wetmore & Co. never faced the critical short-handedness that Russell & Co. did in 1832–33. 142. Augustine Heard to G. W. Heard, 15 September 1843, HP. 143. Lejee returned to Philadelphia, where he became a stockbroker and a “gentleman.” William Couper retired to Newcastle, Delaware.

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144. Moore and his two brothers had arrived aboard their own ship, the tiny Wissahickon. In Philadelphia, Moore had been associated with Moore & Harper, a commercial firm. See Philadelphia directories and the invoice signed by Moore on 21 November 1841 for goods on the ship Hannibal (Captain Scott), Philadelphia Maritime Museum. See also Mrs. R. C. Kinsman to her mother, 13 November 1843, quoted in “Life in Macao in the 1840’s,” EIHC 86, no. 1 (January 1950): 23–24. 145. Material on Lawrence is to be found in the New York directories and in Joseph Scoville (Walter Barrett [pseud.]), The Old Merchants of New York City (1870; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), I: 313–14. The Kinsman Papers also contain a number of references to him. 146. Rawle came from a very distinguished Philadelphia family. His father, William Rawle, was a famous jurist and the author of the standard work on the Constitution, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America, 2d ed. (Philadelphia, 1829). He was also a very pious Quaker and wrote a number of religious works. One of Samuel Rawle’s brothers, William Jr., was a well-known attorney. Another was a civil engineer, and a third became a judge in New Orleans. Both of the latter brothers took ABs and MAs at the University of Pennsylvania. Sarah Coates Rawle, Samuel’s mother, was the daughter of a rich Philadelphia merchant. 147. 1 December 1844, KP. 148. George Peabody became a member of Wetmore & Cryder in the late 1840s. Peabody himself was established in London, and through his connection with the New York firm, he was able to play a major part in the later development of the financing of the US trade with China and Latin America. After 1851, when he organized George Peabody & Co., he became more engaged in selling American securities in Britain. The standard work on Peabody is Muriel E. Hidy’s George Peabody: Merchant and Financier, 1829–1854 (Salem, NH: Arno Press, 1978). This study makes an interesting comparison with the lives of William Sturgis, John Murray Forbes, and Charles N. Talbot. 149. See Dunn to Archer, 2 February 1830, Dunn LB, Mystic Seaport. Contrast the letter of Joseph Archer to George D. Carter, Boston, 3 February 1834, ALB. 150. One of Wetmore’s family testified that William “was opposed . . . to trading in opium. . . . If any opium came consigned to his house, it was received and taken care of, until after the destruction of the opium by the government subsequent to which the house received none.” See J. C. Wetmore, The Wetmore Family of America . . . (Albany, NY, 1861), 354–60. With allowances for the influence of a strong family loyalty that bent the truth somewhat, this statement is not grossly inaccurate. For the period after the Opium War, it is confirmed by an independent source (C. A. Montalto de Jesus, Historic Shanghai [Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1909], 49). The only hint to the contrary is the anomalous presence of William Moore, the firm’s representative, in India in 1843, 1844, and 1845. See ED’s diary, passim. 151. 15 December 1844, KP. 152. Much to Bull’s disappointment and irritation. See his letter to EC, 1 February 1839, CP. 153. In fact John Murray Forbes referred to the firm in a triply mixed metaphor as “a grand milch cow,” “the goose that lays golden eggs,” and “a magnificent engine for coining money” (Duncan Yaggy, “John Forbes, Entrepreneur,” PhD diss., Brandeis University, 1974; and Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 473 and 478). 154. For a handy overview of Russell & Co. leadership after 1844, see Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 471–82. 155. Leland H. Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York: 1927), 113. 156. Knopf, John N. A. Griswold joined the firm in 1848. By then John C. Green

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had married a Griswold and joined the New York concern. Paul S. Forbes chose Griswold to serve as head of the house while he (Forbes) was in America. Ironically Griswold was to lead the only attempt to dislodge the Forbeses from domination of the company in the later period. See Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 474–75. 157. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost (1965; reprint, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971), Introduction.

Chapter 6. The China Trader 1. An epithet mildly translated “treacherous merchants,” but clearly far more biting. See Ann B. White, “The Hong Merchants of Canton” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1967), 145–48. 2. Peter W. Fay, The Opium War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1975), 164. 3. Ibid., 274–75, 286, and 296–97. 4. Necrological Reports  .  .  .  of the Alumni Association of Princeton Theological Seminary (Princeton, NJ, 1891), I (24 April 1871): 7. 5. W. Lloyd Warner and James Abegglen, Big Business Leaders in America (1955; reprint, New York: Atheneum, 1963), 156–70, passim. 6. For example, Benjamin Hoppin, Jr., Philip Ammidon, Jr., and Benjamin Wilcocks, Jr. 7. Possibly here is the basis of the common nineteenth-century belief that poverty in youth provided the spur that goaded men on to success. Samuel Eliot Morison notes the working of this rule on young Harrison Grey Otis (The Life and Letters of Harrison Grey Otis . . . [Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1913], 40). See also the touching description of John Murray Forbes’s early life in Duncan Yaggy, “John Forbes, Entrepreneur” (PhD diss., Brandeis, 1974), esp. 20–22. 8. The two occupations frequently overlapped. As to the relative status of various occupations, it may be of some interest to note that Joseph Scoville, writing as late as the middle of the Civil War, said, A glorious occupation on this continent is that of a merchant! He has no superior. There is no class of citizens that excel or even equal him, except it be editors. Lawyers are respectable, if they conduct their business properly; but . . . in rank the lawyer occupies a secondary position, for the lives and thrives off the business created for him by the more planning, combining genius of the great merchant.

Doctors and clergymen also take second place for much the same reason, according to Scoville (The Old Merchants of New York City, vol. 1 [New York, 1863], I: 94– 95). Alexis de Tocqueville agrees. See Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: Vintage, pb. edition, 1955), II: 164–65. See also Richard Hofstadter, AntiIntellectualism in American Life (1962; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1963), 244–49. 9. There were also a number of small retail merchants such as grocers, apothecaries, and “storekeepers.” They have been classified as businessmen in this study. 10. Both farmers’ sons, John C. Green and William S. Wetmore, received good educations, and both were remarkably successful. Farming in the Northeast in this period was so city-oriented, i.e., mixed with commercial and industrial activity, that to characterize young men born or raised on an eastern farm as “farm boys” is misleading. 11. It had been more common for upper-class young men to enter business despite the loss of status that such a step sometimes involved. In preindustrial England even younger brothers of peers were known to go into trade, and marriage to the daughter of a prosperous merchant saved many a noble estate.

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12. “The large capital required in this business kept the mass of merchants from operating in that quarter of the world.” See Scoville, Old Merchants, I: 39. 13. Like a great number of other Canton institutions, this one was continued at the treaty-ports long after the demise of the old China trade. An observant resident of Shanghai, at the beginning of the twentieth century, described clerks in the commercial houses there as “pampered mercantile assistants enjoying prerogatives which led them on to competence if not to fortune in return for their devotion at the shrine of Mammon” (C. A. Montalto de Jesus, Historic Shanghai [Shanghai, 1909], 53). 14. In the China trade, there were Goodhue & Co., Brown & Ives, Edward Carrington & Co., Howland & Aspinwall, the Peabodys, J. & T. H. Perkins, Bryant & Sturgis, and many others, who never sent their sons to China. Only N. L. & G. Griswold despatched a scion to Canton and only at the end of the era. Probably Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks gives as good a representation of this kind of family-cum-business structure as anything in nonfictional literature. See also Percy E. Schramm, Neun Generationen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1963–64). 15. See Forbes to wife, 3 July 1843, and his journal for 17 May 1843, FP. 16. “The Role Structure of the Entrepreneurial Personality,” in Change and the Entrepreneur (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949), 112. 17. Ibid., 113. 18. Of this group Hunter had been with the firm eight years (an extraordinarily long time) before he was admitted, and he came in then only because John Green, another sport, was willing to give up a one-sixteenth interest to reward him for faithful service. 19. Perkins may have been a relation, but to date this study has not turned up a connection. He did come from the Boston area. If one projects the study forward to 1850, three more ex-clerks were admitted, but only one, John N. A. Griswold, had no direct blood connection with earlier partners. However Green had married Griswold’s aunt and joined his father’s firm, which was one of Russell & Company’s most important correspondents. 20. “Sometimes these educated boys who have to work with their hands turn up trumps. At any rate they are a cheap experiment when willing to work for small pay. I think the mistake we have made in our R.Rd lines was in not bringing up youngsters we know something about as foremast hands, for the chance of picking out good mates and captains just as the old-fashioned shipowners used to do in taking green hands at six dollars a month. It is true that they were called the ‘owner’s hard bargains with sharp teeth and soft hands,’ but out of them we used to get enough good men to pay for the larger portion of good-for-nothings.” See Henry Greenleaf Pearson, An American Railroad Builder (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 105. 21. For example, John W. Brooks, Charles Russell Lowell, and Charles E. Perkins. See also Arthur M. Johnson and Barry E. Supple, Boston Capitalists and Western Railroads (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 30–31. 22. “The Business Elite in Business Bureaucracies,” in William Miller, Men in Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 289. 23. Russell’s mother had the same name and came from the same town as the two sisters. Presumably he, too, was related. 24. Somewhere Samuel Eliot Morison has commented on the endogamous character of Bostonian society at this period. To judge from impressionistic evidence only, the same would seem to have been true of other merchant groups with strong geographical identifications. 25. Peter Parker, for example, was the son of a “farmer in moderate circumstances”

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of Framingham, Massachusetts. Of course the caveats made about farms in the Northeast mentioned above (n. 10) should not be forgotten here. Possibly a heritage of the pattern of Puritan settlement, farm life, especially in New England, was not the lonely, remote kind of existence found further south and west. The birthplaces of several strongly suggest a truly “rural” background, while those born in “cities” were usually from such places as Milton, Massachusetts; Alexandria, Virginia; and Berne, New York, hardly major metropolitan areas at that time. 26. Only Issachar J. Roberts might be classed as a westerner. He was born in Tennessee, a state generally identified as western in that day, but also regarded as southern. Yet the merchants also had one such unusual member. 27. Bridgman, aboard the Roman, near Lintin, to CNT, 8 April 1836, TP. It was only ten months later that Charles W. King wrote the same correspondent, “May I tell you a secret? Dr. Parker wants very much a Mrs. P. [sic],” 30 January 1837, TP. 28. See pp. 240–41. 29. Walter Lowrie, by no means the most fundamental in the Mission, shocked Mrs. Kinsman in 1844 by preaching infant depravity. See Rebecca Chase Kinsman to Nathaniel Kinsman, 20 January 1844, KP. For a more extended treatment of missionary beliefs, see Clifton Jackson Phillips, Protestant America and the Pagan World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 4–12. 30. Indeed William Dean lost two wives in this short period. 31. Quoted in George B. Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick, The Life, Letters, and Journals of the Rev. and Hon. Peter Parker, M.D. (Boston, 1896), 7. A recent biographer calls Parker “a prototype displaying some of the unsmiling attributes of nineteenth-century missionaries, this curious, dour, unfunctional sobriety helping to explain his lack of a sense of proportion, as well as the absence of a sense of humor.” See Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 95. Similarly Latourette says of the young Robert Morrison that he was very serious and “almost devoid of a sense of humor” (The Great Century [New York: Harper, 1944], 296). Again Charles W. King, Olyphant’s partner, at least as much a missionary as a merchant, was also a peculiarly humorless person. Because King, Parker, and the reserved S. Wells Williams went along on Olyphant’s Morrison in 1837 to attempt to open Japan to evangelism, that famous voyage must have been a singularly joyless affair. 32. J. L. Shuck attended the Virginia Baptist Seminary in Richmond, and Issachar Roberts went to the Furman Theological Institution in South Carolina. Bishop Boone was a graduate of South Carolina College and Virginia Theological Seminary. Samuel R. Brown attended Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina before transferring to Union. Sectional differences seem to have been less important in religion than they were to become later as the Civil War approached. 33. This phrase was in common use at the time. 34. Vestiges of this ancient disdain are still evident in the dual school system existing in the eastern part of the United States today. 35. Parsonian analysis of such a firm would be difficult. Using the five “pattern variables of action orientation,” one gets different results depending on how they are applied. Membership in a firm, for example, derived both from ascription (family membership, friendship, etc.) and achievement. Affective bonds were strong, but most firms could and did adapt to unusual situations by inaugurating reforms. Two sets of value standards existed, a particular and a universal, and different firms leaned in different directions. In general, however, the partnerships at Canton were closer to the traditional family firm than to the modern corporation. See Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951), especially Chapters II and III.

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36. Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost, 2d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965, 1971), 3. See also the rules laid down for their apprentices by the Tappan brothers, founders of Dunn & Bradstreet: They insisted that all their young clerks be as evangelical as themselves, with mandatory Sunday church attendance and morning prayers in the “Bethel Chapel” in the store loft. If bachelors, the apprentices had to live in religious boarding-houses, abstain from drink and the company of theatrical people, and retire at night by ten o’clock.

See Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “God and Dunn & Bradstreet,” Business History Review 40, no. 4 (Winter 1966): 433. With minor changes this description could fit Olyphant & Co. 37. See Scoville, Old Merchants, I: 110–11. 38. Their appreciation of this function of apprenticeship may, at least in part, account for the nineteenth-century businessman’s aversion to other, more formal “book learning.” See Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Knopf, 1962), Chapter IX. 39. Aboard ship everyone customarily had some “privilege”—space, or tonnage allotted him to use as he saw fit. Privilege was a means of giving all the ship’s company an interest in the voyage and was also a means of training young men in the mercantile arts. The amount of privilege varied according to rank, and the captain, as master of the vessel, always had the largest share. 40. For a captain, fifty dollars a month, keep, and privilege was common in the period, though if he also served as supercargo, a captain could make substantially more. Also some firms liked the captain to have a share in the ship. 41. Notice, for example, the defensive attitude of Robert Bennet Forbes respecting his own preferential treatment (PRs [Boston, 1882], esp. 80–82). 42. Of course there were captains who did not have such advantages. Some were barely literate. One such was a regular visitor to Canton, Philadelphian John Phillips (master of the Thomas Scattergood, which served Latimer as a storeship at Lintin for over a year). His labored letters to Latimer make difficult reading, yet he enjoyed a reputation as a very efficient captain. 43. The proportion of New Englanders was even higher among opium traders. All but seven of those definitely identified in the traffic were Yankees. However among the non-Yankees were such formidable figures as Wilcocks and Latimer. Also, if sedentary American drug traders were to be included in this survey, Girard, Astor, and other major dealers might force a revision of this generalization. 44. See Scoville, Old Merchants, I: 56–58. 45. The New England influence operated in some obscure ways. For example, John D. Sword of Delaware, who sailed from Philadelphia and generally represented Philadelphia merchants in this period, was intimately connected with Yankees. He had apprenticed with Perit & Cabot, and he ultimately became a partner in Augustine Heard & Co., whose principals came almost entirely from Boston and Ipswich. 46. Although Wetmore & Co. was the successor to Nathan Dunn & Co., a  Philadelphia firm, Wetmore himself came from Vermont via Connecticut. Similarly, though both Olyphant and Talbot had come to Canton as the employees of Thomas Smith of New York, both were Rhode Islanders. 47. Manigault was born in Charleston, South Carolina, but he grew up in Philadelphia and New York. As he was in Canton only a few months, perhaps he should not be classified as a resident at all. Griffin Stith was a Virginian, but he made his home in Baltimore. He was a nephew of John Donnell of that city (see 114–15 and 120–21). Like Manigault, Stith was in China only once and for a similar period. Indeed, if it

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were not for Donnell and a very few other Baltimore merchants, mostly with strong connections in Philadelphia, the South would have been virtually unrepresented at Canton in pretreaty days, except among the missionaries. 48. At least three more Philadelphians became partners before 1844, and a fourth was admitted tentatively but later rejected. Not all were Quakers, but the wife of a Yankee partner, Rebecca Chase (Mrs. Nathaniel) Kinsman, was a Friend. 49. There were also a number of single proprietorships like Wilcocks’s and Latimer’s. Rodney Fisher and Charles Blight, in addition, served with British firms (MacVicar & Co. and Dent & Co., respectively), but there was no large, clearly Philadelphian Canton concern to compare with Russell & Co., Heard & Co., etc. 50. This includes Presbyterians like John C. Green and D. W. C. Olyphant. 51. Quakers and Jews were also among Weber’s high achievers. See The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 44, 144–54, 165–66, and 270–71. 52. N. S. B. Gras and Henrietta Larson, Casebook in American Business History (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1939), 119–33. 53. Thomas T. Forbes, 3 April 1827, PP. 54. Forbes worked as a stateside merchant very effectively from the time of his return in 1837 to about 1840. Thereafter he continued in trade but devoted most of his energies to his family and his investments. The latter led him into iron smelting (unsuccessfully) and ultimately into railroad finance. The most recent and complete study of Forbes is Duncan Yaggy’s “John Forbes, Entrepreneur,” q.v. 55. Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 1845–1890 (1953; reprint, New York: Russell & Russell, 1965), 9. 56. For a discussion of this paradox, see my article, “Fair Game: Exploitive Role-Myths and the American Opium Trade,” PHR 41, no. 2 (May 1972): 133–49. For Redlich’s comment, see his Molding of American Banking (1951; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1968), II: 354. 57. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 34. One might add that the authority of a line boss or a section chief seems less than that of a supercargo. 58. Ibid., 34–39; Arthur M. Johnson and Barry E. Supple, Boston Capitalists and Western Railroads (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 24–32; and N. S. B. Gras, Business and Capitalism (1939; reprint, New York: A. M. Kelly, 1971), 72–91 and 131–74. The quotation is from Gras, 174. With his nostalgia for the era of mercantile capitalism, Gras would call the second careerists “disintegrative capitalists.” 59. Robert Spaulding, “The Boston Mercantile Community and the Promotion of the Textile Industry in New England, 1810–1845” (PhD diss., Yale, 1963). 60. Cf. Cochran, Railroad Leaders, 212–14, 220, 227, passim. Anticipating Secretary Charles Wilson by a century, John Murray Forbes also identified private business interest and the public weal. See Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 426–31. 61. The information on Talbot is in the Talbot Papers and from several of his and Olyphant’s descendants. 62. For example, Samuel R. Brown and Divie Bethune McCartee. 63. William Gammell, A History of American Baptist Missions (Boston, 1849), 204, fn. Among the Episcopalians the counterpart of the ubiquitous Dr. Parker was Bishop Boone. It is interesting to note the difference in the areas covered by the two men. While Parker operated in New England and the central Atlantic states (and Britain), Boone was active in the central Atlantic and the South. See Spirit of Missions IX: 7 (July 1844): 267. 64. To JRL, 29 October 1828, LP. Cf. JPC to JRL, 28 March 1831, LP.

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65. 10 February 1829. Cf. JPC to TTF, 28 November 1828, John P. Cushing’s LB, B&S Papers. 66. J. & T. H. Perkins & Sons to JPC, 18 March 1827. JEC, “Extracts from the Letterbooks of J. & T. H. Perkins.” Colonel Perkins himself was able, in great degree, to retire, thus carrying out his early “credo,” expressed in a letter to his brother James as early as 1783: “When the inclination and ability for exertion is over, let us have it in our power to retire from the bustle of the world and enjoy the fruits of our labour” (28 August 1793). 67. An elderly family member informs me that, as late as the end of the last century, personal and family bills—even magazine subscriptions—were still routinely paid at the office for Cushing’s whole family. 68. JRL to Mary R. Latimer, 28 March 1831, LP. Americans were not alone in this readjustment problem. On leaving Canton in November 1838, Jardine noted that “his joy at the prospect of seeing his native land, was mingled with regrets at leaving the place where he had enjoyed a greater measure of comfort and security than he could expect elsewhere.” See Gideon Nye, The Morning of My Life in China (Canton, 1873), 58. 69. JRL to Mary R. Latimer, 31 March 1831, LLB. 70. To JRL, 29 October 1828, LP. 71. Loc. cit. and JRL to Mary R. Latimer, 28 March 1831, LLB. 72. Quoted in Elma Loines, The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family (Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing Co., 1953), 97. 73. 3 January 1835, CP. 74. July 1804, CP. 75. See Claude Fuess’s article in the DAB II: 630–31. 76. LLB. 77. Yaggy, “John Forbes,” 171 and 202. Latimer often discussed his retirement plans in his correspondence with his relatives. In a revealing letter dated 6  February 1833, his cousin James Latimer sets forth the kinds of lifestyles possible at several levels of income (LP). 78. The 91st edition of the Rand McNally Commercial Atlas and Marketing Guide (New York, 1960) listed twenty-seven states containing at least one Canton. The distribution of these municipalities is instructive: all the states of the eastern seaboard except Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Florida boast a Canton. In  addition all of the Midwestern and Great Plains states have a Canton except for Nebraska and Wyoming. In the South, Cantons are scattered—Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Texas, each listing at least one town by that name. Finally the only mountain state with a Canton is Colorado, and the Pacific Coast, which today has the highest proportion of citizens of Chinese (especially Cantonese) ancestry in its population, has none at all. 79. See Edward C. Kirkland’s chapter “The Big House,” in Dream and Thought in the Business Community, 1860–1900 (1956; reprint, New York: Quadrangle, 1964), 34. 80. Paine was a founder of the Worcester County Horticultural Society. See H. D. Paine, ed., Paine Family Records, vol. 1 (New York, 1880), I: 78–79; and Caleb A. Wall, Reminiscences of Worcester (Worcester, Mass., 1877), 88–89. B. P. Tilden, who was also a member of the society, reports that Puankhequa was made an honorary member. 81. Justin Winsor, ed., The Memorial History of Boston, vol. 4 (Boston, 1881), 633. See Brinker’s comments on the horticultural tastes of China-trade nabobs (William J. Brinker, “Commerce, Culture and Horticulture: Beginnings of SinoAmerican Cultural Relations,” Chapter One in Thomas H. Etzold, Aspects of SinoAmerican Relations since 1784 [New York: New Viewpoints, 1978], 3–24).

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82. JPC to JMF, 23 February 1835, Cushing LB. See also Cushing’s 1837 letter from Chutang Ahao in the Boston Athenaeum. 83. Winsor, Memorial History, IV: 625 and [Thomas L. V. Watson], The Aristocracy of Boston (Boston, 1848), 13–14 and Anonymous, Our First Men: A Calendar of Wealth, Fashion and Gentility . . . (Boston, 1846), 19. 84. See the description in Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston . . . (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 387–88, passim. 85. Fuess, DAB II: 630–31. 86. Andrew Jackson Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practise of Landscape Gardening . . . (New York, 1853), 34–35. 87. Andrew Jackson Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practise of Landscape Gardening . . . (New York, 1853). See also Arthur W. Hummel, “Nathan Dunn,” Quaker History 59, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 37. 88. Anonymous [Frederic A. Delano], Algonac, 1851–1931 (Privately printed, n.d.), 4–5. 89. See my article, “A Study in Failure: Hon. Samuel Snow,” Rhode Island History 25, no. 1 (January 196): 8. 90. H. D. Eberlein and C. Van Dyke Hubbard, “China Hall,” in H. D. Eberlein and C. Van Dyke Hubbard, Portrait of a Colonial City, Philadelphia, 1670–1838 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., [1939]), 472–81. 91. Downing described Latimeria as having “the reputation of being the finest in Delaware,” “with richly stocked gardens and conservatories” (Downing, Treatise [1857], 59). Russell’s mansion, incidentally, is now perhaps the most elegant building on the Wesleyan University campus. 92. A number of the old Forbes houses still remain on Naushon, some, alas, in a rather advanced state of disrepair. It is indeed a pity that the family trust cannot afford the preventive maintenance to ensure their survival. Robert Bennet Forbes’s impressive Victorian house in Milton, fortunately, continues as an exemplary museum. 93. J. Downs, “The China Trade and Its Influences,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 36 (1941): 84–95. See also Carl Crossman, The Decorative Arts of the China Trade (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors’ Club, Ltd., 1991). A good scholarly summary is Jonathan Goldstein, “A Romantic Vision of Cathay: The Decorative Arts of the Old China Trade and Their Influence in America Up to 1850,” American Studies 10, no. 3 (September 1980): 1–11. 94. DAB II: 630–31. 95. Sigmund Diamond, The Reputation of the American Businessman (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955). 96. He wore glasses, and toward the end of his life, one eye became almost totally blind. 97. It should be noted that while the last two were deep in the China trade at one time, and both traded in opium, neither went to Canton. Thus they cannot be included as Canton graduates. For a sampling of China trade nabobs’ generosity, see Hummel, “Dunn,” 38–39 or the DAB biographies. 98. H. A. Crosby Forbes and Henry Lee, Massachusetts’s Help to Ireland during the Great Famine (Milton, Mass., 1967). 99. See 137 and 261–63. 100. See 280–83.

Chapter 7. The Creation of an Official Policy 1. This theme will be developed further in another publication. It was recognized by Tyler Dennett as early as 1922 in his Americans in Eastern Asia (1922; reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1941 and 1963).

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2. Hunt’s Merchant’s Magazine, II (May 1840): 413. 3. Britain’s colonial empire was often the target of caustic remarks in the American commercial correspondence. At least two major views existed—one that did not concern itself with political matters but focused only on trade and colonial social life—and a second that was vigorously anticolonialist. Neither opinion was confined only to merchants; the missionaries also held both views. 4. This feeling was high in Britain also. Gladstone, whose Midlothian campaign was later to epitomize a simplistic, moralistic approach to foreign policy, said of the Opium War: “A war more unjust in its origin, a war more calculated in its progress to cover this country with disgrace, I do not know and have not read of” (quoted in Claude M. Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, vol. 1 [New York: Harcourt Brace, 1923], 404, fn.). 5. Congressional Globe VIII, 26:1, 275, House Journal, 26, no. 1 (16 March 1840): 285. 6. It is not clear to what “pledge” they were referring, unless it was Russell & Company’s announcement that it was quitting the traffic. Three of the eight signatories were members of that firm and two more—the members of Russell, Sturgis & Co.—had agreed to dissolve their concern and enter the former company. Presumably, therefore, five of the eight were covered by Russell & Company’s decision. The other three signers were independent agents who had never, to my knowledge, been in the opium trade at all. Thus this was essentially a Russell & Co. petition. Such major firms as Olyphant & Co. and Wetmore & Co. (a minor drug trader) and most of the independents were simply not represented. Why John C. Green and A. A. Low, the senior partners of Russell & Co., failed to sign the memorial is a matter for speculation. 7. This was simply dishonest. Since 1837 the local authorities had been enforcing the antiopium laws with Draconian severity, and the results of this campaign were the basis for the petitioners’ conviction that the government was in earnest. 8. US Cong., 26:1, H/R Doc. #40, “Memorial of R. B. Forbes and Others.” 9. US Cong., 26:1, H/R Doc. #170, “Communication from Thomas H. Perkins and a Great Number of Other Merchants of Boston and Salem, Mass.” 10. Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 103–4. 11. Parker to Rufus Anderson, 17 February 1841; American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, “South China Mission,” Ia: 130. This source is located in Harvard’s Houghton Library. Henceforth it will appear ABCFM, “SCM.” 12. For information on Kearny, see Charles Oscar Paullin, American Voyages to the Orient, 1690–1865 (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute, 1971), 87–96. This is a reprint of several articles published in 1910–11, but it is still among the best secondary sources on the subject. See also Carroll Storrs Alden, Lawrence Kearny, Sailor-Diplomat (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1936). 13. John Heard III to his father, 19 May 1842, HP. 14. Both of Kearny’s two brothers, Stephen and Philip, became renowned generals. 15. US Department of the Navy, Letters to Officers of Ships of War, XXX: 44–47; James Kirk Paulding to Kearny, 2 November 1840. 16. US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, 38–39. Kearny, Amoy Harbor, to Secretary of the Navy, 19 May 1843. 17. See Forbes’s own account in his Personal Reminiscences (2d ed., Boston, 1882), 298–303. 18. US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, 39; Kearny, Amoy Harbor, to Sturgis, Macao, 21 May 1843, and Augustine Heard, Canton, to PCB (probably Peter Chardon Brooks), 15 June 1843, HP. Had Kearny had a more analytic eye, he might have

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suspected Sturgis. See the latter’s answer to Kearny’s request for information on American vessels trading on the coast illegally. US Cong., 26:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, 36–37. Sturgis to Kearny, 20 April 1843. 19. Paullin, American Voyages, 89, and John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast (1953; one vol. ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 136–37. 20. Paullin, American Voyages, 90. 21. See Bridgman’s account in Chinese Repository XI (June 1842), 329–35. He had long been an advocate of strong American action in China. 22. US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, 9–10. Kearny to Lieutenant J. B. Reynolds, 27 April 1842. 23. Ibid., “An official reply to  .  .  .  the Commodore, by Ke,” 16 May 1842, 12–13. 24. Ibid., Kearny to Delano, 23 June 1842, 17, and Alden, Lawrence Kearny, 149–50. 25. Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven, Conn.: Far Eastern Publications, Yale University Press, 1953), 93–95. 26. 23 September 1842, US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139 (16 February 1846), 20. This had been the advice of many a consul, missionary, merchant, and naval officer in letters to the Department over the previous half century. 27. US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, Kearny to Governor of Canton, 8 October 1842, 21. 28. Ibid., Ke to Kearny, 15 October 1842, 21–22. 29. Thomas Kearny, “The Tsiang Documents,” Chinese Social and Political Science Review 16 (1932): 75–104; same author, “Commodore Kearny and the Open Door,” New Jersey Historical Society Proceedings 50 (1932): 162–90; and same author, “Commodore Kearny and the Opening of China to Foreign Trade,” T’ien Hsia Monthly 3 (November 1936): 323–29. Mr. Kearny’s work is a staunch defense of a noble ancestor, but Professor Tsiang, whose work Kearny (a New York lawyer) attacks, stands unrebutted. See Tsiang Ting-fu, “The Extension of Equal Commercial Privileges to Other Nations Than the British After the Treaty of Nanking,” Chinese Social and Political Science Review 15 (1931): 422–44; and same author, “A Note in Reply,” Chinese Social and Political Science Review 16 (1932): 105–9. Tsiang’s contribution is that Kearny’s diplomacy merely put the US claim on the agenda of the Chinese government, which then decided, for reasons of its own, to grant equal rights to all foreigners. Caleb Cushing had no illusions about the matter. In his despatch #85 to the Department of State dated 16 August 1844, he wrote, “so far as can be gathered from all the documents which I have seen, the opening of the five ports was in fact as it certainly was in form, the spontaneous act of the Chinese Government.” 30. There is a log of the USS Constellation for this voyage kept by Midshipman John C. Beaumont in the Naval Records Collection, NA, RG-45. 31. US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, 24 and 26, Augustine Heard & Co. to Kearny, 5 January 1843 (two letters) and John Heard’s “Diary, 1891,” 31, HP. 32. Ibid., 29:1, Kearny to Ke, 15 March 1843, and Ke to Kearny, 17 March 1843, 31–33. 33. John Heard III to father, 30 May 1843, HP. 34. Augustine Heard & Co. to Kearny, 18 March 1843, HP. 35. US Cong., 29:1, Sen. Exec. Doc. #139, 32–33, Ke to Kearny, 17 March 1843. 36. Ibid., Kearny to Ke, 13 April 1843, 33–35.

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37. Ch’i-ying was the imperial clansman who negotiated all of the foreign treaties of the early 1840s. 38. It should probably be emphasized again that this most-favored-nation treatment was no achievement of Kearny’s. It was established Chinese policy. Indeed “equality of treatment was a prerequisite for the traditional policy of playing one barbarian off against another.  .  .  .  This led China into the most-favored-nation clause without understanding its importance” (John K. Fairbank, comp., Ch’ing Documents, 2d ed. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958], 38). This message from Ch’i-ying arrived on 31 July according to P. S. Forbes’s “Journal,” although the letter was dated 1 August. 39. See Kenneth Ch’en, “The Cushing Mission, Was It Necessary?” Chinese Social and Political Science Review 23 (April 1938): 3–14. Professor Ch’en makes this point and in so doing unconsciously echoes Governor Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai, who asked Cushing the same question in the spring of 1844. 40. Edward Everett justified the mission on the basis of “common prudence.” See the extract of his letter to the president in his letter to Cushing, 1 June 1844, Cushing Papers, L/C. 41. Ultimately Tyler was to appoint Calhoun secretary of state (1844–45). 42. Congressional Globe VIII: 275. 43. US Cong., 26:1, H/R Doc. #119. 44. US Cong., 26:2, H/R Doc. #71. 45. Included in US Cong., 26:2, H/R Doc. #71. 46. See pp. 120–21. Several earlier writers have suggested that Adams’s stand in 1841 may have had its roots in the Terranova affair. See Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 106; and Foster Rhea Dulles, The Old China Trade (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1930), 182–83. It was also while Adams was secretary that an attempt was made to communicate with the Emperor of China. Jonathan Russell, merchant and prominent Massachusetts Democrat, had suggested that President Monroe send a letter to the Son of Heaven. Russell even went so far as to compose the proposed message. Adams noted in his diary for 16 April 1822, “I  was at the President’s with various papers.  .  .  .  I read to him the projected letter from the President to the Emperor of China. It sounds the very base-string of humility, and disgusts me more and more by its servile fawning. The President liked it no better than myself. He asked me to make another draft.” On the 29th Russell came for the president’s letter and one from Adams to the Viceroy of Canton. He declared he preferred Adams’s draft to his own, but it seems doubtful that either message was ever sent. Not only is this the sole record of these letters, but it was this meeting that produced a very serious rupture between Adams and Russell—a break that grew into a feud in which Adams nearly destroyed Russell’s reputation for integrity. See Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Philadelphia, 1876), V: 491 and 504. 47. Adams, Memoirs, XI: 30–31. 48. CR IX (May 1842): 281. This is the only source I know of for the entire address. It is to be found on pp. 274–89. It is a commentary on the difference in climates of opinion that the North American Review should refuse the article, although a missionary periodical on the China coast printed it. 49. Before setting out for Washington, Parker wrote his sister of his plans: “My object being to afford such information as my residence in China shall enable me to give our Government, and, if possible, to interest it to do something at this time to establish a friendly relation with that government . . . and perhaps to offer mediation between them and the English.” See George Barker Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick, The Life, Letters, and Journals of the Rev. . . . Peter Parker (Boston & Chicago, 1896), 182–83.

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50. She was reportedly very close to the secretary, and though apparently not really a relative, she and the secretary seem to have thought they were kin. It seems to have been a whirlwind courtship. The Parkers were married less than three months after their first meeting. Webster helped Parker raise money in England later in the year by giving him several letters of introduction to important people. See Peter Parker, Statements Respecting Hospitals in China (Glasgow, 1842), 3. 51. Fuess, Life of Cushing, I: 405–6. See also George B. Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick, The Life, Letters, and Journals of . . . Peter Parker, M.D. (Boston, 1896), 253; and Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 96–108. 52. This view obtained despite the fact that the missionaries welcomed the results of the war, and several had even occasionally called for forceful action in the years before the conflict. See Peter W. Fay, “The Protestant Missionaries and the Opium War,” Pacific Historical Review 40, no. 2 (May 1971): 145–61. For a more recent and decidedly stronger view, see Murray Rubinstein, “The Wars They Wanted: American Missionaries’ Use of The Chinese Repository before the Opium War,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 271–82. 53. See Paul S. Forbes, “Journal,” 9 April and 26 July 1843, FP, and two rather remarkable letters from Augustine Heard to Thos. H. Perry, 24 January 1843 and to A. F. Seebohm of Hamburg on 11 May 1843, HP. See 140. 54. Charles W. King, “Application of the Power of the Consuls of the United States of America,” CR VI (March 1838): 497–527. 55. Section XIII. 56. Stevens and Markwick, Life of Peter Parker, 220. 57. Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, I: 407. 58. US Cong., 27:3, H/R Doc. #35. Yet it was J. Q. Adams, on 24 January of the following year, who introduced a bill calling for the appropriation of forty thousand dollars to fund the mission. 59. Works of Daniel Webster (Boston, 1856), VI: 463, fn. 60. British and Portuguese officials resided at Hong Kong and Macao, respectively. Only consular officials had been tolerated at Canton, and even the imperial order that the American consulate at Canton was to receive the next 31 July mentioned no residents except consuls. 61. 24 January 1843; US Cong., 27:3, H/R Report #93. 62. Ibid. See also Congressional Globe XII: 323, 325, and 391. The report is to be found in Statutes at Large, 24–28, Cong., XV: 624. In reporting for the Foreign Affairs Committee, John Quincy Adams reviewed Sino-British relations in much the same manner as he had done at greater length before the Massachusetts Historical Society. What had changed his mind about despatching a mission was the realization that after Nanking, “the honor, interest and pride of the Emperor will all be prompted to concede, in peace and amity, to other nations, the same equality of access to his Government which was extorted from him by British arms.” 63. Congressional Globe XII: 391. See also Thomas Hart Benton, Thirty Years’ View (New York, 1863), II: 514. Inadvertently Benton later exposed the intensity of his own partisanship when he stressed the importance to the United States of the China trade as a reason for constructing a transcontinental railroad. See Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (1950; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1957), 23–34. 64. Adams was outraged at the selection of Cushing for the China mission. Cushing’s support of Tyler, in Adams’s opinion, proved him corrupt, a turncoat or worse. Adams was rarely moderate in his judgments of his adversaries. See Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia, 1876), XI: 388. Incidentally Congress was out of

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session, so the commission was not ratified by the Senate until 17 June 1844, by which time negotiations in China were well underway. 65. His brother William was engaged in the Pacific trade at the time of the China mission. Cushing wrote to him at Honolulu in care of George Brown, a close family friend. He had been a classmate of Joseph Coolidge, formerly of Russell & Co. and since 1840 a member of Augustine Heard & Son. He was a distant cousin of John Perkins Cushing and knew a number of other Canton merchants. An historian of the last generation states that Cushing himself was engaged in the Pacific trade as “a member of the maritime firm of Cushing and Company,” but I have been unable to confirm this statement. See Cornelius J. Brosnan, Jason Lee: Prophet of the New Oregon (New York: Macmillan Co., 1932), 224, fn. 28 and 277. 66. A few quotations from his biographer illustrate the point. He had a “gift of intense concentration” and a “love of order, exactness, and punctuality, all manifestations of his dislike of any waste of time or energy. He was so systematic that everything was ready to his hand. . . . His information was all classified and pigeonholed.” “He hated immeasurably to have a book out of place on his shelves or mislaid.” “He was always punctual, almost to the second.” Although he was not snobbish, he was “incapable of mingling with others in an unreserved way. No one ever grew too familiar with Cushing.  .  .  .  Even when he unbent, he still seemed formal and rather frigid.” He was very penurious, especially in his old age, when “he kept together in one room every little object that had been his mother’s.” “Cushing did not care for either frivolity or dissipation, which he considered evidence of feeble character.” He was no “spritely wit” and had “little small talk.” He was “conventional and established in religion,” and “there was about him a kind of Roman severity and aloofness.” He was “rather coldly intellectual.” See Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, passim, esp. vol. 2, Chapter 18, 386–424. 67. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 193–94, fn. 68. He was no racist. One of his first essays for the North American Review concerned Haiti. One purpose of the article was to demonstrate that blacks are not intellectually inferior. In fact he once wrote a paper maintaining that slavery was demoralizing to a slaveholding society. 69. An attorney general under Pierce, Cushing was to be one of the strongest figures in the administration. Only Jefferson Davis, secretary of war, and William  L. Marcy, secretary of state, rivaled him. Named chairman of the 1860 National Democratic Convention at Charleston, he exerted all his powers to keep the party together, but the Southern extremists would have none of it. Although he was also chairman of the Baltimore Convention, which convened a few weeks later, he threw his support to Breckinridge, hoping against hope to keep the Union intact. Only when the Republican victory in November ended all chance of appeasing the Southern secessionists did Cushing become a supporter of Lincoln. 70. In a number of respects, Caleb Cushing was a conservative Adlai Stevenson, to employ an anachronism for the purposes of exposition. He was scholarly, immensely learned, and of a wealthy, established family. His education was impeccable, and his political career was continually damaged by his own honesty, moderation, and allegiance to principle. He was also perhaps the most misunderstood man of his time and certainly one of the most deserving of public office. Fuess has made a very apt description of some of Cushing’s personal qualities which served him well at Macao in the negotiations: “Cushing was an extraordinarily versatile and well-rounded man. To a naturally keen mind, he joined other qualities which gave him intellectual distinction. With tireless physical and mental energy, he rose at dawn and was seldom in bed until after midnight.” See “Caleb Cushing,” in DAB IV: 628–29.

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71. His experiences in China may well have prepared him to accept Darwin’s thesis after his first reading of the Origin of Species. 72. Sir Harold Nicholson has contended that this is the essence of diplomacy. See his Peacemaking, 1919 (1933; reprint, Boston and New York: Harcourt Brace, 1939), especially chaps. I, esp. 1–10. See also my article, “Fair Game,” Pacific Historical Review 61 (May 1972): 133–49. 73. Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, I: 397–98. 74. Fletcher Webster, as he was known, had graduated from Harvard in 1833. He had been his father’s private secretary while the latter was secretary of state. He was appointed to the mission on 24 April 1843 in the belief that Edward Everett would be commissioner. He sailed ahead of Cushing but met him in Bombay. 75. After the mission left for home, Kane remained in Macao practicing medicine, but toward the end of the year, he became ill and was forced to leave in January 1845. In later years he became well known for his North Polar explorations. He died suddenly and prematurely in Havana on 16 February 1857, aged thirty-five. See William Elder, Biography of Elisha Kent Kane (Philadelphia, 1858). 76. From Webster’s second letter to Cushing dated 8 May 1844. This message listed the various items with which the government would supply the mission, gave travel information, etc. It is quoted in part by Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 142. One of these youngsters, Stanislas Hernisz, came as Cushing’s private secretary and was paid by the commissioner himself. Of Polish extraction Hernisz possessed formidable language talent as evidenced by his swift mastery of Portuguese on the trip out and by his attainment of some ability to read and write Chinese by the end of the mission. John R. Peters, of New York, was the son of a friend and political ally of Cushing’s. The “General Correspondence” file in the Cushing Papers contains a number of letters written regularly by John R. Peters, Sr., keeping the commissioner informed on political developments at home. George R. West was “an experienced draftsman” and artist who sketched and painted what he saw at Canton and on the voyage out. Pioneering diplomatic missions in those days frequently included an artist. West bridges the technological gap nicely, because he brought with him a “Daguerreotype instrument” by the use of which, together with his painting, he paid his way. Little is known of Robert L. McIntosh except that he came from Norfolk, Virginia, and had a rather hot temper. His father, George McIntosh, wrote Cushing on 3 August 1844 that he hoped his son had won approval, “the only risque being from our Southern education and manners of our inexperienced youth, who are apt to entertain too favorable an opinion of themselves” and asked Cushing’s “fatherly admonition” in case of an untoward incident. Whether or not Cushing exercised the senior McIntosh’s belated sanction to intervene with the young attache, he certainly had sufficient cause by the time he received this letter. Only shortly before his father had taken pen in hand, young McIntosh had challenged John O’Donnell to a duel. Fortunately O’Donnell had the good sense to apologize, blaming his indiscretion on too much alcohol. John H. O’Donnell, the last of the mission’s young men who financed their own way to China, was from a distinguished Maryland family. He was the son of General Columbus O’Donnell and the grandson of an Irish immigrant—the Captain (later Colonel) John O’Donnell who had commanded the ship Pallas from Canton to Baltimore in 1784. This vessel had been chartered by Major Samuel Shaw and Thomas Randall in Canton on the first American voyage to China. Captain O’Donnell had settled in Baltimore and become one of the city’s leading merchants.Young O’Donnell, who carried the title of major, seems to have been liberally endowed with social

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talents. Cushing used him often to fill in on important occasions and as a bearer of communications to the Chinese authorities. O’Donnell was also a personal friend of Paul S. Forbes and became a chief source of information for the consul during the treaty negotiations. 77. See Robert E. Speer, ed., A Missionary Pioneer in the Far East (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1922), 37–64. 78. Parker wrote in his journal that Cushing had asked him to become “not only  .  .  .  Chinese Secretary but  .  .  .  confidential advisor, and remarked that he should have no secrets with me.” Cushing says much the same thing in his despatch #202, 25 January 1945. See George B. Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick, Life of Peter Parker . . . (Boston, 1896), 250–54, which quotes Parker’s journal and letters. 79. The cost of the mission was forty thousand dollars, in addition to which $1,994.64 was claimed by Cushing. See Polk’s message to Congress, 22 December 1845, Sen. Doc. #17, 29:1, p. 2. 80. Dennett’s statement that “the selection of Edward Everett for the mission was evidence of the extreme importance which now attached to the establishment of suitable diplomatic relations with China” (Americans in Eastern Asia, p. 113) seems to me an exaggeration. China was important to the Northeast because of the lucrative tea trade and the newly developed missionary endeavor. However, to the nation as a whole, relations with China were far from being “of extreme importance.” In fact I would argue that it was this relative indifference to China policy that made for American flexibility. The same was true of many areas throughout the world in the nineteenth century. The fact that this indifference enabled policy makers to put their country into positions that proved of dubious advisability by the end of the century is, of course, the other side of this coin. 81. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 133–51. 82. Stuart Creighton Miller traces the anti-Chinese feeling so prevalent in the late century back to the old China Trade. See The Unwelcome Immigrant (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1969). However, one need not see a connection between the “Shanghai mind” and California race riots later in the century to appreciate the effect of negative symbolism on American policy makers in 1843 and 1844. 83. Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 170. 84. American official ignorance could hardly have been better illustrated than by the two letters from President Tyler to the Emperor of China. Both were in the nature of accrediting documents, but their wording was, to say the least, bizarre. Dennett states, “Something of mystery attaches to these letters.” Neither showed much knowledge of protocol or of Chinese custom. Dennett describes one as “brusque, stiff and ungracious . . . certain to be regarded by the Chinese authorities as either a studied insult to the Emperor  .  .  .  or as a colossal breach of good manners by uncouth barbarians.” The second letter, which Dennett attributed to Secretary Abel Upshur, “might have been a serious handicap to Cushing in his initial efforts to establish cordial relations with the Chinese Government.” He continues, “The style and tone of this letter was hardly in keeping with the instructions as to tact and courtesy” and contained a “veiled threat” of force. The flavor of these letters, as others have suggested, is reminiscent of the pompous missives sent to Indian chiefs on the American frontier. See Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 140–41. 85. Webster to Snow, 4 January 1842, Instructions to Consuls, X: 86. 86. The State Department archives contain no such letter. At least neither Dennett nor the present writer found one. However, there is a copy dated 20 March 1844 (rather late) in the Kinsman Papers, reprinted in “Nathaniel Kinsman, Merchant of Salem in the China Trade,” EIHC 85, no. 2 (April 1949): 135.

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87. J. M. Forbes, Samuel Cabot, R. B. Forbes, Thos. H. Perkins, Jr., Wm. Appleton, H. Appleton, and John S. Gardner to Daniel Webster, 29 April 1843, Department of State, Miscellaneous Letters, 1789–1906, RG-59, Microcopy #179, Roll #101, NA. 88. John C. Green and Nathaniel and George Griswold, N.Y., to secretary of state, 13 May 1843, Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789–1906, RG-59, Microcopy #179, Roll #101, NA. 89. This was a firm consisting of five brothers, who had been in the trade at least since 1831. They took turns going to Canton as supercargoes on their own vessels. 90. All of these replies are to be found in the Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789–1906, RG-59, Microcopy #179, Roll #101, NA. There is also the draft of a letter from Edward Carrington dated 27 February 1843 in the Carrington Papers. 91. Of course this is what one might have expected of them. They were from Eastern Massachusetts, well acquainted with the trading aristocracy of the Atlantic Coast, and especially with that of Boston. They were of the same stock and lineage. They learned their ideals and received their schooling in the same institutions and got their information through the same media as the merchants themselves. Finally the merchants’ advice on most matters was reinforced by the missionaries, whom both Webster and Cushing, as religious conservatives, were accustomed to hold in high regard. The fact that Green’s letter was not available to Webster when he wrote Cushing’s instructions is not important in my opinion. The information and advice in that message is much the same as that from other sources. Probably the secretary and certainly the commissioner read it in any case. The letter carries the penciled notation: “Copy given to Mr. Cushing, 12 June 1843.” 92. Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, I: 405. 93. Ibid., Life of Caleb Cushing, 415. 94. Webster to Cushing, 8 May 1843, in US Congress, 28:2, Senate Document #138 (21 February 1843), 138. 95. Lead, ginseng and, it was hoped, cotton and cotton cloth. 96. Webster to Cushing, 8 May 1843, in US Congress, 28:2, Senate Document #138 (21 February 1843), 2. In his message to Congress of 30 December 1842, President Tyler noted that no minister of a foreign nation resided in Peking, and he expressed the doubt that the emperor was prepared to permit any to do so. Webster referred Cushing to this message in the second paragraph of the instructions and provided him with a copy of the address. However both the president’s letter to the Emperor of China and the “Personal Instructions to Diplomatic Agents of the United States in Foreign Countries” specify personal delivery of the “letter of Credence” to the chief of state of the host country. The “Personal Instructions,” of which there are at least two copies in the Cushing Papers, are considerably weakened by being contradicted by Webster’s specific orders, the president’s message to Congress, and their own internal difficulties. Furthermore the “Personal Instructions” also state: “In performing all the ceremonies connected with his official reception, he [the minister] will conform to the established usage of the Country in which he is to reside.” 97. Cushing appears to have needed little urging. On 27 December 1842, three days before President Tyler addressed Congress to propose the mission, Cushing had written the president urging that the embassy be “of an informal character as to be able to treat either with the Imperial Court directly, or, if that is not permitted, then with any of the provincial authorities.” See Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, I: 407. 98. Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, I: 43, 234 and 397–98. Cushing was also close to President Tyler (I: 398–99). 99. “Finally, you will signify, in decided terms and a positive manner, that the

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Government of the United States would find it impossible to remain on terms of friendship and regard with the Emperor, if greater privileges or commercial facilities should be allowed to the subjects of any other Government than should be granted to citizens of the United States.” 100. Whether or not it had any influence on the State Department’s lack of action in this matter, Russell & Co. interacted with the Department at many points. Not only was the head of its Canton house US consul, but it provided various services for the mission such as negotiating a letter of credit drawn on Baring Brothers (Russell & Company’s London affiliate) by the Department. In the impersonal twentieth century, such connections would be viewed with more than a little suspicion of conflict of interest. 101. Forbes, like many of his predecessors, was compelled to assume greater powers than he had been granted by the Department. Witness his apology to Secretary Upshur of 2 December 1843 for attempting to get tariff reductions. His powers were still nominal. Fairbank reports that “Pottinger regarded [his] consular function as ‘a mere name, so far as the wholesome control of his fellow citizens extends,’” a judgment that seems accurate on Pottinger’s terms. See Trade and Diplomacy, 210. 102. His orders are dated 26 April 1843. Department of the Navy, Letters Sent by the Secretary of the Navy to Officers, RG-45, NA. 103. Parker, Harbor of Bombay, to David Henshaw, 27 November 1843, East India Squadron Letters, NA. 104. The opium schooner Zephyr was also at Bombay during Parker’s stay there. 105. Parker to Henshaw, 27 November 1843, East India Squadron Letters, NA. Dennett could find no answer either. See Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 126. 106. Heard to J. P. Sturgis, Macao, 28 May 1843, HP.

Chapter 8. The Mission to China 1. And none of these except perhaps S. Wells Williams can be compared with the sinologists trained by the East India Company. 2. Fuess quotes Tyler as saying that if the Congress provided enough money, he would send the Pennsylvania, but presumably the Missouri was still more dramatic. See Claude Fuess, Life of Caleb Cushing, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1923), II: 415. 3. In Alexandria he had an audience with the seventy-four-year-old Mohammed Ali, despatch #11, 3 October 1843, US Department of State, Diplomatic Despatches, China, 1843–1906, RG 59, M-92, Roll #2 (henceforth all references to this microfilm will list only the despatch number and date). 4. Westel W. Willoughby, Foreign Rights and Interests in China (1920; reprint, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1927), 16–17. 5. Despatch #22, dated 1 December 1843. He was to be most specific in his despatch #77, 29 September 1844: “I entered China with the formed general conviction, that the United States ought not to concede to any foreign state, under any circumstances, jurisdiction over the life & liberty of any citizen of the United States, unless that foreign state be of our own family of nations, in a word, a Christian State.  .  .  .  In China, I found that Great Britain had stipulated for the absolute exemption of her subjects from the jurisdiction of the Empire; while the Portuguese attained the same object through their own local jurisdiction at Macao.  .  .  .  I deemed it, therefore, my duty  .  .  .  to assert a similar exemption in behalf of citizens of the United States.” 6. Legare was from South Carolina. He was replaced by Abel Upshur of Virginia,

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and upon Upshur’s untimely death in February 1844, John C. Calhoun himself became secretary. 7. Recently this point has been made by scholars interested in early modern Spain with respect to Muslims remaining in the Iberian Peninsula after the Reconquista. 8. Despatch #23, 3 December 1843. 9. Forbes to Cushing, 24 February 1844, Cushing Papers. 10. Cushing’s despatch #27 of 5 February and Commodore Parker’s General Order of 3 February 1844 (attached to Cushing’s despatch). See also Cushing’s letter to Fletcher Webster of 18 February 1844, Cushing Papers. 11. Despatch #32, 28 February 1844. 12. See Rebecca Chase Kinsman’s letters to her husband dated 28 and 29  February 1844, KP; and her diary, quoted in Rebecca Kinsman Munro, “The American Mission to China,” EIHC 86, no. 2 (April 1950): 114. 13. The legation seems to have been well known even among the lower orders of Chinese. According to Niles National Register, “while Mr. Cushing was residing at Macao, his house was attacked by robbers five times, and entered by them on one occasion. The legation were obliged to be constantly armed for self-defense” (LXVII: 299). 14. Webster also joined in the pomp. He was accompanied by a black servant who appeared at Macao in livery. See Mrs. Kinsman’s letter to a friend dated 7 March 1844 (Munro, “American Mission to China,” 112). 15. Despatch #33, 2 March 1844. Cushing’s letter to the governor-general was dated 27 February 1844, Cushing Papers. This document is not in the State Department records. See CR V: 12, 33, and 41 and XII: 43–46. 16. See the letter dated the previous April quoted in Niles National Register on 21 September 1844 (LXII: 36). 17. Cushing Papers. 18. Pottinger’s letter was dated 6 March 1844, Cushing Papers. 19. Despatch #9, 19 August 1844 and enclosure to despatch #53, 18 April 1844. 20. Despatch #86, 19 August 1844. Fairbank believes that the anomalies were the result of the British sinologists’ “incapacity,” which “left it up to the Chinese negotiators to draw up the final Chinese draft of the Supplementary Treaty.” See Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842–1854 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 121–26 and 132. 21. The Cushing library became the basis of the Library of Congress Chinese Collection. 22. In this work Canton will refer to the city and Kwangtung to the province. 23. The report reached Peking on 1 November 1843. Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 132. 24. The edict is dated 15 November 1843. Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians. 25. “Tribute, Defensiveness, and Dependency,” The American Neptune 48, no. 4 (Fall 1988): 227. 26. Ch’eng took twenty days to reply. 27. 19 March 1844, enclosure to Cushing’s despatch #46, 28 March 1844. 28. 23 March 1844; Despatch #46, 28 March 1844. 29. See his despatch #27, 4 February 1844. That Cushing’s change of tone was deliberate appears to have been Morse’s judgment as well. He notes that Cushing’s “instructions breathed the spirit of peace, but the situation forced him to warn the Viceroy that the course followed must inevitably lead to hostilities.” See Hosea Ballou

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Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, vol. 1 (London and New York: Longmans Green & Co., 1910), 324. 30. Beginning with Lin Tse-hsü, Chinese imperial commissioners built up a staff of aides who had some experience in dealing with foreigners. At this time Huang was provincial treasurer (also known as financial commissioner) for Canton. He had been instrumental in the negotiations of 1843, and he was to be one of the principal Chinese negotiators at Wang-hsia. Indeed, Wakeman calls him the “ablest” of the Chinese negotiators of the time. See Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, Part I, 225. For further information on the “barbarian experts,” see Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 176–82. For data on Huang, see Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 187; and Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 116, 132, 136–39, 144, 146–47, 151–57, 159–62, and 175. For P’an see Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven: Yale University, 1953), 155, 171, and 191–92; and Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1943), II: 606. 31. Cushing’s despatch #45, 26 March 1844. Parker, incidentally, had known all but one member of the Chinese delegation while he was operating his hospital at Canton. 32. 19 April 1844, in despatch #55, 22 April 1844. 33. Parker to Cushing, 18 April 1844, Cushing Papers. 34. Despatch #57, 10 May 1844, Cushing Papers. Note the careful use of the word “reparations” in very dissimilar instances. This is probably as close to a threat as Cushing ever permitted his correspondence to get. 35. Cushing’s despatch #59, 15 May, included a copy, dated 9 April 1844, of the “Privy Council’s” (Grand Secretariat’s) letter authorizing Ch’i-ying to negotiate and ordering him to proceed “post-haste” to Canton. However Swisher’s copy of the emperor’s edicts on the same matters are dated 22 April 1844. If the English rendering of Chinese dates is correct, this discrepancy of nearly two weeks might be further evidence of Ch’eng’s anxiety. 36. Despatch #73, dated 9 July 1844. 37. Dated 7 May, in Cushing’s despatch #62, 25 May 1844. 38. Morse, International Relations, I: 327–28. Ch’i-ying’s assessment of the Canton mob was very similar to that of Governor Ch’eng: “The temper of the Cantonese is overbearing and violent; firy [sic] banditti are numerous  .  .  .  a vagrant, idleness-loving set, who set in motion many thousand schemes in order to interrupt peace between this and other countries” (Ch’i-ying’s letter of 28 June 1844, enclosure to despatch #73, 9 July 1844). 39. See the edict dated 17 July 1844 in Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 156, and the various memorials from Ch’i-ying, 153–60, passim. 40. Cushing had been advised by Forbes even before he began, and Forbes had written to the secretary of state on 7 October 1843, following his interview with the imperial commissioner: “It would appear that the Chinese Government has strong objections to any Embassy proceeding to Pekin, and to avoid all necessity for it, better terms will be granted at Canton than could be obtained by proceeding to Pekin.” This was to be the substance of Ch’i-ying’s urgings at Macao also. 41. Actually he had arrived on the evening of the 20th, and Parker reported that fact to Cushing on the 21st. 42. Commodore Parker to Secretary of the Navy, 13 July 1844, Naval Letters, East Indian Squadron. 43. See Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 18–20; Arthur

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W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period (1943; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1972), 130–34; and Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 92–102. 44. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 104–5. Fairbank notes elsewhere that “it  was standard procedure for Chinese diplomats to develop special relationships with all the outside barbarians,” and he cites specifically Ch’i-ying’s close friendship with Sir Henry Pottinger (draft paper for the January 1970 Cuernavaca Conference on American East Asian Relations, 1). 45. Ibid., 113. 46. Cushing’s despatch #42, 17 March 1844. 47. Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 48. 48. Ibid., 49. 49. Ibid. 50. Fuess, Caleb Cushing, II: 436. Fuess is sometimes more colorful than accurate. The negotiators met alternately at the temple of Wang-hsia and at the legation in Macao. 51. As governor-general of the two Kwangs, Ch’i-ying had many duties besides those concerning foreigners. Moreover he was well aware that the French mission would arrive shortly. 52. For P’an and Huang, see p. 294 and especially n. 30. 53. For data on Ch’ao, see Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 32–33 and Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 191–92. 54. Also mentioned in the sources are Wu T’ing-hsien and Wu Ch’ung-yueh, both of whom seem to have been members of Howqua’s family. The latter was his heir and, as Howqua IV, current head of the hong. For information on them, see Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 33, and Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 191, 250 and 122, n. 41. There was also Wen-feng, the Hoppo, who carried the same surname as another “barbarian expert,” T’ung-lin, a sub-prefect of Canton. See Swisher, 33 and Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 191. Mrs. Kinsman gives a very brief description of Huang and Ch’ao. See her letter of 30 June 1844 to her sister in Munro, “The American Mission to China,” 132–33. 55. The minutes put it rather more clearly: “The two Commissioners were united in a friendly & dignified embrace.” Cushing prudently omitted the hug from his official reports. “Minutes of the Meeting between Caleb Cushing and Keying, June 19–27, 1844”; Cushing Papers. 56. The quotation is from the minutes, which are to be found in the Cushing Papers. Huang En-t’ung, incidentally, was later to publish a book on the management of barbarians, according to Michael Hunt. See his The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 50. 57. The two commissioners’ correspondence is included in Cushing’s despatch #73, 9 July 1844. 58. The Court received notification of the projêt on 17 July but the analysis came only with Ch’i-ying’s discussion of the treaty on July 28. See Swisher, 84 and 160–62. 59. Sherry was a seaman, son of the harbor master of New York, who had disappeared during the disorders that accompanied the evacuation of the factories preceding the first assault on Canton by the British at the end of May 1841. The matter had never been settled to the satisfaction of the American residents. For the documents on the incident, see the Talbot Papers. 60. “Minutes”; Cushing Papers. 61. Webster to Cushing, 8 May 1843, in US Congress, 28:2, Senate Document #138 (21 February 1843), 138. 62. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 105.

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63. “Minutes of the Meeting between Caleb Cushing and Keying, June 19–27, 1844”; Cushing Papers. 64. Ch’i-ying cites Cushing’s first letter to Ch’eng. This communication is not to be found in the State Department’s records, but fortunately a copy exists in the Cushing Papers, dated 27 February 1844. 65. Memorial received 28 July 1844, Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 160. 66. Despatch #72, 8 July 1844. 67. Cushing to Ch’i-ying, 25 June 1844, in despatch #73, 9 July 1844. 68. Cushing later stated that he expected the French mission to insist on visiting Peking. See his despatch of 24 August 1844. One source even says he urged Lagrene to do so. 69. The discrepancy in the dates is not an error. These matters had already been settled at the two commissioners’ meeting of 24 June. Cushing explains in his despatch #72, 8 July 1844, “All the points discussed on this occasion will appear in the written correspondence, which ensued, it being understood that for the purpose of putting on record our respective views, the interview should be deemed an informal one, and that we should proceed to rediscuss the several matters in question, in written communications.” 70. The wording of these articles is largely my own rendering of Swisher’s translations of Ch’i-ying’s memorial received 28 July 1844 (China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 161–62). All except perhaps #5 seem the sort of articles Cushing would very likely have proposed. Somewhere along the line, this article must have been mistranslated. It seems too much to assume that Cushing would have attempted to open the entire China coast by a device. 71. This, of course, is highly unlikely. It is far more probable that Ch’i-ying simply exaggerated his difficulties to impress his sovereign. As a matter of fact, the time consumed by bargaining was shorter than appears. Everything was agreed upon by 2 July at the latest. See Ch’i-ying to Cushing, 3 July 1844, in despatch #73, 9 July 1844. Cushing himself commented on the ease and facility of negotiations. 72. See “Minutes”; Cushing Papers. 73. “Minutes”; Cushing Papers. 74. Ch’i-ying to Cushing, 30 June 1844, in despatch #74, 10 July 1844. 75. Despatch #75, 13 July 1844 and enclosures. Ch’i-ying’s message of 30 June does not appear in the microfilm copy. 76. Memorial received 22 July 1844; Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians. The quotation is from p. 158. See also Cushing’s despatch #75, 13 July 1844. 77. Edict dated 22 July 1844; Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, quotation from p. 159. Cushing had not yet surrendered the President’s letters to Ch’i-ying. See Ch’i-ying’s memorial of 22 July 1844, esp. p. 158. 78. Cushing understood very well the importance of this article: “The Government of the United States shall have the power to correspond with the court, and . . . the proper Ministers on the Frontier shall be required to receive and forward all such correspondence, leaving the Minister at Peking or the board which shall be addressed, to the choice and discretion of the United States. . . . And in this way access to the Chinese Court is at length open to all the Western Governments, or at least to the United States” (despatch #75, 13 July 1844). 79. John Heard III to parents, 4 March 1844, HP. 80. Trade and Diplomacy, 197. 81. To his credit Cushing understood much of Ch’i-ying’s problem. Although it may have been true that he overestimated the effect of his threat to visit Peking, it

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is more likely that it was not Cushing but American diplomatic historians who have overplayed this theme. Apparently they missed the importance of the correspondence with Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai that preceded the imperial commissioner’s arrival. Here is an arresting example of a situation in which an historical event may have been better understood by a participant than by the historians for all their vaunted longer perspective, greater resources, and superior analytical tools.

Chapter 9. Retrospection 1. See Cushing to Forbes, 22 June 1844, CP, and Cushing to Forbes, CCL. 2. The selection of the committee may show the shrewdness of Forbes. He was a member of Russell & Co. himself. Members of Olyphant & Co. and the missionaries might have been tempted to sympathize too openly with the Chinese. 3. The Chinese officials had some difficulty explaining the new procedures to the Cantonese. Huang, Wu, T’ung-lin, Forbes, and Parker spent considerable time working on Forbes’s letter explaining the settlement of the case. As Forbes put it in a letter to Cushing dated 2 August 1844, “We did all we could to aid the mandarins while adhering to the facts.” Parker was more pointed in his letter of the 15th, “The whole matter has been in accommodation to their [the mandarins’] wishes and from a desire as far as practicable to help them out of a dilemma.” Both letters are in the Cushing Papers. 4. The fact that Moses’ property was mostly not burned but stolen during a period of disorder did not appear to bother Cushing. Following a pattern perhaps first set down in America by John Marshall, Cushing seems to have been using the incident for larger purposes than the mere adjudication of the particular dispute. 5. The Emory and Frazer material is to be found in Cushing’s despatch # 83, 14 August 1844 and that on Moses in despatch #89, 23 August 1844. 6. Cushing to Ch’i-ying, 15 August 1844. Parker also tried to acquire some space on Honam Island for the Americans but Huang objected. Ultimately the Chinese agreed that the Americans might rent space there “whenever it should be found safe and convenient.” 7. It was common belief among the foreigners at Canton that Parker wrote the missionary clauses into the treaty, though Parker himself credited P’an Shih-ch’eng, the son of old Pankhequa, with suggesting Article XVII, providing for cemeteries, hospitals, and churches at each of the treaty-ports. Because both of P’an’s parents had been treated at Parker’s hospital, the young man was very grateful and knew Parker wanted such a provision. See George B. Stevens and W. Fisher Markwick, The Life . . . of Peter Parker (Boston, 1896), 250–54, which quotes from Parker’s journal and letters. 8. John Heard II to “uncle” [Augustine Heard], 3 October 1844, HP. Heard stoutly maintained “Americans had never done such a thing.” Apparently the Americans protested this rule as insulting. 9. Augustine Heard to J. W. Alsop, 12 March 1844, HP. 10. Ibid.; Heard to George W. Heard, 10 February 1844; and John Heard III to “Charley” [Brown], 18 April 1844, HP. There are comments on the mission sprinkled throughout the Kinsman and Heard Papers and I. M. Bull’s letters in CP. See also Niles National Register, 21 September 1844, quoting a letter of 16 April 1844; LXVII: 36. 11. For example, John Heard III to “Mr. Oakes,” 22 April 1844, and Augustine Heard to G. W. Heard, 10 February 1844, HP. 12. Cushing Papers. Although his uncle, W. S. Wetmore, the senior partner of the firm, had consulted with Cushing in America, Samuel Wetmore, Jr., refused to

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sign the letter because of a “personal pique” with Cushing. Reportedly he also prevented several members of his firm from placing their signatures on the document. See G. B. Dixwell to Augustine Heard, 3 September 1844, HP. 13. Heard to parents, 28 August 1844, HP. See also Paul Forbes to Mrs. Forbes, 7 August 1844, FP. 14. Young Heard noted in a letter to his uncle dated 2 April 1845, “[US Consul] Forbes has taken no steps to prevent American vessels doing as they please in this matter [opium smuggling]—nor do I believe that he would interfere to stop them from proceeding where they like. R&Co are as much interested in the trade themselves” (HP). 15. The Missionary Herald was the organ of the ABCFM (see XLI: 2, 53). Parker’s letter is dated 1 August 1844 and Bridgman’s 18 July 1844. The New York Evening Express, 24 March 1845, contains some of the same abstracts, which it quotes from the Baptist Advocate. Clearly the missionaries’ views were widely circulated. 16. Memorial received 28 July 1844; Earl Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 160–64. 17. Memorial, 15 August 1844, in Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 119. 18. Wolfgang Franke, China and the West, trans. R. A. Wilson (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1967), 31. Fairbank agrees: “It was assumed that the Western officials would have a special responsibility for their countrymen trading in China, just as the Arab headmen had had at Canton or Zayton (Ch’uan-chou) in medieval times. This provided a Chinese historical justification for extraterritoriality. The implications of which were not fully foreseen” (Fairbank, Ch’ing Documents, 3d ed. [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970], I: 46). 19. Memorial, 15 August 1844, in Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 166–70. 20. The emperor issued an edict forthwith, ordering his officials to do as the Grand Council had recommended. See Swisher, China’s Management of the American Barbarians, 170. 21. Cushing Papers. The document itself is in Box #164, “Special File,” and the letter is in the “General Correspondence.” 22. Box #47, Cushing Papers. Chinese documents relating to the English mission were obtained by young Howqua at Nanking in 1842. They are to be found in the folder labeled “Dec. 1844 and Undated 1844.” 23. Despatch #93, 26 August 1844. 24. Despatch #91, 24 August 1844. See also his despatches #97 and #98, 29  September and 1 October 1844, respectively. The latter despatch is specifically devoted to Cushing’s view of the necessity for professional representation in China. In the original English version of the treaty, Cushing noted in the margin opposite Article IV, “office of consul becomes a responsible one & he will need [to] be vested with considerable power.” 25. John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842– 1854 (1953; one vol. ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 208. This is a very fair statement of the case; however, I take issue with Professor Fairbank’s next statement: “Cushing had in fact foreseen that his treaty would be enforced if at all by merchant consuls only.” No documentary citation for this assertion is offered, and the despatches cited above would seem to contradict it. 26. Professor Fairbank’s comment that the treaty was “unilateral” is well taken. However, Cushing did not introduce this principle.

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27. I am indebted to Jared Stammell and Randle Edwards for calling this point to my attention. 28. Finding a substitute for Hong Kong was also a motive in several other provisions of the treaty, notably those affecting interport trade. See Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 208–9. 29. See his despatch #22, 1 December 1843, and #97, 29 September 1844. 30. Michael Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 17. 31. It was also clear by 1843 that the British were not going to interfere with the profitable commerce. See Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 133–51. 32. Ibid., 208. 33. There were sixteen by Cushing’s own count. 34. LXVII: 299 (11 January 1845). 35. Rhoads Murphey puts it succinctly, “The Westerners saw the treaties as a license for the rapid expansion of their effort, the long-awaited ‘opening’ of China. The Chinese saw them as an agreed set of limitations which were designed to restrict this new set of barbarians” (The Outsiders: The Western Experience in India and China [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977], 133).

Epilogue: The Legacy of Old Canton 1. John K. Fairbank, “The American Approach to China, ca. 1840–1860,” draft paper for the January 1970 Cuernavaca Conference on American East Asian Relations, 16. 2. Charles M. Dyce, Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in the Model Settlement, Shanghai, 1870–1900 (London: Chapman & Hall, 1906), 46–48. 3. The similarity of treaty-port institutions to those of British India is a commonplace. See John King Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842–1854 (1953; one vol. ed., Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 157, and Rhoads Murphey, “Traditionalism and Colonialism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies 29 (November 1969). See also such works on British India as Percival Spear’s The Nabobs (London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1932), and Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608– 1937, 2d ed. (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1973). More recent is George Woodcock’s The British in the Far East (New York: Atheneum, 1969). 4. Chang Chung-li, The Income of the Chinese Gentry (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982), 167–68. 5. Fairbank calls it the “Cantonization” of the newer ports. See especially his chap. XXI, 383–409. Discussion of at least part of the process went on at the time it was happening. Bridgman, for example, considered the linguists “indispensable,” and said so in the Repository XII (September 1843): 500. See also Woodcock, The British in the Far East, 16–17, passim. 6. On the origins of the Maritime Customs Service, see Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 438–68, and Stanley F. Wright, Origin and Development of the Chinese Customs Service, 1843–1911 (1936; reprint, Shanghai: Privately printed, 1939). 7. Dyce, Personal Reminiscences, 31 and Anon., The Englishman in China (London, 1860), 49 and 192. 8. C. A. Montalto de Jesus, Historic Shanghai (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1909), 35; Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 156–57, and Rhoads Murphey in The Chinese City Between Two Worlds, Mark Elvin and G. William Skinner, eds. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1974), 19–20. 9. Refugees flocked in especially with the Taiping Rebellion. See Rutherford

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Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon (London, 1863), I: 38. Incidentally in the treatyports as in old Canton, it was the Chinese who insisted upon segregation. See Montalto, Historic Shanghai, 37. 10. James Ryan to JM, 17 June 1841, Canton Letters, JMA. 11. Fairbank notes that a tea-taster was called a cha-see or an “expectorator”; a silk inspector was a tsze-tsze or “grub”; a bookkeeper was called “books”; and so forth. See Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 160. 12. Dyce describes the typical layout as well as anyone. Inside the walled compound, he notes that the residence hall-countinghouse was two stories high with thick walls and interior halls in the form of a cross, meeting in the center of the building, where the staircase was located. There were four very large rooms on each floor and a veranda on both floors running around all sides of the building. In the compound’s walls, there were two gates, the front entrance, and a more modest rear exit. See Dyce, Personal Reminiscences, 33–35. Montalto calls the architectural mode, “Italian villa style or orientalised by the addition of verandahs, and generally with gardens where, amidst thriving home flowers, pheasants were to be seen sometimes” (Montalto, Historic Shanghai, 41–47). Cf. W. F. Myers, N. B. Dennys, and Charles King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan . . . (London, 1867), 378. 13. See the customary Shanghai dinner described in Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 160–61. 14. Only two of the factories at Canton had gardens, and they were comparatively small. 15. Meyers, Dennys, and King, Treaty Ports, 118. 16. It is instructive to read Louis Wirth’s classic The Ghetto (1928; reprint, New York: Macmillan & Co., 1956) with old Canton (and the treaty-ports) in mind. The points of similarity are striking: The ghetto was a method of social control of a “dissenting” (read “foreign”) minority, of achieving tolerance and security through prophylaxis. There was “partial autonomy” in the ghetto, and its residents were seen as a source of income by the leaders of the majority. Residents were subjected to a series of regulations on their residence, mobility, and occupations and were frequently abused by the populace if they violated any of these rules. The ghetto was generally near the marketplace, because Jews were frequently involved in trade, money-lending, and other service occupations that revolved about the market. One of the strongest forces in ghetto cohesiveness was the treatment of Jews as a community by the majority. Typical institutions included the synagogue (church), cemetery, schools, hospitals, and other philanthropic organizations. “The ghetto is not only a physical fact, it is also a state of mind” and so on. Wirth even goes so far as to suggest that “the whites in the cities of China” constituted a kind of ghetto (282). Clearly the idea is not an extraordinary one. 17. JM to T. W. Henderson, Bombay, 5 and 11 May 1839, and to WJ, 8 May 1839, JM Private LB, JMA. 18. AH to PCB, 15 June 1843, HP; Paul S. Forbes, “Journal,” 26 May 1843; FP and JH to parents, 14 June 1843, HP. Although it is probably impossible to prove that individual merchants preceded the firms into the drug trade, people like Fraser and Sturgis certainly had the motives and plenty of experience. Moreover their names appear in the trade very early, and at least Sturgis seems to have stayed in the trade. Edward Delano noted on 2 January 1844 that Sturgis had despatched the Don Juan “for the East Coast with Drugs” (ED’s diary). Tyler Dennett states simply that Sturgis was “implicated in drug smuggling” (Americans in Eastern Asia [1922; reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1941], 124). 19. JC to JM, 26 November 1841, Canton Letters, JMA. 20. JC to JM, 2 January 1842, JMA.

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21. Dixwell to AH, 3 September 1844 and 17 November 1844, HP. Fairbank says merely, “Augustine Heard and Company of Boston began to act as Jardine’s agents in Canton in 1840, and soon were distributing Indian opium on their own account” (Trade and Diplomacy, 226). 22. Dixwell to AH, 27 July 1845, HP. This was the brig, Snipe, William Endicott, master. 23. Ibid. 24. Legare to Forbes, 2 June 1843, US Department of State, Instructions to Consuls, X: 191–92. 25. PRs, 161. In a letter to his wife dated 17 October 1839, Forbes had taken a somewhat different stand. Musing over the loss of his first fortune in 1837, he  wondered if “perhaps Providence took away my fortune because I made it in Opium. What I make this time will be free from that stain” (FFP). 26. ED reported the sale in his diary (for twelve thousand dollars), and regretted that she would be used in the drug trade under American colors, but he fails to give the name of the purchaser. See also his admiring description of the Forbesbuilt Zephyr in his diary, 4 September 1842. 27. And he was still a partner in that prospering firm (RBF, PRs, appendix). See also Basil Lubbock, The Opium Clippers (Boston: Charles E. Lauriat, 1933), 247 and 258. Building fast, well-armed vessels (generally schooners) for the opium trade was not a new business. As early as the mid-1820s, Americans were so engaged. See testimony of Sir Charles Marjoribanks, 23 February 1830, First Report on the East Indian Company’s Affairs, H/C, 1830, V: questions 858 and 859, and THP to JPC, 15 January 1825, SCP. See also letters from the Perkinses in May–June 1826, JEC, “Extracts.” 28. Interestingly when R. B. Forbes was preparing a history of Russell & Co. for the second edition of his Personal Reminiscences, he encountered considerable resistance from the partners to printing anything whatever about the firm. His brother, John Murray, and Paul S. Forbes were particularly disturbed. Ultimately John Forbes bought the copyright in order “to use scissors wherever he chooses in cutting out objectionable parts.” Thus it may have been the influence of others that restrained the usually candid “Black Ben.” See RBF to WD, 28 February 1879, FAD Papers, DP. See Appendix 6 on pages 371–373 for excerpts from family letters concerning this affair. 29. To Captain Jauncey, Governor Findley, 11 January 1839, WJ Private LB, JMA. The hand is Henry Wright’s, but the voice is Jardine’s. 30. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 226, and Lubbock, Opium Clippers, 18–19. 31. 4 May 1841, Macao Letters, JMA. In the difficult months from June to December 1839, when Chinese enforcement was at its most effective and the opium trade (supposedly) depressed, Captain John Rees, who continued selling on the coast for Jardine’s, reported sales of nearly $1.2 million worth of the drug. See Rees’s Account Sales Book, JMA. A much higher figure is indicated by the rough accounts current from 1840 to June 1841. By this time the coastal trade was over twice the size of the Canton-area sales. Indeed the figure given is so high as to stretch one’s credulity—$4,365,662.09! JMA. Joseph Coolidge had written Heard on 29 November 1839, “The opium trade is flourishing vigorously. Patna is selling at $900 which costs at Singapore 150—and large quantities are arriving from Bombay and Calcutta. Jardine Matheson & Co. is said to have made 1,000,000 dls in opium in Septr.—This sounds large—but there must be some foundation for it for I heard it from an enemy,” HP. See also RBF to SC, 3 March 1840, SCP. 32. For example, CPress, 2 July 1842. 33. CReg, 5 July 1842. 34. A letter to Lord Aberdeen in the British Foreign Office, dated 6 April 1843,

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describes the evils of the new smuggling methods and their perpetrators: “I do not believe that there is a Gang of Burglars and Highway Robbers in England more relentless, more unfeeling and more cruel in their occupations, more thoroughly lost to all our common feelings of humanity than these British semi-pirates upon the Canton River, and upon some portions of the China coast” (quoted more fully in Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 71–72, n. e). 35. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 72, n. e. 36. CReg, 5 July 1842. 37. To John Abel Smith, 8 September 1841, JM Private LB, JMA. A decade later another British merchant commented sourly that in his firm’s refusal to handle opium, “We seem to have placed ourselves here in altogether a false position, by  assuming an establishment, and an expenditure corresponding  .  .  .  with the leading Houses English and American, while by excluding opium  .  .  .  we are precluded from those sources of profit which may justify them in their large expenditure.” See W. S. Brown, Shanghai, to William Rathbone, Jr., Liverpool, 3  July 1851, quoted by S. G. Checkland, “An English Merchant House in China after 1842,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 27 (1953): 189, n. 85. 38. Cf. Rhoads Murphey, who believes the attitude was the product of decades of Western frustration with Chinese failure to change: “The treaty port mind, evolving from early expectations through frustrations and becoming in later decades more and more bitter” (The Outsiders: The Western Experience in China and India [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977], 137). 39. Alcock, Capital of the Tycoon, I: 37–38. This passage is partially quoted in Fairbank, 161, n. c. Cf. Robert Bennet Forbes’s less strident phrasing, “I did not come here for my health, neither to effect a reform, moral or political, but to get the needful wherewithall to be useful & happy at home” (RBF’s LB, 7 August 1839, reel 1, frame 335, RBFP). 40. Wealth of Nations (London, 1776), 605, quoted by Rhoads Murphey, “Changing Urban Roles,” 78. 41. A. S. H. Mountain, Memoirs and Letters (London, 1857), 199. 42. ED’s diary, “off Tiger Island,” 11 March 1841. 43. ED’s diary, 17 and 18 January 1841. 44. Such payments may well have looked very different to Confucian Chinese. There were “many exceptions and special circumstances” that were recognized in Chinese law. Moreover “the total role of formal law in ordinary life was limited  .  .  .  by the prominence of the customary (and largely unwritten) law of clan, guild, council of local gentry and other extra-legal organs.” See Derk Bodde, “Basic Concepts of Chinese Law,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107, no. 5 (October 1963): 393. 45. Dyce, 149. 46. Wu Chao-kwang (also known as Chao-kwang Wu), The International Aspects of the Missionary Movement in China (1930; reprint, AMS Press, 1977), 239–40, and S. Y. Teng, “The Predisposition of Westerners in Treating Chinese History and Civilization,” The Historian 19 (1953): 319. 47. Woodcock states, “If, between 1840 and 1949, the Christian missionaries played a major role in the spread of Western education and of Western medicine in China it was due in the greater part to American effort. While until 1940 the British remained the most important Western power in China politically and commercially, in the field of religion, and particularly of practical Christianity, they lost the lead almost in the beginning and never regained it” (Woodcock, The British in the Far East, 104). 48. The missionaries commonly blamed the evils they saw (and fancied) all around

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them in China—lying, stealing, fornication, infanticide, brutality, etc.—to the absence of the Light. The conversion of China, therefore, would go further than any other single reform to help China solve its problems. Modernization was identified with Christianization. See Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), especially chap. IV, “The Protestant Missionary Image, 1807–1870,” 57–80. 49. William Gammell, A History of American Baptist Missions (Boston, 1849), 197–98. See also Peter W. Fay, “The Protestant Mission and the Opium War,” PHR 40, no. 2 (May 1971): 145–61, especially 161, and Stuart Creighton Miller, “Ends and Means: Missionary Justification of Force in Nineteenth Century China,” in John K. Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), 251–57. The latest and most complete study of the missionaries will be coming out this year. See Murray Rubinstein, Origins of the Anglo-American Missionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, ATLA Monograph Series #33, 1994). 50. I suspect Peter Fay believes I have. See Foreword. 51. Woodcock traces this disrespect and the freebooting activities that it spawned among the British directly back to the opium trade of the 1830s (The British in the Far East, 19). 52. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 159. 53. Ibid., Trade and Diplomacy, 466.

Appendix 2. Statistics and the American Trade 1. One reason for the discrepancies in Morse’s data may be that he sometimes used American sources without reporting that fact. Thus readers are under the erroneous impression that they are seeing East India Company material, while they are probably reading US Treasury Department figures. In any case the tables appear again in various forms in Hunt’s during the 1840s. 2. III: 471—December, 1840.

Appendix 3. A Note on the Silver Trade 1. Cheong W[ang] E[ang], “Trade and Finance in China, 1784–1814,” Business History 7, no. 1 (January 1965): 34–51. 2. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842 (1951; reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 161–4 and W. E. Cheong, “China Houses and the Bank of England Crisis of 1825,” Business History 12, no. 2 (January 1973): 56–73, which brings the crisis into global perspective.

Appendix 4. Known Partners of American Firms at Canton 1. For a complete list of Russell & Co. partners, see Appendix of Robert Bennet Forbes, Personal Reminiscences, 3d edition (Boston, 1892). The firm failed in 1891. 2. Unlike the other firms, Thomas H. Smith & Co. did not have a firm at either end of the trade. It was a New York firm that sent employees to Canton. 3. Affiliated with Olyphant & Co. 4. This was a proprietorship, not a partnership. 5. Although the Blights were in and out of Canton, there is no mention of a

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“Blight & Co.” until 1832. When James H. Blight left Canton in 1835, he left his business to Dent & Co., with which firm the family evidently had maintained close relations.

Appendix 5. Commercial Family Alliances 1. This is in addition to a John Sturgis, otherwise unidentified, whose name appeared in the Canton census of 1837. 2. William’s great-great-great-grandnephew, Joseph Clark Grew, served as American ambassador to Japan for seven years prior to Pearl Harbor. Similarly a Forbes descendant, W. Cameron Forbes, was governor-general of the Philippine Islands from 1909 to 1913. 3. Bates’s great-granddaughter married the (British) Rajah of Sarawak on the northwestern coast of Borneo in 1911. 4. The family’s connections also strengthened each other. Although the formation of Augustine Heard & Co. divided the Barings’ affiliations in Canton (Bates was fond of Coolidge), Bennet Forbes noted that Howqua’s consignments to the Barings ensured the latter’s friendliness to Russell & Co. (RBF to wife, 7 August 1839, RBFP). He also noted that William Sturgis’s influence would keep the British firm loyal to Russell & Co. (RBF to wife, 2 March 1840, RBFP).

Appendix 7. A Note on Sources 1. For a more detailed description, see Karen A. Stuart, “The Golden Chain: Manuscripts on East Asia at the Maryland Historical Society,” Association for Asian Studies Committee on East Asian Libraries Bulletin 73 (February 1984): 17–25. 2. See also “Resources on Early Sino-American Relations in Philadelphia’s Stephen Girard Collection and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,” Association for Asian Studies Committee on East Asian Libraries Bulletin 60 (October 1979): 16–23. For Philadelphia missionary records, see Kay L. Dove, “Resources on China, Japan and Korea within the Presbyterian Historical Society Archives in Philadelphia,” Association for Asian Studies Committee on East Asian Libraries Bulletin 54 (November 1977): 27–30 and Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i IV: 3 (June 1980): 130–34. 3. Baker Library has a Forbes Family Collection which is not to be confused with the Forbes Family Papers now at the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Bibliography Works of General Reference [Secondary sources of particular value for this study] Barrett, Walter [pseud. for Joseph A. Scoville]. The Old Merchants of New York City. 5 vols. 1870. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. (To some extent also a primary source.) Chang Hsin-pao. Commissioner Lin and the Opium War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964. Danton, George H. The Culture Contacts of the United States and China: The Earliest Sino-American Culture Contacts, 1784–1844. 1931. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963. Dennett, Tyler. Americans in Eastern Asia. 1922. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963. Dermigny, Louis. La Chine et l’Occident: le commerce a Canton au XVIIIe siecle, 1719–1833. Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1964. Downs, Jacques M. “American Merchants and the China Opium Trade, 1800– 1840.” Business History Review 42, no. 4 (Winter 1968): 418–42. ———. “Fair Game: Exploitive Role-Myths and the American Opium Trade.” Pacific Historical Review 41, no. 2 (May 1972): 133–49. Dulles, Foster Rhea. The Old China Trade. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930. Fairbank, John King. Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast, 1842–1854. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953. one vol. Reprint. 1963. ———, and Denis Twichett, eds. Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, Late Ch’ing, 1800–1912, Part I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978, esp. Chapter 4, “The Canton Trade and the Opium War” by Frederic Wakeman, Jr., 163–212, and Chapter 5, “The Creation of the Treaty System” by John King Fairbank, 213–63. Fay, Peter Ward. The Opium War, 1840–1842. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975. Greenberg, Michael. British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951. Gulick, Edward V. Peter Parker and the Opening of China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973. Hummel, Arthur W. Eminent Chinese of the Ch’ing Period. 1943. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1972. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. The History of Early Relations between the United States and China, 1784–1844. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1917. Also in Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 12 (August 1917). Liu, Kwang-Ching. Americans and Chinese: A Historical Essay and a Bibliography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963.

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Morison, Samuel Eliot. Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783–1860. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1921. Morse, Hosea Ballou. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834. 5 vols. 1926–29. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966–69. (To a large extent a primary source.) Stelle, Charles C[larkson]. “The American Opium Trade to China Prior to 1820.” Pacific Historical Review 9, no. 4 (December 1940): 425–44. ———. “The American Trade in Opium to China, 1821–1839.” Pacific Historical Review 10, no. 1 (March 1941): 57–74. Wakeman, Frederic, Jr. Strangers at the Gate: Social Disorder in South China, 1839–1861. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Williams, S[amuel] Wells. The Middle Kingdom. 3 vols. New York, 1883. (To some extent a primary source.)

Manuscripts Documents American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Correspondence, South China Mission American Fur Company Papers Appleton, Nathan, Collection Archer, Joseph, Letterbook Augustine Heard & Co. Papers Bancker, Joseph, Papers Bell, William, Papers (in ConstablePierrepont Papers) British East India Company, Records & Correspondence Brown & Ives Papers

Code ABCFM SCM

Bryant & Sturgis Papers Butler, Caroline Hyde, “Journal of a Voyage to China in the Year 1836–7 on the Ship Roman,” Captain Benson C[abot], J[ames] E[liot], “Extracts from the Letterbooks of J. & T. H. Perkins” (typescript) Cabot, Samuel, Papers Cadwalader Collection Carrington Papers Carter-Danforth Papers Columbia,1 US Frigate, “Abstract Journal of a Cruise Around the World . . .” Comstock, Samuel J., Letterbook

B&S

ALB AH

Location Houghton, Harvard

NYHS MHS HSP BL APS NYPL India Office Library, London John Carter Brown Library BL NYHS

BL

SCP CP

MHS HSP RIHS RIHS Mystic Seaport

BL

bibliography Constable & Rucker, “Journal No. 1” (Spring 1787) and Letterbook late 1793–94 Cushing, Caleb, Papers Cushing, John Perkins, Diaries (after 1834) Cushing, John Perkins, Letterbook (in Bryant & Sturgis Papers) Dallam Papers Delano, Edward, Diary (in Delano Papers) Delano Family Papers Derby Family Papers “Diary of a Tea Merchant . . .” [George Dent?] Dorr, Sullivan, Letterbook (2 vols.) “Account book” Dunn, Nathan, Legal Papers Dunn, Nathan, Letterbooks Edgar, William, Papers (esp. V) Etting Papers Forbes Family Papers2 Forbes Family Papers Forbes, John Murray, Letters (typescript) Forbes Papers Girard, Stephen Papers (on microfilm, APS) Goodhue, Benjamin, Papers Goold, Edward & Co. Letterbook, 29 May 1797–3 September 1798 Gouverneur & Kemble, Letterbooks, 3 July 1796–12 May 1798 and Receipt Book, 19 October 1787–24 December 1790 Hawaii, In Chancery: Proceedings of the Court of Oahu on the Removal of the Funds of William French and J. Greenway . . . Honolulu, 1844 Haswell, Robert, Logs of the first and second voyages of the Columbia (now in Frederic Howay, ed. Voyages of the Columbia [New York: Da Capo Press, 1961]) Hathaway, Francis, Letterbook

461 NYHS L/C Boston Athenaeum BL

ED’s diary DP

FFP/BL FFP FP

Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore FD Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park FD Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park P&E Guildhall Library, London Private possession HSP Mystic Seaport NYPL HSP BL MHS BL BL Girard College New York Society Library NYHS NYHS

Boston Athenaeum

MHS

Whaling Museum Library Old Dartmouth Historical Society

462

bibliography

Heard Papers HP Hill, Samuel, “Autobiography,” Journals and Log of the Packet; and Miscellaneous Letters Hooper-Sturgis Papers Hoppin, Benjamin, Diary Hoskins, John, “Narrative of the Columbia’s Second Voyage” (see Howay) Howqua, “Houqua’s Letterbook, June 1, 1840–April 5, 1843” (photostatic copy at BL) Hunter, William C., “Journal of Occurrences at Canton during the Cessation of Trade at Canton, 1839” Jardine Matheson Archive JMA Kinsman, Nathaniel, Letters to his wife, Rebecca, 1834–January 1836 Kinsman, Rebecca Chase, “Journal of Rebecca Chase Kinsman on Her Voyage to China in 1843” (typescript) Knox, Henry, Papers Latimer, John R[ichardson], Papers Law, William, Papers Low Family Papers Low, Harriet, Diary, 9 vols. (one mission). In LMFP. Low, William H., Letters Nightingale-Jenkes Papers Nye, Gideon, Papers

Olyphant Papers3 Perkins & Company Papers James & T. H. Perkins & Company, Collection Perkins & Co./Russell & Co. Papers Perkins, Thomas Handasyd, Papers Pingree Papers Pintard, John M[arsden], Papers & Account Books Samuel Russell Papers4 Shaw, Samuel, Miscellaneous Papers Shreve, Banjamin, Papers Smith, Thomas H. Miscellaneous Papers (including Account Book, 1823) Sturgis, James Perkins, Account Book & Sales Book of J.P.S. (in James Hunnewell Collection)

BL NYPL MHS Private possession MHS MHS Boston Athenaeum Cambridge University Library P&E BL

LMFP HL’s diary

Pierpont Morgan Library L/C and University of Delaware NYPL L/C L/C

OP P&Co P&Co

P&E RIHS Whaling Museum Library Old Dartmouth Historical Society Private possession BL BL

JRL

THP

RP

BL MHS P&E NYHS L/C MHS P&E NYHS BL

bibliography Sturgis, Russell, Letters to his wife (1834–36) Sturgis, William, Logbook and Lecture Notes on Voyages of the Eliza 1798–99, the Pearl, 1805–6, and the Atahualpa, 1811–14 Sword, John D[orsey], Papers Talbot, Charles N[coll], Papers Thorndike, Israel, Papers Tilden, Benjamin Parrott, “Father’s Journals” (typewritten copy also) Townsend, Solomon, Miscellaneous Papers Waln Family Papers Waln Letterbook Wetmore Papers Wolcott, Oliver, Account Book, 1804–10, Account Book, 1808–15, and Miscellaneous Papers Wood, William, Papers

463 Boston Athenaeum MHS

TP

HSP RIHS, APS BL P&E NYHS

WP

Library Co. of Philadelphia HSP Private possession NYHS Houghton

Notes to Manuscripts 1. Ship logs vary widely in utility for a work of this nature. Some are merely notations of wind and water conditions, while others are marvelously discursive. They have been preserved in such frighteningly large quantities that it hardly pays to list most of them. Latourette, “Early Relations,” contains a serviceable list, though vast numbers have surfaced since 1917. Probably the largest single source of ship logs is the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, which conveniently lists them both by the name of the vessel and by the ports visited. Other repositories with many logs are the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, the Marine Historical Association, Mystic Seaport, state and local historical societies, universities and the larger public libraries. Finally many logs still remain in private hands. 2. This is a sizeable collection and is not to be confused with the Forbes Family Papers (FFP) at the MHS. 3. This group of papers is very small. It consists of only a few letters and business documents. A number of years ago, the owner intended to donate them to the South Street Seaport Museum, New York, but I have lost track of the owner, and I do not know the fate of the papers. 4. This collection is mislabeled. Its title is the “Russell & Co. Papers,” but it consists of the records of Samuel Russell & Co., 1819–24, and of some of Samuel Russell’s later incoming commercial correspondence.

Public Documents British East India Company Records:1 China and Japan Factory Records, Series I: Canton Consultations, Letters and Diaries China and Japan Factory Records, Series II.

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British Parliamentary Papers:2 House of Lords, Session of 1821: Minutes of Evidence Relative to the Trade with the East Indies and China, Volume VII House of Commons, Session of 1830: First Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, Volume V Second Report of the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, Volume V House of Commons, Session of 1831: Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, Volume V US Congress: US Congress, 26th Congress, First Session: Congressional Globe VIII: 275 (16 March 1840) (C. Cushing’s speech on relations with China) IX: 24 (15 December 1840) (J. Q. Adams requests documents from State Department concerning China.) IX: 28–29 (C. Cushing adds Navy documents to request.) XII: 195 (28 January 1843) (J. Q. Adams introduces bill for forty thousand dollars to pay for China mission.) House of Representatives: 20th Congress, First Session Document No. 77. “Memorial from citizens of Philadelphia principally engaged in the China trade” (calling for a reduction in tea duties) 26th Congress, First Session Executive Document No. 137 (24 March 1926). “Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury transmitting the information . . . in relation to Fraud . . . upon the Revenue Laws of the United States” (tea smuggling—Edward Thomson’s failure) Document No. 40 (9 January 1840). “Memorial of R. B. Forbes and Others” Document No. 119 (25 February 1840) (Canton Consular Letters) Document No. 170 (9 April 1840). “Communication from Thomas H. Perkins and a Great Number of Other Merchants of Boston and Salem, Mass.” Document No. 248 (1 July 1840). Secretary of the Treasury: “China trade . . . respecting the commerce and navigation between the United  States and China, from 1821 to 1839” 26th Congress, Second Session Executive Document No. 34 (31 December 1840). Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury: “.  .  .  transmitting the information  .  .  .  in relation to the Commerce of the United States with China &c” (correspondence of Minister Stevenson with Lord Palmerston) Executive Document No. 71 (25 February 1841). “Message of President Van Buren Transmitting a Report of the Secretary of State” (Canton Consular Letters) 27th Congress, Third Session Document No. 35 (31 December 1842). Secretary of the Treasury (trade statistics, China and Sandwich Islands, 1831–41)

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465

Report No. 93 (24 January 1843). John Quincy Adams’s Report on the Appropriation for the China Mission US Congress: Senate 19th Congress, First Session: Document No. 31 (6 February 1926). “Extract of a letter—dated New York, January 18, 1926” (Report on the China trade) 28th Congress, Second Session: Document No. 58 (22 January 1945) (transmitting the Treaty of Wang Hiya and correspondence of Caleb Cushing) Document No. 67 (10 December 1845) (Correspondence of Caleb Cushing) Document No. 138 (21 February 1845) (Daniel Webster’s Instructions to Cushing) 29th Congress, First Session: Document No. 17 (22 December 1845) (cost of mission) Document No. 139 (16 February 1846). “Correspondence between the Commander of the East India Squadron and Foreign Powers &c” (Commodore Kearny’s correspondence) American State Papers Class III (Finance) Vol. IV: Document No. 738. Report of the Secretary of the Treasury (Extract of a letter from T. H. Perkins dated Boston 29 December 1825. Also trade with China, 1801–1824) US Statutes at Large, 24–28. Cong., XV: 624. US Department of the Navy Captains’ Letters NA RG-45 Master Commandants’ Letters NA RG-45 East India Squadron Letters NA RG-45 US Department of State Canton Consular Letters NA RG-59 Vols. I and II (1790–1849) M101 Rolls 1–3 Smyrna Consular Letters NA RG-59 Vol. I (1802–38) T238 Despatches to Consuls (var. Instructions to Consuls) I–V NA RG-59 and X: 191–92 M78 Diplomatic Despatches, China, 1843–1906 NA RG-59 M92 Rolls 2–3 List of US Consular Officers by Post NA Miscellaneous Letters, 1789–1906 (esp. spring 1843) NA RG-59 M139 Personal Instructions to Diplomatic Agents of the NA RG-59 United States in China M77 Roll 1

Notes to Public Documents 1. H. B. Morse (The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635– 1834, 5 vols. [1926–29]; reprint, Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1966–69) has

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done so complete a job that I have not found it necessary to consult these records very often. They are voluminous and complex. A good short introduction to them is in Cheong W[eng] E[ang], Mandarins and Merchants (London and Malmö: Curzon Press, 1978), 273–74. 2. A more precise guide to the relevant British Parliamentary Papers may be found in Cheong W[eng] E[ang], Mandarins and Merchants (London and Malmö: Curzon Press, 1979), 275–76.

Publications Published Primary Sources Abeel, David. Journal of a Residence in China. London, 1836. Adams, John Quincy. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams. 12 vols. Edited by Charles Francis Adams. Philadelphia, 1876. American Museum. Philadelphia, 1787–92. Analectic Magazine. Philadelphia, 1813–19. Anglo-Chinese Kalendar . . . for 1832. Canton, 1832. Anglo-Chinese Kalendar . . . for 1838. Canton, 1838. Anglo-Chinese Kalendar . . . for 1844. Macao, 1844. Baptist Advocate. Barrett, Walter [Joseph A. Scoville]. The Old Merchants of New York City. 5 vols. 1870. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. (Technically perhaps a secondary source, but Scoville knew many of the people he covered.) Bridgman, Elijah. “A Peep at China.” Chinese Repository 8, no. 11 (March 1840): 581–87. Bridgman, Eliza J. G[illet]. The Life and Labours of Elijah Coleman Bridgman. New York, 1864. Briggs, L. Vernon. The History and Genealogy of the Cabot Family, 1495–1927. 2 vols. Boston: Privately printed, 1927. Canton Miscellany. Canton, 1831. Canton Press. Canton, 1836–44. Canton Register. Canton, 1827–43. (Later the Hongkong (Late Canton) Register, thereafter the Hongkong Register.) Canton Weekly Price Current. Canton, 1834——. (Sometimes printed by itself; sometimes with other periodicals.) Cary, Thomas G. Memoir of Thomas Handasyd Perkins: Containing Extracts from His Diaries and Letters. Boston, 1856. Chinese Courier and Canton Gazette. Canton, 1831–33. Chinese Repository. Canton, 1832–51. Cleveland, Richard Jeffry. A Narrative of Voyages and Commercial Enterprises. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1842. A Correspondent [Charles King?]. “Outline of a Consular Establishment.” Chinese Repository 6 (May 1837): 69–82. Corwin, Edward R. Manual of the Reformed Church in America. 3d ed. New York, 1879. Dean, William. The China Mission . . . New York, 1859.

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Delano, Amasa. Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Boston, 1817. Dobell, Peter. Travels in Kamchatka and Siberia with a Narrative of a Residence in China. London, 1830. Downing, C[harles] Toogood. The Stranger in China. 2 vols. Philadelphia, 1838. ———. The Fan-gui in China in 1836–37. 3 vols. 1838. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1972. Dyce, Charles M. Personal Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in the Model Settlement, Shanghai, 1870–1900. London: Chapman & Hall, 1906. Edward, Robert. A Signal Book for the Use of the Lintin Fleet. Canton, undated. The Englishman in China. London, 1860. Fairbank, John King. Ch’ing Documents: An Introductory Syllabus. 2d ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958. ———. Ch’ing Documents: An Introductory Syllabus. 3d ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965. Fanning, Edmund. Voyages Round the World: With selected sketches of voyages to the South Seas, North and South Pacific Oceans, etc. performed under the command and agency of the author. New York, 1833. Forbes, John Murray. Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes. 2 vols. Edited by Sarah Forbes Hughes. Boston, 1899. ———. Letters (Supplementary) of John Murray Forbes. 3 vols. Boston: G. H. Ellis, 1905. ———. Reminiscences of John Murray Forbes. 3 vols. Boston: George H. Ellis, 1902. Forbes, Robert Bennet. Remarks on China and the China Trade. Boston, 1844. ———. Personal Reminiscences. 3d ed. Boston, 1892. The Friend of China and Hongkong Gazette. Hong Kong, 1842–59. Fu Lo-shu. A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations. 2 vols. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1966. Gützlaff, Karl F. A. Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832 and 1833. . . . New York, 1833. Henshaw, J[oshua] Stanley. Around the World: A Narrative of a Voyage in the East India Squadron, under Commodore George C. Read. 2 vols. New York, 1840. Hickey, William. The Memoirs of William Hickey. 4 vols. Edited by Albert Spencer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1913–25. Hongkong Gazette. Hong Kong, 1841 (merged with The Friend of China). Howay, Frederic W., ed. Voyages of the “Columbia.” New York: Da Capo Press, 1961. Hunter, William C. The “Fan Kwae” at Canton. 1882. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1970. ———. Bits of Old China. 1855. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co., 1976. Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine. New York, 1839–70. King, Charles W., and G. T. Lay. The Claims of China and Japan upon Christendom. 2 vols. New York, 1839. Kinsman, Rebecca Chase. “Journal of Rebecca Chase Kinsman Kept on Her Voyage to China in 1843.” EIHC 90, no. 3 (July 1954): 289–308; and EIHC 90, no. 4 (October 1954): 389–409. Kuo, Ping-chia. A Critical Study of the First Anglo-Chinese War with Documents. Shanghai: Commercial Press Ltd., 1935.

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[Latimer, John]. Letter. National Gazette, 27 October 1828. Ledyard, John. A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage to the Pacific Ocean. New Haven, Conn., 1783. Loines, Elma, ed. The China Trade Post-Bag of the Seth Low Family. Manchester, Me.: Falmouth Publishing House, 1953. ———. “Francis Low, a Salem Youth, Dies on Board Ship in the China Sea.” EIHC 87, no. 3 (July 1951): 261–68. ———. “Houqua, Sometime Chief of the Co-Hong at Canton (1769–1843).” EIHC 89, no. 2 (April 1953): 99–108. ———. “More Canton Letters of Abiel Abbot Low, William Henry Low and Edward Allen Low (1837–1844).” EIHC 85, no. 3 (July 1949): 215–44. [Low, Harriet]. My Mother’s Journal: A Young Lady’s Diary of Five Years Spent in Manila, Macao, and the Cape of Good Hope from 1829–1834. Edited by Katherine Hilliard. Boston: G. H. Ellis, 1900. Low, William Henry. “The Canton Letters of William Henry Low.” EIHC 84, no. 3 (July 1948): 197–228; and EIHC 84, no. 4 (October 1948): 304–30. “Memo for Mr. Forbes Respecting Canton Affairs.” Business History Review 40, no. 1 (1966): 98–107. Missionary Herald (organ of the ABCFM). Morrison, John Robert. A Chinese Commercial Guide. Canton, 1834. (Later editions revised by S. Wells Williams. The 1844 and 1848 editions retained Morrison’s name on the title page, but thereafter only Williams’s name appears.) Morse, Hosea Ballou. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834. 5 vols. 1926–29. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Co. (While technically, perhaps, a secondary source, this work reproduces much primary material, making it often more useful and accessible than the original.) Mountain, A. S. H. Memoirs and Letters. London, 1857. Munro, Rebecca Kinsman (also known as Mrs. Frederic L. Munro). “The American Mission to China.” EIHC 85, no. 2 (April 1950): 108–43. ———. “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman at Macao, China.” EIHC 86, no. 1 (January 1950): 15–40; EIHC 86, no. 2 (April 1950): 106–7; EIHC 86, no. 3 (July 1950): 257–84; EIHC 86, no. 4 (October 1950): 311–30; and EIHC 87, no. 2 (April 1951): 114–49. ———. “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman in China, 1846.” EIHC 87, no. 4 (October 1951): 388–409; and EIHC 88, no. 1 (January 1952): 48–99. ———. “The Daily Life of Mrs. Nathaniel Kinsman on a Trip to Manila.” EIHC 87, no. 3 (July 1951): 269–305. ———. “Excerpts from the Diary and the Letters of Abbot Kinsman from San  Francisco, the Pacific, Hong Kong and the Philippines.” EIHC 89, no. 1 (January 1953): 72–93; and EIHC 89, no. 2 (April 1953): 141–62. Murrell, William Meacham. Cruise of the Frigate Columbia Around the World. Boston, 1840. “Nathaniel Kinsman, Merchant of Salem in the China Trade.” EIHC 85, no. 1 (January 1949): 9–40; and EIHC 85, no. 2 (April 1949): 101–42. National Gazette. Philadelphia. Niles’ Weekly Register (title changes slightly). Baltimore, 1811–49. North American Review. Boston, 1815–1900. (Volume and issue numbers are very confusing.)

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Credits to the New Edition Baker Library, Harvard Business School Bryant & Sturgis (Boston, Mass.) Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Comstock Family Business Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Forbes Family Business Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Grinnell, Rebecca Chase Kinsman, Journal of Rebecca Chase Kinsman Kept on Her Voyage to China in 1843 [n.p., 1958], Baker Old Class Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Heard Family Business Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Israel Thorndike Business Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. James Hunnewell Business Records, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School. Russell and Co. / Perkins and Co. Collection, Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School.

Historical Society of Pennsylvania Cadwalader Family Papers (Cadwalader Collection), Collection 1454, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Etting Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

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Maryland Historical Society Dallam Papers, MS 1250, Maryland Historical Society.

New York Historical Society Constable & Rucker, “Journal No. 1” (Spring 1787) and Letterbook late 1793–94, BV Constable and Rucker, New York Historical Society. Goold, Edward & Co. Letterbook, 29 May 1797–3 September 1798, American Historical Manuscripts Collection, New York Historical Society. Gouverneur & Kemble, Letterbooks, 3 July 1796–12 May 1798 and Receipt Book, 19 October 1787–24 December 1790, BV Gouverneur and Kemble, New York Historical Society. Smith Thomas H. Miscellaneous Papers (including Account Book, 1823), BV Smith Thomas H., New York Historical Society. Townsend, Solomon, Miscellaneous Papers, BV Townsend, Solomon, American Historical Manuscripts, New York Historical Society.

New York Public Library Bell, William, Papers (in Constable-Pierrepont Papers), Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Edgar, William, Papers (esp. V), Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Hill, Samuel, “Autobiography,” Journals and Log of the Packet; and Miscellaneous, Letter, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Law, William, Papers, Manuscript and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. We apologize for any errors or omissions and would be grateful for notification of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Index Abeel, David, 29, 43 Aborn, Daniel T., 157, 364 Adams, John Quincy, 268, 270–71, 279, 280; portrait, 269 advertising, 33–36 Alcock, Rutherford, 335 Alsop, Joseph, 370 Alsop, Luch (née Whittlesey), 370 American (Protestant) China Mission, 43, 57, 58, 93, 198, 206, 207, 230 American factory, 39, 76, 148 Ammidon, Philip, 54, 118, 124, 125, 126, 127, 150, 162, 190, 227, 364; portrait, 164 Antelope, brig., opium clipper, 286 Archer, Joseph, 170, 209, 210, 213, 214, 365 Archer, Samuel, 157–58, 209, 210 Ariel, opium clipper, 264, 330, 334 arrival: cost of, 24; process of, 19–25 Asiatic Squadron, US Navy (a.k.a. East India Squadron), 263, 283, 285 Astor, John Jacob, 106, 123 attitudes towards Chinese, 36, 327. See also ghetto attitudes Augustine Heard & Co., 179, 191–98, 266, 310, 325, 330–31, 333, 366, 368 B. & T. C. Hoppin, 370 Bancker, James, 369 banking: Chinese, 86 bankruptcy, 103 Baring Brothers & Co., 111, 154, 155, 170, 176, 177, 367, 368 Baring, John, 155 bartering, 107 Bates, Joshua, 155, 368 Battle of Chuenpi, 138 Beale, Thomas, 51 Benton, Thomas Hart, 273 Big Four, 196, 198 bill trade, 109, 112, 325 blackmail, 83

Blight family, 366 Blight, Charles, 85, 124, 130, 147, 150, 366 Blight, George, 115, 147, 366 Blight, James H., 147, 366 Blight, William P., 366 Boca Tigns (or Bogue), 19; picture, 22 Boston China Traders’ banquet for Cushing, 253 “Boston Concern,” 155, 160, 165, 167, 168, 190, 280, 367 Boston & Salem Merchants’ memorial to Congress, 9 April 1840, 262–63 Brandywine, USS, frigate, 287, 288, 290, 294 bribes, 125 Bridgman, Elijah Coleman, 92, 93, 230, 264, 277, 281, 300, 305, 313 British Chamber of Commerce. See Canton General Chamber of Commerce British East India Company, 45, 47, 98, 106, 109, 116, 117, 118, 127, 129, 133, 137, 157, 159, 212, 222 Brown & Ives, 162 Brown, William & Joseph, 209 brutality: of Chinese legal system, 61 Bryant & Sturgis, 155, 190, 367 Bryant, John, 155 Bull, Betsy (née Carrington), 370 Bull, Isaac M., 59, 140, 219, 224, 370 Bull, Nye & Co., 326 Bumstead, Ephraim, 151, 364 Burlingame, Anson, 307 business: customers, 97, 100; ethics, 239, 240; family obligations in, 227, 229; primacy of, 222–23, 240; style, 217–21; transferability, 237–41 Butler, Cyrus, 162, 370 Cabot, Samuel, 151, 154, 160, 224, 369 Calhoun, John C., 268

489

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Canton General Chamber of Commerce, 101–4 Canton Merchants’ Memorial to Congress, 25 May 1839, 261–62 Canton Press, 92 Canton Regatta Club, 48 Canton Register, 92, 173, 333 Carrington, Betsy. See Bull Carrington, Edward, 41, 89, 90, 100, 148–50, 162, 224, 236, 237, 250, 252, 360; portrait, 149 Cary, Thomas C., 224 cemeteries, 60 Ch’ao Ch’ang-ling, 300, 305 charities, 60 Ch’eng, Yü-ts’ai, 292–95, 303, 310 Ch’i Kung, 264, 265, 293 Ch’i-ying, 266, 267, 278, 285, 292–95, 296–310; influences on, 304; portrait, 298 China policy: development of, 279; origins of, 259–60 Chinese Courier, 55, 92, 173 Chinese negotiating techniques, 294, 297–99, 301, 303 Chinese New Year, 52–53 Chinese Repository, 58, 91–92, 205, 326 Ch’ing bureaucracy, 75 Chinnery, George, 41–43, 81 chits, 95–96 clerks, 96–97, 173, 227, 232–33 climate, 38 clippers. See opium clippers Cohong: conflict of interest among, 79–80; duties of, 78; end of, 82; history of, 77; vitality of, 80; vulnerability of, 119, 323. See also hong merchants communication between governments, 306–8 comprador: duties of, 24, 25, 36, 37, 78 conflict of interest, 79 Confucian value system, 76, 79 Conseequa, 148 Consoo Fund, 76, 77, 79–80, 323 Consoo House, 76 Constellation, USS, 263, 265, 286 convention of Chuenpi, 138, 140 Coolidge, Joseph, 54, 55, 67, 140, 179, 192–96, 198, 330; portrait, 193 coolie trade, 340, 364, 366, 368

cotton trade, 72, 129 Couper, William, 212, 365 Couvert, Jacob, 199, 365 Cowsajee family, 127 credit, 86–89, 95 Cryder, John, 213, 370. See also Morrison & Cryder, Wetmore & Cryder Cryder, Mary Wright, 370. See also Wetmore Cushing, Ann. See Higginson Cushing, Caleb, 140, 261, 268, 273, 275–77, 279, 280; advises Chinese, 291, 307; consults Canton merchants, 290; develops policy, 288–89, 292–95; instructions, 283–85, 302; leaves China, 319; picture, 276; preparation for embassy, 287 Cushing, John P., 75, 85, 119, 120, 122, 125, 148, 151, 152–53, 156, 157, 159, 163, 210, 224, 241–42, 244, 245, 246, 364, 367; country seat “Bellmont,” 246 Cushing mission, 11 Cushing Treaty, 9–10, 11, 189, 196, 278, 279; evaluation of, 317–20; flaws in, 316; Grand Council determined to subvert, 315; reaction to, 312–16; testing, 310. See also Treaty of Wanghia customs, 24 customs commissioner. See Hoppo Davidson, G. F., 186 Delano, Amasa, 91, 146–47, 191 Delano, Edward, 54, 140, 182, 189, 331, 336, 365; picture, 187 Delano, Warren, 54, 60, 104, 179–80, 183, 189, 191, 219, 264, 365, 371–73; Algonac, 247; portrait, 180 departure: cost of, 24; process of, 25 Derby, Elias Hasket, 143, 200 Dermigny, Louis, 147 dining, 51–52, 98, 218 disease, 25, 60 diversification, 220 division of labor in firms, 93–96, 326 Dixwell, George Basil, 195, 196, 198, 330–31, 336 Dobell, Peter, 41 Don Juan, 331 Donnell, John, 120, 123

index Dorr, Sullivan, 90, 147–48, 236, 243–44 Dunn, Nathan, 75, 85, 158, 210, 217, 365 East India Squadron, US Navy. See Asiatic Squadron Edward Carrington & Co., 370 Eight Regulations, 73–74, 75, 94, 104, 260, 327. See also restrictions on trade Elliot, Captain, 86, 103, 133 Elliot, Sir Charles, 137, 138, 179–80, 181, 222–23, 324–25 Emily incident, 120–21 Emory (a.k.a. Emery), Charles, 311 Empress of China, 73, 112 Endicott, James B., 186 etiquette, 49 Everett, Charles, 158 Everett, Edward, 273 exotic imports, 105 exports: American from Canton, 356–57; Chinese, 109 extraterritoriality, 283, 288, 289, 305, 310, 315, 317, 319, 320, 321, 325, 327 factories: furnishings, 25, 38; layout and construction of, 25–31; living conditions in, 36–39; shops and peddlers nearby, 31–37 fees: customary, 78–79 fire of 1822, 29, 59–66, 199 flood, 59 flower boats, 62; picture, 64 Forbes, James Grant, 367 Forbes, James Murray, 368 Forbes, John Murray, 54, 57, 82, 154, 164, 165, 170–71, 176, 177–79, 192, 206–7, 213, 219, 224, 228, 237, 240, 250, 262, 280, 364, 365, 367; portrait, 238 Forbes, Paul Sieman, 53, 82, 186, 189, 219, 227, 271, 285, 289, 290, 291, 296, 332, 365, 367; picture, 188 Forbes, Robert Bennet, 57, 80, 81, 85, 128, 136, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, 164, 165, 172, 182, 183, 190, 192, 194, 195, 215, 219, 223, 234, 240, 254, 330, 332, 365, 367, 371–73; mansion, 251; portrait, 178

491

Forbes, Thomas Tunno, 159–60, 365, 367 foreign traders: apprenticeship system, 232–34; captains among, 234–35; disputes among, 53–56; education and experience, 231–34; geographical origins, 234–35; later lives, 236–41, 245–55; lifestyle, 36–39; nepotism among, 227–29; religious affiliations, 235–36; retirement, 241–45; social origins, 222–31 Framjee family, 127 Fraser, George W., 330 fraud, 99–101 Frazer. See Fraser French, William, 91, 156–57, 364 fringe benefits, 97–98 fur trade, 89–90, 105–6, 150 Gantt, Christopher, 115, 119 George W. Talbot & Co., 199 Ghetto attitudes, 328–30, 333; “Shanghai Mind,” 337–40. See also attitudes toward Chinese Gilman, Joseph T., 183, 331, 365 Girard, Stephen, 84, 115, 123 Goodhue & Co., 191 Gordon, Oliver H., 202, 208, 209, 366, 369 Gordon & Talbot, 203, 208, 366, 369 Gott, Benjamin, 158 Gough, General Hugh, 139, 195 Gray, Robert, 150 Green, John C., 54, 55, 58, 168, 173, 191, 194, 220, 224, 245, 281–82, 364; portrait, 169 Grelaud, Arthur, 101 Grew, Henry Sturgis, 368 Griswold, Nathaniel and George, 176, 281 Hallam, John, 183 Haven, John P., 191 Heard, Albert Farley, 366 Heard, Augustine, 39, 55, 56, 100, 140, 162, 164, 166, 167, 190, 191, 194, 195–98, 251, 271, 286, 364, 366; portrait, 197 Heard, Augustine, II, 366 Heard, John, III, 37, 53, 54, 196, 198, 263, 268, 366 Higginson, Ann (née Cushing), 368

492

index

Higginson, Henry, Sr., 368 Higginson, J. Babcock, 127, 368 Higginson, Stephen, 368 Higginson, Stephen Perkins, 368 holidays, 51–53 hong merchants: attempts to extort money from, 119; duties, 21–22, 76, 78; exploitation of, 79, 83; friendship with Americans, 81–93; reliability of, 80, 104; responsibilities of, 102–3; status of, 37, 76. See also Cohong Hong Kong, 129, 138, 267; sketch of, 314, 324–25 Hong Kong Yacht Club, 48 Hoppin, Benjamin, 370 Hoppin, Benjamin, Jr., 370 Hoppin, Thomas H., 162 Hoppo, 24, 75–76, 77 Hormajee family, 127 hospital, 52. See also Parker, Peter hotels, 81, 90, 91 Howell, John, 147 Howland and Aspinwall, 282 Howqua, 43, 46, 77, 176, 316, 331, 369; building up of fortune, 151; friendship with Americans, 81–82, 151–54, 156, 159, 172, 177, 179, 181–82, 192; influence of, 219; intervention by, 194; portrait, 153; profits, 101; wealth, 80 Hsü A-man incident, 296, 310 Hsü, Nai-chi, 131–32 Huang En-tung, 292, 302, 305, 311 Hunter, William C., 33, 51, 80–81, 167, 183, 220, 242, 365, 366; portrait, 174 Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, 260–61 illegitimate children, 49–50 imports: Chinese, 105, 108, 128–30 information gathering, 78 Ingraham, Joseph, 150 Innes, James, 46, 56, 138 insurance, 89 Irving, Mortimer, 173 Issaverdes, George, 115 Issaverdes, John B., 115 Issaverdes, Stith & Co., 114–15 J. D. Sword & Co. See Sword, John Dorsey J. & T. H. Perkins, 150–51, 155, 367

James P. Sturgis & Co., 119, 156, 161, 364, 367 Jardine, Andrew, 330 Jardine, Matheson & Co., 179, 196, 198, 205, 222 Jardine, William, 58, 98, 212, 332 Jenkins, Jabez, 209, 218, 365 jobs, 94–95 Joss House, 48 Kane, Dr. Elisha Kent, 277 Kearny, Commodore Lawrence, 26; policy of, 263–66, 272, 279, 318, 330 Keating, Arthur Saunders, 55–56 Kendrick, John, 146 King, Charles W., 202, 203, 204–5, 206, 207, 208, 244, 272 King, Edward, 173, 331, 365 King, Samuel, Jr., 199, 369 King & Talbot, 199, 369 King, William Henry, 365, 366; “Kingscote,” 249 Kinsman, Captain Nathaniel, 51, 53, 54, 59, 60, 194, 216, 218, 219, 365 Kinsman, Rebecca (Mrs. Nathaniel), 51, 216, 217–18, 289 laborers: types of, 24–25 Langdon, John M., 114 Langdon, Joseph, 253 Latimer, John R., 37, 43, 49, 54, 89, 101, 120, 126, 151, 165, 166, 167, 210, 244, 248, 366 Latourette, Kenneth Scott, 293 Lawrence, William A., 216–17, 219, 365 lawsuits, 102 Lejee, William Real, 212, 213, 216, 365 Lewis, Edwin M. & Co., 282–83 Lin, Tse-hsü, 131–36; portrait, 134 linguists: duties of, 22–24 Lintin: picture, 121; system of marketing, 122, 129 liquor: consumption of, 25, 37, 39 Low, Abiel Abbott, 85, 171–73, 364; picture, 172 Low, Edward A., 183 Low, Harriet, 50, 75, 209 Low, Mrs. William Henry, 75 Low, William Henry, 39, 50, 54–55, 89, 162, 167, 182, 190, 364; portrait, 166

index

493

Macartney, Ld.: mission, 295 Macondray, Frederic W., 166, 254 Maritime Customs Service, 323 Matheson, James, 107, 130, 138, 139, 159, 330 Matheson, Jardine, 89 McGillivray, William, 106 meals, 39 medical care, 25, 98 Megee, Captain William F., 81, 90, 91, 109, 148, 150, 236 metals, 129 Milne, Richard, 84 missionaries, 43–44, 57, 58, 92, 229–31, 240–41, 360; attitudes, 336–37, 338; reaction to Cushing Treaty, 312–17, 322, 323, 326 Missionary Herald, 313 Missouri, USS, steam frigate, 287 mistresses, 49 monetary system, 86–88 Moore, William, 216, 365 Morris, Robert, 65, 146 Morrison & Cryder, 213, 370 Morse, Hosea Ballou, 27, 122, 150 Morss, William Howard, 205, 366, 369 Moses, Joseph, 311 most-favored-nation privileges, 266, 285, 316, 320, 325 Mu-chang-a, 314–15

Olyphant, David, 201, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 218, 325, 365, 366 Olyphant & Talbot, 366 opium, 118; attempts to legalize, 118, 131–32; demand for, 117–18; effect of use, 131; opium crisis of 1839–40, 84, 179, 215, 260; poppy picture, 113; price of, 117, 130; production in Turkey, 123–24, 325 opium clippers, 175, 196, 334 opium trade: American and British dependence upon, 205, 278–79, 338; American opposition to, 206, 207, 218; Chinese attempt to end, 131–36; differing views of traders and missionaries, 260; Emily incident, 120–21; growth of, 112–40, 204; hong merchant in, 120; implications, 279, 334–35, 338; Indian, 124, 125, 165, 167; opium traders’ reaction to Cushing Treaty, 312–13, 318, 321, 329, 330–34; profits from, 213, 332–33; risks of, 156; Russell & Co.’s abstention from, 173, 179; statistics, 351, 355–57; suggested policy, 282; Turkish, 114, 116, 118, 123, 126, 128, 151, 154–55, 161, 175 Opium War, 182, 193; American response, 260–63, 270–71, 336 Otadui & Co., 330 “outside man,” 94

N. L. & G. Griswold, 168, 171, 236 nankeens, 72 Napier, Lord, 55, 102, 137, 212 Nathan Dunn, 217, 218, 242, 246 Nathan Dunn & Co., 165, 209, 365 nationalities: dress of, 44–45; relations among, 46, 80–83 “New Regulations” for foreigners at Canton, 311 newspapers, 92 Niles Register, 319 Nye, Clement Drew, 366 Nye, Gideon, 242, 366 Nye, Parkin & Co., 366 Nye, Thomas S. H., 366

Page, Benjamin, 147 Paine, Ann (née Perkins), 368 Paine, Frederick W., 158, 368 Paine, Sarah, 368 Paine, William Fitz, 368 P’an Shih-ch’eng, 294, 300, 305 Panic of 1819, 200 Panic of 1837, 176–77, 208, 213, 369 Parker, Commo. Foxhall A., 285, 294, 318 Parker, Peter, 43, 57, 231, 270–71, 277, 279, 280, 281; association with Cushing, 291, 294, 300, 305, 311, 313 Parkin, William W., 366 Parkman, Susan, 368 Parsees, 45, 58–59 pastimes, 25, 39, 47–51, 80–81, 97, 326–28 Paulding, James Kirk, 263 Peabody, Joseph, 123

Offley, David, 114 Oliver, James, 147 Olyphant & Co., 56, 165, 198–209, 220; opposition to opium trade, 207, 310, 366, 369

494

index

Peking: Cushing’s proposed visit to, 302–3, 306 Perit & Cabot, 190 Perit, John W., 191, 365 Perkins, Ann. See Paine Perkins Brothers (Smyrna), 114 Perkins & Co., 150–62, 164; domination of Turkey trade, 123, 190, 364, 367 Perkins, Colonel Thomas Handasyd, 123, 150, 151, 183, 224, 245, 252, 253, 262, 282, 364, 367, 368 Perkins, Elizabeth. See Sturgis Perkins, George, 183, 365 Perkins, James, 151, 224, 245, 364, 367 Perkins, Samuel G., 245, 368 Perkins-Sturgis-Cushing alliance, 158. See also Boston Concern Perry, USS, brig., 277, 296–97 Peter Parker’s Ophthalmic Hospital, 58, 93 Phillips, John, 126 pidgin, 22, 74 Pierce, William (vice consul), 289 pirates, 61, 107 Pitman & French, 157, 364 Pitman, Timothy G., 91, 156, 364 Pottinger, Sir Henry, 139, 267, 285, 292, 297, 319 poverty: among Chinese, 60–61 Praya Grande, 19, 51, 290, picture, 21 price currents, 91–92, 100 price cutting, 100 Prince, Captain Job, 146 printing, 91–93 profits, 83–86, 101, 128 projêt, 295–96, 300 Puankhequa, 37, 77, 81, 152, 294 Randall, Thomas, 146 Rawle, Duns & Co., 326 Rawle, Samuel, 217, 365 Read, William, 115 real estate, 90 religious services, 25 remittance crisis, 110 reputations: commercial, 97 restrictions on trade, 72–75. See also Eight Regulations Reynolds, J. N., 122 rice, 128 river life, 62–64 river pilots, 21

Roberts, Edmund, 31 Roberts, Joseph, 196, 198, 366 Russell, Angustus, 228, 370 Russell & Co., 56, 136, 156, 160, 161–69, 176, 177, 179, 184, 190–91, 195, 204, 210, 218, 219, 220, 223, 310, 325, 331–32, 333, 364, 367; picture of Russell & Co., Shanghai, 327 Russell, George Robert, 120, 151, 190, 191, 365 Russell, Jonathan, 162 Russell, Samuel, 90, 127, 151, 160–61, 162, 224, 228, 248, 249, 364, 369, 370; home, 249; portrait, 163 Russell & Sturgis, 190, 367 Russell, Sturgis & Co., 175, 177, 179, 190–91, 365, 367 Rustomjee, D. & M., 213 Rustomjee, Jeejeebhoy, 59 salaries, 96 Sampson, George R., 206 Samuel Russell & Co., 162, 364 Scott, 199 secrecy, 100–101 servants, 36, 96 “Shanghai Mind,” 335, 340 Shaw, Major Samuel, 39, 80, 143, 230, 368 Shaw, Robert Gould, 195, 368 Sherry, 301–2 Shillaber, John, 330 shipbuilding, 91 shipping regulations, 24 Shroff, 107 silk trade, 71–72 silver trade. See specie trade Sino-Portuguese Treaty, 2 November 1749, 292 Slade, John, 92 slavery, 288 Smith, Adam, 335 Smith, Thomas H., 146, 165, 199, 200, 201 smuggling, 41, 112, 118, 119, 122–23, 125, 128, 129–31, 132, 133, 157, 170, 204; Chinese government attempts to eliminate, 120–21, 131–36. See also opium trade, Chinese attempt to end Smyrna, picture, 114 Snow, Peter Wanton, 41, 150, 280

index Snow, Samuel, 39–41, 90, 147, 148, 236; country seat, 248; portrait, 40 social hierarchy: Chinese, 78 specie trade, 106–8, 109, 110, 111; “chopped” dollars, 87; statistics, 358–63 speculation, 89–90 Spooner, Daniel N., 183, 365 St. Louis, USS, frigate, 288, 296–97 Stansbury, Daniel, 150 Stith, Griffin, 120 Sturgis, Ann Cushing, 157 Sturgis, Elizabeth (née Perkins), 368 Sturgis, George W., 156, 364, 367 Sturgis, Henry, 364, 367 Sturgis, Henry Parkman, 120, 151, 156, 190, 191, 365 Sturgis, James P., 51, 55, 90, 119, 156, 157, 165, 166, 242, 264, 364, 367 Sturgis, Josiah, 130, 367 Sturgis, Lucretia, 155 Sturgis, Nathaniel Russell, 367, 368 Sturgis, Robert Shaw, 367 Sturgis, Russell, Jr., 150, 155, 183–84, 185, 191, 219, 240, 365, 369; picture, 185 Sturgis, Russell, Sr., 367, 368 Sturgis, William, 128, 151, 156, 160, 234, 236, 237, 240, 367, 378 subsidiary business, 86–93, 326 supercargo, 143 Supplementary Treaty of Bogue, 267, 285, 292, 317 Sword, John Dorsey, 146, 326 Talbot, Charles Nicoll, 199, 201–2, 206, 207, 237, 240, 365, 366, 369 Talbot, George W., 369 Talbot, Olyphant & Co., 202, 205 Talbot, William R., 208, 366 tea: chests, 42; damage to, 98–99; picture of packing, 99; processing of, 68–70; season, 93–94; types of, 67 tea tasters, 65, 326, 327 tea trade, 65–71; fraud, 70; picture, 69; statistics, 353–54; tariff racket, 200–1, 212 Teng, T’ing-chen, 132, 204 Terranova affair. See Emily incident textiles, 129 Thomas H. Smith & Sons, 365 Thomson, Edward, 146, 157, 158, 165, 200

495

Tilden, Bryant P., 36, 81, 146 Tilton, E. G., 297 Treaty of Nanking, 73, 129, 140, 260, 265, 266, 267, 288, 289; general regulations, 272, 323, 333 Treaty of Wanghia, 11. See also Cushing Treaty treaty port culture, 322, 326–28, 334 treaty ports, 266, 324–25 treaty tariff, 289, 320 trucking, 107 T’ung-lin, 301, 305 Tyler, John, 267, 272, 273 “unequal treaties,” 305, 318, 319, 322 Union Club, 48 van Braam-Houckgeest, Andreas Everardus, 41, 147, 248 verbal contracts, 95 Wang, Ch’ing-lien, 132 Wang-hsia: temple at, 300 Ward, Thomas Wren, 111, 170 Webster, Daniel, 263, 270, 271, 272, 273, 279–80; adopts merchants’ view of opium policy, 284, 302; instructs Cushing, 283–85; policy, 284, 302; portrait, 274 Webster, Fletcher, 31, 277, 285, 286, 290, 292, 300, 305 Wen-feng, 293 Wetmore & Co., 171, 204, 209–17, 218, 219, 220, 310, 365 Wetmore & Cryder, 217, 370 Wetmore, Esther, 370 Wetmore & Hoppin, 370 Wetmore, Josiah F., 370 Wetmore, Mary Wright. See Cryder, John Wetmore, Samuel, 85, 210, 369, 370 Wetmore, Samuel, Jr., 212, 215, 216, 217, 225, 365, 370 Wetmore, William Shepherd, 209, 210, 212, 213, 215, 216, 217, 219, 224–25, 283, 325, 365, 370; Château-sur-Mer, 250; picture, 211 Wetmore, Willard, 370 Whampoa, 21, 23; picture, 25 Whitall, Joseph, 170 Whittlesey family, 369 Whittlesey, Luch. See Alsop, Joseph

496

index

Wilcocks, Benjamin Chew, 41–43, 52, 54, 82, 89, 90, 115, 119, 120, 124, 125, 126, 144, 150, 151, 157, 207, 241, 242–43, 366; portrait, 42 Wilcocks, James, 115, 150 Williams, Samuel Wells, 44, 57, 74, 92, 158–59, 241 Williamson, James I., 115 women at the factories, 49–50, 75, 311 Wood, William W., 55–56, 92, 173 Woodmas & Offley, Smyrna, 114 woolens, 129 work hours, 94

The Verandah of Nathaniel Kinsman’s House, Macao. Oil by Lamqua, 1845. An unusual prospect of the Praya Grande, Macao: in place of the traditional view across the bay, the Chinese artist has adopted the view of a Western resident— in fact that of Nathaniel Kinsman, from Salem, Massachusetts, a partner in the North American firm of Wetmore & Co., owners of the house. The Kinsman family took up residence here in October 1843. The house of their compatriots, the Forbes family, can be seen at the far end of the veranda. Across the bay is the Franciscan convent, with the fort of Nossa Senhora da Guia on its hill, the highest in Macao. Beneath the rolled-up blinds sit two Westerners, one of them peering seaward through a telescope. Private collection. Photo by Martyn Gregory Gallery.

Interior of the tea taster’s office, M20597 in Wetmore & Company’s hong (Imperial Factory No. 1). Notice the tea chests on the floor, the chits held by clothespins on the string above the desk and the elegant blue and white porcelain spittoon. This watercolor by Warner Varnham is the only known picture of the inside of a Chinese factory. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. Photo by Mark Sexton.

Temple at Wang-hsia, near Macao. Watercolor by George West (Cushing Mission, 1844). This temple of the goddess of mercy was Ch’i-ying’s residence during the negotiations for the Treaty of Wanghia. The treaty was signed here on 3 July 1844. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Ballroom at “Château-sur-Mer.” Courtesy of the Preservation Society of Newport County.