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Johnathan Farris

Buildings & Landscapes: Journal of the Vernacular Architecture Forum,

Volume 14, Fall 2007, pp. 66-83 (Article)
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DOI: 10.1353/bdl.2007.0000

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bdl/summary/v014/14.1farris.html

Access provided by University of Hertfordshire (20 Dec 2014 18:39 GMT)

johnathan a. farris

Thirteen Factories of Canton

An Architecture of Sino-Western Collaboration
and Confrontation

Figure 1.
Panoramic view of
Guangzhou (Canton)
from the southwest
looking northeast. The
white buildings along the
river in the foreground
are the Thirteen
Factories. Gouache
on paper, circa 1800,
anonymous Chinese
artist, Peabody Essex
Museum.

66

Port cities have historically been hubs of and

spaces for cross-cultural interaction. One place
whose architectural history is only just beginning
to be written is Guangzhou (Canton), China, a
city that witnessed the earliest and longest settlement of English-speaking Westerners in China.
Mid-eighteenth-century Chinese imperial decrees
restricted foreign residence to a set of Chinesebuilt dwellings on the banks of the Pearl River
known as the Thirteen Factories (in Mandarin,
Shisan Hang).1 Factory is used here in its original
sense as the premises of a factor, or merchant.
One-time resident merchant William Hunter
explained: Not the least remarkable feature of

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

Old Canton life was the Factory, as the common

dwelling and common place of business of all
the members, old and young, of a commercial
house.2 The Thirteen Factories remained the
primary center for Western trade well into the
mid-nineteenth century. The necessity of close
collaboration between foreign merchants and
Chinese employees and peers on the one hand,
and the tensions created by attempted foreign
interventions in the face of a fiercely independent
local populace on the other, helped shape the factories and their surrounding urban spaces. By the
late eighteenth century, the factories had, in terms
both of appearance and habitation, evolved into a

culturally blended space reflecting both Chinese

and European traditions. However, pressures that
would culminate in the Opium and Arrow Wars
also shaped this environment. Violence would
lead to spatial barriers between the Cantonese
populace and the foreign merchants who resided
on this edge of empire.
The Thirteen Factories lay in the southwestern suburbs of the city (Figure 1), near the hangs
or business premises of the Chinese cohong
merchants. These were the people who had the
monopoly on trading major export commodities
with the foreigners and who were the actual landlords of the buildings. The factories, where Westerners and Chinese employees dwelt in close
quarters, followed closely Cantonese vernacular
precedents in structure and form. The spatial
hierarchy of the factories, though, also matched

Western conceptions of divisions between work

and service. When Pehr Osbeck, chaplain to the
Swedish East India Company, stayed in one of
the factories in 1750, his description made it clear
that the building form was foreign to him.3 By the
time of the first visual depictions of the factories
in the late eighteenth century, many had acquired
Westernized facades, though the precise origin
of this change remains a mystery (Figures 2 and
3). In the eighteenth century, the great national
joint stock companies such as the British and
Dutch East India Companies inhabited a factory
for the brief trading season each year and then
departed to their home countries. These two
giants of Sino-European trade occupied premises on the eastern end of the site, announced
by large pediment-capped porticoes that were
called verandahs or terraces in contemporary

Figure 2.
View of the Hoppo
Returning (detail). Old
and New China Streets
are indicated by gated
entrances recessed from
the buildings on the left
(western) side of the row
of factories. Watercolor
on silk, late eighteenth
century, anonymous
Chinese artist, Hong
Kong Museum of Art.

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

67

Figure 3.
Close view of the foreign
factories. Four of the
factories in the central
block are shown, with
their denizens peeking
out of the second-story
recessed verandahs.
In the background, the
end gable and the large
terrace of the New
English Factory are
visible. Oil on canvas,
circa 1807, attributed to
Spoilum, Hong Kong
Museum of Art.

parlance. After repeated seasons of trade, the factories acquired names that reflected the nationalities associated with them. They might also
have Chinese names, some of which referred to
the country of origin, while others were simply
an indication of good luck or prosperity.4 From
west to east (reading Figures 1 and 2 left to right)
are the Danish Factory, the Spanish Factory, the
French Factory, Chunquas (later Mingquas)
Hong (a Chinese merchants premises where he
rented rooms to Westerners), the American Factory, the Paoushun Factory, the Imperial Factory,
the Swedish Hong, the Old English Factory, the
Chowchow Factory, the English or New English
Factory, the Dutch Factory, and the Creek Factory
(the last referring to proximity to a stream).
By the early nineteenth century, the British
(with their Parsee and other South Asian subjects) and the American free traders dominated the China trade.5 These merchants lived
throughout the Shisan Hang even though the
particular buildings still retained names such
as the Swedish, Danish, or Imperial Factories.
The foreign merchants were supposed to be in
residence only for the winter trading season, but

68

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

many individuals stayed for nearly the entire year

without consequence; and when they left the factories, they often vacationed in the Portuguese
colony of Macau rather than returning to their
home countries.
A catastrophic fire in 1822 necessitated the
complete rebuilding of the factories. The new
structures had heavier neoclassical external
ornament but still closely followed the original
models (Figure 4).6 Surviving records indicate
that the contractors for the buildings were a mix
of Chinese compradors who were already in the
employ of Western firms, the hong merchants
who owned the lots, or Westerners.7 Both before
and after the 1820s rebuilding, the Thirteen
Factories were constructed of low-fired brick,
covered with tile roofs, and punctuated with
small courtyards.8 Once one looked behind their
facades, the fact that they were similar to Cantonese vernacular buildings became apparent.
This is clearly illustrated in a circa-1810 painting
that shows an unusual rooftop prospect (Figure
5).9 Although no directly analogous structures
survive in Guangzhou today, the factories apparently resembled in plan and materials those of

Figure 4.
View of the factories as
rebuilt after the 1822 fire.
This also shows the first
steps taken to enclose
the factory square on
the eve of the Opium
War. Pen and ink on
paper, circa 183940,
anonymous Chinese
artist, Peabody Essex
Museum.
Figure 5.

the neighboring Chinese cohong monopolists and

would have shared many features with smaller
surviving Cantonese domestic structures (Figure
6). Comparing the narrow frontage of a surviving mid-sized house in Guangzhous mercantile western suburb (Figure 6) with the rooftop
prospect of the factories (Figure 5), the narrow

but deep lot size, the gabled residential blocks,

the small courtyards, and the varied roof heights
all immediately point to related building traditions. The smaller houses of this region of the
city also share details such as blue-grey, low-fired
brick and painted linear gable ornament. The latter feature is readily apparent in the profiles of

Panoramic view of
Canton across the
rooftops of the foreign
factories. Gouache
on paper mounted
on canvas, circa 1810,
attributed to Tonequa,
Hong Kong Museum
of Art.

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

69

Figure 6.
A rare, surviving larger
Cantonese house of the
eighteenth or nineteenth
century, in the Western
suburbs (Xiguan) of
Guangzhou. Notice the
distinctly Cantonese
gable ornament, as
well as balustrade and
window caps, which
show the spread of
Westernized details.
Photograph by author,
2002.

70

the factories in some views (i.e., the gable of the

New English Factory in the background of Figure
3 and the end walls of the factories in the foreground of Figure 9).
Records for the rebuilding of the Old English
and New English Factories after the 1822 fire indicate that the Chinese contractor was responsible
for the vast majority of materials used in their
construction.10 This included bricks, tile, most
of the wood, stonework (for paving and possibly
exterior door frames), chunam (a word borrowed
from India for lime and materials produced from
it such as paving, stucco, and perhaps mortar),
iron nails, lead and tin, marble chimney pieces,
and the bamboo house. The latter was a rooftopped scaffolding for support and shade during
the building of the permanent structure. The
British East India Company, on the other hand,
was to supply the teakwood for the windows and
stairs, the iron door locks and stoves, and the
glass windowpanes (though skylight glass was
provided by the contractor). In the earlier eighteenth-century incarnation of the factories, many
of the windows had mother-of-pearl or shell,
rather than glass panes.11
Baltimore native Osmund Tiffany described
the plan that was common to all of the factories
in the early nineteenth century: The hongs are

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

entered by the means of a wide passage-way running the whole length of the building, and each
are composed of numbers of houses detached
from each other, yet all serving in their turn like
the distinct glasses in a telescope.12 One or more
companies would inhabit each tier of houses in
between the sequence of courtyards. The exception to this was the British East India Company,
which until its monopoly was revoked in 1833,
occupied two whole factories by itself. The only
detailed plan of a factory to survive comes from the
memoirs of a supercargo (that is, an independent
trader attached to a particular ship as opposed to
a resident merchant), Bryant Parrott Tilden, of
Salem, Massachusetts (Figure 7).13 Showing the
two stories of the Imperial Factory side by side,
Tildens plan probably makes the arrangement
of courtyards and residential blocks more regular than it would have been in the early 1830s.
This building was shared, from front to back, by
the resident American firm of Wetmore & Co.,
who occupied the first block, two other business
houses in the smaller number 2 and number 3,
and a hotel for supercargoes in the rear two units,
run by an Englishman named Markwick.
Wetmore & Co.s residence in the front of the
Imperial Factory reveals what would have been
typical of spatial arrangements of the more sizable firms. On the first floor, flanking the wide
passageway, were the spaces for the functions
and people who were involved with the outdoor
aspects of the business. On the east was the godown (or warehouse) where goods were stored
while waiting to be shipped. On the west was
the space for the comprador (or Chinese business manager), the purser, and the so-called
coolies who moved the goods and ran errands
throughout the city. Behind these two rooms
were the indoor Chinese employees, those who
worked in the kitchen, and the valets, who were
sometimes called marvelous boys. Upstairs,
a row of bedchambers for the all-male Western
staff lined the southern side of a central hallway.
Here was also the dining room and the business
office or counting room. This range of rooms
opened onto a recessed verandah with a view of
the square in front of the building. On the northern side were storage and miscellaneous rooms.
Probably one was the tea tasting room, which,

Figure 7.
A plan of the Imperial
Factory in a nineteenth
century copy of an
original sketch from the
early 1830s. The ground
floor is on the left, the
upper story is to the
right. No. 1 (Wetmore &
Co.) is indicated by the
block at the top of the
drawing. Pen and ink
on paper, Bryant Tilden,
Phillips Library of the
Peabody Essex Museum.

though not designated by Tilden, is recorded in

the only surviving interior view of one of the factory rooms (Figure 8).
The spatial organization of the factory interior,
with the firms partners chambers, social rooms,
and the more tidy of the business tasks above,
and the Chinese employee quarters, kitchen, and
warehouse space below, parallels service ground

floor / piano nobile organization of the Italian palazzo. This is a form the Western occupants might
have had in mind when they adopted a Neo-Palladian mode for the early factory facades. While
this organization perhaps gave the Westerners
the benefit of a breeze (particularly in the first
block of the factory), it also allowed the Chinese
employees to occupy the place most sheltered

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

71

Figure 8.
Wetmore & Co.s
Tea Tasters Office.
Watercolor on paper,
circa 1838, Warner
Varnham, Peabody Essex
Museum.

72

from the tropical Guangzhou sun. The more public rooms of Cantonese houses were in fact often
on the ground floor rather than on the second.
Room functions in the factory demonstrate a clear
social hierarchy, but they also show how Chinese
servants controlled access to the factory interiors.
Even the coolies in the employ of Western firms
felt some ownership of their factory and turned
back Chinese lacking credentials and sometimes
even scrutinized Westerners. One British visitor,
Charles Downing, described his discomfort at
being stared at by the idlers about the house,
who were namely the crowds of natives who are
the servants belonging to the establishment, or
the domestics of private individuals.14
There is no documentation on what was most
likely the quite plain ground-floor realm of the
Chinese employees, but their various roles and
activities are amply recorded. The Western merchants of this era typically knew many of the

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

members of their staff by name, or at least by

a trade or nickname, but may not have known
anything about their individual backgrounds.
Chinese records tell little about the lower and
middling classes from which these men were
drawn. A vivid picture of Chinese activities within
the factories can, however, be assembled. At the
center of all the activities of the factory was the
comprador. William C. Hunter wrote:
The most important Chinese within the factory
was the Compradore. He was secured by a Hong
merchant in all that related to good conduct generally, honesty and capability. All Chinese employed
in any factory, whether as his own pursers, or
in the capacity of servants, cooks, or coolies, were
the Compradores own people; they rendered to
him every allegiance, and he secured them as
regards to good behavior and honesty. This was
another feature that contributed to the admirable

order and safety which characterised life at Canton.

The Compradore also exercised a general surveillance over everything that related to the internal
economy of the house, as well as over outside
shopmen, mechanics, or tradespeople employed
by it. With the aid of his assistants, the house and
private accounts of the members were kept. He was
purveyor for the table, and generally of the personal
wants of the Tai-pans and pursers.15

Most numerous among those under the compradors authority were the coolies, who carried out
most of the heavy manual labor and sometimes
ran errands. Tiffany describes them as strong
backed, nimble men who perform every office
connected with the hongs.16 Perhaps their most
important job was acting as porters, as Englishman Charles Downing explained:
That work of conveyance, which is generally
assigned to horses, is here performed by vast numbers of coolies or porters, who carry on their shoulders a bamboo, having half of the load hanging in
slings or baskets from either end. Another way is to
have the weight suspended from the middle of the
pole and a man at each end.17

Although members of the coolie class rarely

emerge as individuals in Western accounts,
some of particularly long and devoted service did
come to be considered members of the foreigners commercial family, such as Russell & Co.s
devoted workman Old Qui.18 If the very cramped
dwelling space of the coolies in the foreign factories at all resembled how they were housed
in Chinese merchants hongs, there would have
been some twenty to thirty shelves, intended
for beds, arranged like the berth in a steamboat,
consisting of rough boards with square wooden
blocks for pillows, each with its own curtain of
blue mosquito netting.19
The cooks were also important and worked in
the kitchen across the passage. While Westerners left few descriptions of them, Osmund Tiffany noted with great relish the results of their
labor: The Chinese show their imitative powers
in nothing more than in the ease with which they
emulate European dishes, and every meal could
not have been more completely like home had it

been transported by lightning line.20 The house

servants, or valets, or boys, as they were often
called, were much more visible. Each foreigner
of sufficient station to acquire quarters among
the Thirteen Factories was assigned one of these
servants, a young man probably in his teens or
twenties. These servants had some independent
standing and considered themselves answerable only to the comprador and their employer.21
Osmund Tiffany was astonished by the attentiveness of his marvelous boy, who woke him in
the morning and attended him at all meals.22 The
station of these young men, however, was quite
defined, as Tiffany notes:
The varlet [sic] thinks it no degradation to bring
fresh water and make up your bed, but he would
consider it humiliating in the last degree to be
forced to sweep the room out. He is a gentleman,
and has a cooley under him to do the dirty work;
and though he will go on errands, he would scorn
to carry a bundle.23

Supercargo Tilden noted something similar: If a

bundle, or pack, is to be sent, Mr. Servant calls a
house cooley & directs him to follow.24 At dinner,
the valet would echo the behavior of his employer,
changing into finer clothing, and waiting on only
his employer, ignoring the other foreigners at the
table should they request anything of him.25 The
clear difference in attitudes between the valets and
the coolies seems to indicate that the former were
drawn from younger members of the compradors
own trading class, while the latter came from the
citys poor.
Besides their use for basic domestic functions,
the upper stories of the factories primarily served
the European and American merchants as spaces
for recording and processing goods and transactions and for entertainment. The long workday
was perhaps the most pervasive characteristic of
life within the factories:
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 process of receiving and dispatching car-

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

73

goes, of making out sales and interest calculations,

copying letters, filing away papers, and the perpetual round of business employments.26

The offices of the Western firms were not elaborate, as the watercolor of Wetmores tea tasting
room indicates (Figure 8). The main features of
the room were the rows of shelves and boxes that
were needed for the task at hand, but there is a
decorative chair rail, crown moldings, and a fanlight over the window. These seem to be Western
touches to what structurally was a Cantonese
building. The Chinese tea-tasting assistant sits in
a chair that, while neoclassical in form, was very
likely local in its production. The counting rooms
of the factories impressed Tiffany. He noted that
one of the pleasures of the counting-room is
smoking, resulting in the clouds of vapor that
float around one.27
Few descriptions remain of the Westerners
bedchambers in the factories, but ones that do
are negative in tone. Complaining of the lack
of unspecified things which to an Englishman
are considered essential, Charles Downing
described his room in Markwicks hotel in the
rear of the Imperial Factory:
The walls are perfectly bare without the slightest
attempt at ornament, and the window is generally
without any blind or screen to free you from the
observation of your opposite neighbour. A fourpost
bedstead stands on one side of the room, with a
mattress and bolster spread with a couple of sheets,
and encircled by a large green mosquito-curtain. A
small table, a chair or two, and a washbasin without soap or towel, complete the furniture of this
desolate apartment. There is no looking-glass on
the table or carpet on the floor.28

Nathaniel Kinsman, an employee of Wetmore

& Co. in the 1840s, found his quarters in No.
1 Imperial Factory gloomy, since the walls
here were painted dark green & are now nearly
black.29 Those merchants expecting to take up a
prolonged residence in Canton would have had
their chambers fitted up to accommodate their
taste and desire for comfort, but they did it at their
own expense.30

74

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

The dining room was the center of social life.

John Heard, the young nephew of the principal of
the Massachusetts firm Augustine Heard & Co.,
was impressed with the firms dining table at the
Creek Hong:
We got to Canton about 3 PM, a few minutes before
dinner was announced, and this was quite a revelation to me. There must have been more than
a dozen at the table, as partners and clerks all sat
down together, and there were always stray captains from Whampoa. The first thing that struck
my attention was that a bottle of wine was placed
at each plate. Ah said I to myself, no more short
corners here. . . . the whole dinner was on a satisfactory scale of abundance.31

The factory inhabitants used the communal space

of the dining room four times a day: for an early
breakfast, a light lunch around noon, a large
dinner around three or four in the afternoon,
and often a tea in the evening.32 The main furnishing for this room was, of course, a very large
table, capable of seating all of the firms Western
employees as well as a number of guests. There
could be more than twenty around the table on
some occasions. The other major feature of this
room was the punkah:
This is an immense fan suspended by the two ends
of the ceiling, and kept in motion by means of a
rope alternately pulled and slackened by a machine
in shape of a cooley, who stands outside of the
dining room, and who never thinks of stopping
until he is told to, should the dinner continue six
hours.33

This feature, which looked like a large, square,

cloth sail stretched on a wooden frame above the
middle of the table, seems to have been imported
by the British from India and was soon in use by
most of the foreign houses.
China trade veteran William C. Hunter
described the British East India Companys New
English Factory as having the most elaborate dining and leisure facilities:
Their dining room was of vast dimensions, opening upon the terrace overlooking the river. On

the left was a library, amply stocked, the librarian

of which was Dr. Pierson; on the right a billiard
room. At one extremity of the dining room was a
life-sized portrait of George IV in royal robes, with
crown and sceptre, the same that had been taken by
the Embassy of Lord Amherst to Pekin, offered and
refused by the Emperor Keen-Lung, and brought
to Canton overland. Opposite to it hung a smaller
full-length portrait of Lord Amherst. From the ceiling depended a row of huge chandeliers, with wax
lights; the table bore candelabra, reflecting a choice
service amidst quantities of silver plate.34

By and large, however, it was the function of

the dining room, rather than the rooms physical characteristics, that caught the attention of
observers:
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 drank at
the 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 drank
by the servants! I mention this as an example in the
article of Beer. Every thing else is pretty much in
the same ratio.35

The hard-working, hard-drinking (by imperial

decree all male) society of the foreign trading community generally worked well with their Chinese
merchant peers, employees, and servants. The
foreigners were dependent on the government
designated cohong monopolists for protection
and supplies. They trusted their comprador to
hire the rest of the staff, to conduct negotiations
for the firm involving great amounts of money,
and to generally manage the factorys domestic
affairs.36 The foreign merchants considered the
Chinese servants an inferior class; however, the
merchants knew the individual servants by name,
and in memoirs, letters, and journals appear to
have accepted them as collaborators in their enterprise. The Cantonese employees, in turn, served at
their own will and frequently developed a sense of

loyalty, which they proved in many circumstances,

especially during the later civil disturbances.
Descriptions of cross-cultural social interactions outside of the workday are rare. The few we
have are of dinner parties where Western traders were invited to feasts at the garden villas of
the wealthy Chinese monopolists.37 Occasionally
there would be social events in the factories for
the traders Chinese compatriots. For example,
Bryant Tilden was lodging at Magees hotel (a
block in one of the factories) during the 1818
19 trading season, when a son of the Chinese
merchant Paunkhequa asked if he could bring
some friends to Magees to hear foreign music.38
Magee arranged a large dinner party to which he
invited a number of musically talented foreigners who then put on a show of playing, singing,
and dancing in the Western style for the younger
Paunkhequa and his friends. Tilden gave a
detailed and amusing account of the event:
Our instrumental music consisted of a base viol,
flute, violin, and my clarinet as an accompaniment
to a dozen fanquie [sic, fan gui or foreign ghosts or
devils] sing-song-sters which the celestials seemed
to enjoy, keeping perfect silence. A short while after,
Paunkeiqua Jr. and his friends signified that they
had heard of, and would like to make see dat too
much culious fanquie dance pidgin so fashion
and for our own as well as their amusement, by
way of sport, mustered a cotillion set & having no
ladies as partners had to imitate them as well as we
could, but by no means so cleverly as the Chinese
boys do the women characters in their sing-song
theatres. Olo Magayas master of ceremonies
after a Scotch reel had been got through with, seeing that the dancers flaggedsaid Dn your
eyes! Ladies and gentlemen you dont know how
to dance! . . . . . Tilden give us a fishers hornpipe,
and Ill show em how its done, & sure enough he
shuffled & danced it handsomely in the true sailor
fashion, much to the amusement of guestsservants, cooks, and house coolies, who had mustered
upstairs to see the sport, which they enjoyed as
much as we do, when Indians entertain us with
a war dance, on visiting our cities. Indeed our
gentlemen not having ladies as partners, danced
very much like savages. However, after supper we
pleased our guests, with very good English song-

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

75

Figure 9.
The factories of Canton.
This view illustrates
throngs of vendors,
beggars, and others
in the factory square.
In the foreground are
enclosures for goats and
milk cows that provided
products for Western
tables. Oil on canvas,
circa 182535, attributed
to Lamqua, Peabody
Essex Museum.

singing, which they liked more better than our

dancing; and retired as they came attended by their
lantern bearers at midnight having chinchinned
[sic, bade farewell to, probably with some gesture,
the clasping of hands in front of the chest and a
short bow] all of us at parting.39

Tildens description reveals a noticeable lack of

formality and an atmosphere of festivity that broke
down cross-cultural boundaries between Westerners, their Chinese trade partners, and even the
servants. Tildens attempt to render the dialect of
English spoken by the Cantonese merchant class
may seem a caricature, but it also is probably accurate in the blending of vocabularies and grammars
from various Western and Chinese tongues. One
should also note that few if any Westerners at this
point spoke any Chinese at all.
Outside of the factories was an open space
sometimes called Respondentia Walk but more
often simply the square. This site would be
transformed by cross-cultural conflict in the midnineteenth century. The idea of an open space
functioning as a market area for foreign traders
who had restricted movement is one that had a
long history in Chinese city building. Initially the
space in front of the factories was largely open,

76

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

though partially fenced to control access from

the river and perhaps mark workspace for loading and unloading cargo. The 1822 fire destroyed
these initial fences. By the mid-1820s Cantonese
vendors, entertainers, and beggars were daily
assembling in the square, much to the foreigners irritation (Figure 9).40 These hucksters and
performers, along with some idle tradesmen
would occasionally contribute to the collective
violence that periodically erupted in the early to
mid-nineteenth century. Besides the idlers about
the square, other groups appear to have participated in civil disturbances around the Thirteen
Factories, particularly in the years surrounding
the Sino-British military conflicts of the midnineteenth century. The presence of some more
tightly organized rioters armed with short
swords may imply the involvement of peasant
militias, martial arts secret societies, or organized
crime gangs.41 Often, British officials would refer
to Cantonese rioters as vagabonds and rabble.
Chinese officials reporting on the fatalities of an
1846 riot, however, noted at least some of those
involved were regularly employed citizens of the
laboring and skilled tradesman class, hailing
from both the city itself and surrounding districts.42 On the Western (generally British) side,

drunken sailors on shore leave, cross or mentally

imbalanced merchants, and the enclosure by the
British of the space in front of the New English
Factory also triggered these riots.
Cantonese rioters saw the factories as symbols of foreign power and surrogates for foreign
bodies, while the foreigners utilized them as
fortresses.43 In the winter of 183839, there was
a riot caused by the Chinese authorities efforts
to stem opium smuggling. They attempted to
execute several Chinese involved in the drug
trade in the factory square, as a warning to both
Chinese and Westerners engaged in the illegal
activity.44 Foreigners attempted to intervene. Initially they had some success in peacefully resolving the crisis, but in the end there was another
riot. The British Canton Agency Consultations
reported:
Throughout their proceedings, up to this point, the
foreigners had carried with them the sympathies of
the people, but then the intemperate conduct of a
few individuals soon after engaged them in a collision with the mob, which after a few broken heads,
resulted in their retreating to their factories; a few
native police made their appearance and attempted
to keep the peace, but they were driven off the field,
and the factories were reassailed for several hours,
at first only with stones and brickbats, but as the
mob grew more excited, they tore up the rails in
front of the houses, applied the cross-beams as battering rams to the factory gates, and about 4 oclock
succeeded in breaking into the Lung Shun [sic
Old English] Hong. Had they not at this moment
checked themselves, and refrained from rushing in, blood would certainly have been spilt, but
before any further violence could be committed, a
party of soldiery came on the ground, which they
cleared in a short space of time, and tranquility was
restored.45

The desire of Chinese officials to maintain civic

order apparently triumphed in the end with the
troops dispersal of the crowd. The events of the
winter of 183839 had highly symbolic implications for both the Western and Chinese populace.
The Chinese authorities wanted to send a visual
message with the executions. It was a message
that could be understood no matter the language

spoken by the onlookers. The foreign merchants

took affront at these actions as an invasion of their
square, their primary outdoor space.
The motivations of the crowd may have been
more ambiguous. According to both the British
Canton Agency Consultations and Massachusetts native Gideon Nyes recollections, the Chinese crowd did not at first oppose the foreigners
actions and, in fact, were even construed as supportive. As in any riotous crowd, it was composed
of individuals who might have had distinctly separate motives for participation.46 What seems to
have triggered the collective action, however, was
the assault by English sailors and perhaps other
foreigners on the execution party. This action
could have been interpreted any number of ways:
as an assault on order, as an assault on a fellow
Chinese, or simply as an act outside reasonable
social norms. The Westerners retreat into the
factories was, of course, the logical move for
self-protection of a minority group. They fled to
a space where they could claim official and personal ownership. The factories became fortresses
and were quickly barricaded. This seemed to
motivate the Chinese crowds attack.
By breaking windows and battering doors, the
rioters were attacking a surrogate body.47 There
were no accounts of actual physical injuries suffered by Westerners. The Chinese crowd could
throw bricks and stones at a building and thus
display their resistance, but they did not risk the
moral or legal implications of actually hurting
or killing a foreigner. That might have resulted
in capital punishment. The appearance of the
soldiers who cleared the factory square was a
reassertion of Chinese authority that the crowd
accepted. The fact that the rioters did not enter
the Old English factory, even after having broken
down the door, indicates that their action was
largely symbolic. The threat of penetrating the
factory was sufficient to communicate meaning,
while the abstention from doing so indicated
that the foreigners were not considered mortal
enemies. Unfortunately for the Chinese, their
foreign guests took a different view, and military
mobilization and global political maneuvering
soon took over to escalate the situation to war.
The Opium War (183942) included a massive siege of Guangzhou by the British. A string

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

77

Figure 10.
The American Garden.
Pen and ink, watercolor
on paper, 184445,
anonymous Chinese
artist, Peabody Essex
Museum.

78

of Chinese military defeats and considerable

destruction of civilian parts of the city caused
a humanitarian crisis and humiliation. In the
immediate aftermath, some segments of the
population retained a smoldering resentment.
On December 7, 1842, a scuffle between Lascars
(South Asian sailors) on shore leave and Chinese
fruit merchants triggered a conflict that would
ultimately result in the complete destruction of
the three factories on the eastern end of the site
(the New British, Dutch, and Creek Factories).48
British traders predominated in all of these factories.49 The destruction was quite specific in its
goals. The center block of factories, dominated
by the neutral American trading houses, was left
untouched by rioters.
The foreign response to Cantonese riots was
to enclose the space in front of the factories and

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

to create paths that restricted Chinese traffic. In

the aftermath of the Opium War, the so-called
American Garden, surrounded by high walls,
was created as much to control Chinese traffic as
to provide recreational space for the Americans
and Europeans (Figure 10). Rhode Islander Isaac
Bull planned the garden in the style promoted
by English landscape theoretician John Claudius
Loudon.50 The garden became central to the recreation of the foreign merchants in the 1840s but
also a spectacle for curious Chinese:
The Chinese of the interior, whom business takes
to Canton or Macao, always go the first thing to look
at the Europeans on the promenade. It is one of
the most interesting sights for them. They squat
in rows along the sides of the quays, smoking their
pipes and fanning themselves, contemplating all

the while with a satirical and contemptuous eye the

English and Americans who promenade up and
down from one end to the other, keeping time with
admirable precision.51

Tension was inevitable between the gazers and the

promenaders. Boston native Paul Forbes recorded
one such incident in 1843, revealing both the contested nature of the site as well as the intended
exclusionary purpose of the garden:
Last evening, however, there was something of a
row in front of the factories, in consequence of the
overbearing impudence of the foreigners as much
as any blame of the Chinese. The garden of the factories is surrounded by a high garden railing 8 feet
high & when walking inside you can see outside.
The humble Chinese looking through the rails
with respectbut it is the fashion to brand them as
villains, & rascals & that is enoughas one or two
were looking in at the gate, some would-be nerves
[sic] felt their dignity compromised by the simple
curiosity of the Chinamen and slammed it in their
faces, the Chinese pushed it open, very properly
as they had done nothing to provoke this insult &
immediately were threatened with stickstheir
reply was a shower of brick bats & of course the
foreigners were glad to get into their factoriesbut
this is laid all to the Chinese! Where is the country
where a parcel of insolent foreigners would have
got off as easily?52

same as those of the older factories, with vertically hierarchical interior arrangements.53
The escalation of cross-cultural tensions, however, was reflected in the increased amount of
space enclosed around the factories. Three streets
initially allowed access to the factories from the
surrounding city. The two on the western end of
the site, the so-called China Street and New China
Street, from the eighteenth century had portals
that could be closed in emergencies and at night.
This was both for the protection of foreigners and
for the protection of the Chinese vendors luxury
goods housed in small booths lining these streets.
Hog Lane, the street between the central group
of factories and the British factory, was a consistent source of disruption, however, since it did not
have gates and housed the temporary booths of
traders who sold trinkets and liquor to the foreign
sailors on shore leave.54 The walled American
Garden and gated lanes running in front of the
factories helped to restrict and control traffic in
the vicinity. This was evident in the last major riot
in the vicinity of the factories in 1846. Incited by
an English merchants bad behavior in Old China
Street, a crowd chased him into a neighboring
factory.55 Foreign merchants in neighboring factories who saw the disruption assembled in the
walled-off American Garden and then marched
to break up the rioters. The crowd split into three
parts, with one fleeing down New China Street.

Figure 11.
Augustine Heard &
Company, Canton.
Gouache on paper,
circa 1850, studio of
Tingqua, Peabody
Essex Museum.

This little disruption was not particularly serious,

but it confirms how the attitudes of some foreigners clearly fostered the creation of distance and
boundaries in the garden space.
In the mid-1840s, the factories built to replace
the destroyed eastern three buildings were done
in a new style, with colonnaded porches over an
arcade, a low-hipped roof, and a freestanding
form (Figure 11). These buildings typologically
reflect contemporary developments in Hong
Kong, which was ceded to the British as part of
the treaty ending the Opium War. They probably
had their origins in British India. The exteriors
set the pattern for foreign building over the next
few decades. Their detached freestanding form
was probably a precaution against fire. The interiors of the buildings, however, were much the

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

79

Figure 12.
The hongs of Canton.
Gouache on paper, circa
1852, Tingqua, Peabody
Essex Museum.
Figure 13.
The American Garden
and Anglican Church.
Gouache on paper, circa
184856, attributed to
Tingqua, Peabody
Essex Museum.

80

They were caught between foreigners at the

southern gate and Chinese merchants who had
barricaded the northern one. A second group ran
back down China Street where the armed foreigners, acting against the consuls orders, wounded
and captured several individuals. Only the rioters
who fled south to the river escaped. This incident
demonstrates that by the mid-nineteenth century
both foreigners and Chinese shopkeepers had
developed methods to respond to riots. Architectural control of space was an integral part of their
defense. Thus the urban fabric of the Thirteen
Factories served as dwelling, place of business,

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

and place of leisure for foreign merchants in the

eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They
were the seat of Sino-Western commerce. The
control over their neighboring exterior spaces,
however, shows that they also became a fortified
environment.
After the 1846 riot, the foreigners were permitted to further redesign the landscape surrounding the factories and limit potential routes
for rioters.56 Hog Lane was blocked up when a
narrow factory building inhabited by the British firm of Dent & Co. was erected. The American Garden was expanded, new plantings were
added, and a church was built in front of the New
Factories (Figures 12 and 13). Additional buildings, including a boathouse, were added to the
western end of the site. Traffic was further channeled into defensible corridors. Peace was only
to be maintained for a decade, however. British
and French imperial aspirations would eventually lead to the Arrow War. In December of 1856
all foreigners evacuated the factories, and as the
allies blockaded the city, the factories were set on
fire (possibly with the consent of Chinese authorities), effectively ending the first phase of foreign
habitation of Guangzhou.57
During the Arrow War in the late 1850s, the
British and French occupied the Chinese city
for over a year. British military power created an
atmosphere of fear and disruption, and there were
also dire humanitarian crises among the Cantonese as a result of both wars. It is a testament to the
regional pride and cosmopolitan broad-mindedness of the Cantonese (as much as it is to the
coercion of the foreigners) that the Arrow War
did not mean the termination of peaceful foreign
habitation in the city. In the end, however, the violence of the mid-century fundamentally changed
the way that foreigners dwelt in the city. In the
1860s, the foreign settlement, Shamian (literally
in Chinese sand-face because of its origins as
a sandbar), was rebuilt on a completely different
model (Figure 14). Access to and from the city
was across two carefully guarded bridges. The
result of this traumatic history of mutual antagonism was a spatial and social separation that
would last into the twentieth century. The history
of the Thirteen Factories, however, demonstrates
an important lesson for modern scholars: cross-

cultural relations are spatial relations, and they

can be read not only in the historical accounts
but also in the buildings and spaces the foreigners occupied.

n otes
1. An excellent summary of Western presence in
Guangzhou in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries from an American perspective can be found
in Jacques M. Downes, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping
of American Policy (Bethlehem, Penn.: Lehigh University Press, 1997). Another useful general reference is
Valerie M. Garrett, Heaven Is High, the Emperor Far
Away: Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), chapter 7.
2. William C. Hunter, The Fan Kwae at Canton before
Treaty Days 18251844, 2nd. ed. (Shanghai: Kelly and
Walsh, 1911), 124. A native of Kentucky, Hunter was
sent in his teens to Guangzhou in 1825 and resided
there seasonally for nearly twenty years. His highly
readable reminiscences are considered a standard
source for the period.

3. Pehr Osbeck, A Voyage to China and the East

Indies, vol. 1 (London: Benjamin White, 1771), 205.
4. The names of the factories are repeated in
numerous sources and on several maps or diagrams. A
useful chart of the appearances of names over time can
be found in Jiabin Liang, Guangdong Shisan Hang Kao
(Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1999),
34849. The flags seen in most views of the factories
indicate the presence of a consul or other official representative of that country, though not necessarily a
native of the country. For instance, the Scottish firm
of Jardine and Matheson frequently had its principal
partner in residence traders appointed as the Danish
consul.
5. The United States, unlike the European nations,
never had national companies that monopolized trade
with the Far East, and therefore American merchants
were known as free traders.
6. Besides the visual evidence showing continued
use of the earlier model of factory plan, there is also
some textual confirmation. For example, after the British East India Company adopted a Chinese contractor
for the rebuilding of their factories, there was some

Figure 14.
Shamien, the Foreign
Settlement. Newspaper
engraving, after a
photograph by John
Thomson, The Graphic,
September 22, 1883, page
293, from the authors
collection, reproduced
here by kind permission
of the Illustrated London
News Picture Library.

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

81

concern voiced about whether the contractor could produce the building to the taste of the company. The
contractors response was that this was by no means
probable, having as a model the sets of rooms that yet
remained as a model. Thus the parts of the factories
that had not completely succumbed to the fire were actually the inspiration for the rebuilding. (Canton Agency
Consultations, India Office Records, G/12/229, British
Library, consultation for February 4.)
7. Canton Agency Consultations, India Office
Records, G/12/229 and G/12/231, British Library.
8. According to at least one period source, three
types of brick were in use in Guangzhou in the early
nineteenth century. The first type was sun dried and
had a pale brown color; the second type had been thoroughly kiln baked and was red; and the final type was
fired for a short time only and possessed a blue-grey
hue. The last type of brick was the most common and
apparently the variety used in the factories. See The
Chinese Repository, vol. 2 (Canton, China: n.p., 1833),
19596.
9. See Peabody Essex Museum and Hong Kong
Museum of Art, Views of the Pearl River Delta: Macau,
Canton, and Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Urban Council of
Hong Kong, 1996), 17071.
10. See Canton Agency Consultations, India Office
Records, G/12/229, British Library, particularly vol.
2, which contains records for the consultations of
November through early February of the 182324 trading season.
11. Osbeck, A Voyage to the East Indies, 1:205.
12. Osmund Tiffany, Jr., The Canton Chinese, or
the Americans Sojourn in the Celestial Empire (Boston:
James Munroe and Company, 1849), 214.
13. Benjamin Parrott Tilden, Fathers Journals,
vol. 2 (voyage 7), 129, unpublished manuscript, Peabody-Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. Two copies exist of
Benjamin Tildens hand-written volumes of his father,
Bryants, journals. The copies appear to date from
around the 1870s. While the original journal does
not seem to have survived, the detailed nature of this
source, including copies of Bryant Tildens sketches,
makes it still very credible. Bryant Tildens stays in
Canton include three trading seasons in the 1810s and
four in the 1830s.
14. Charles T. Downing, The Fanqui, or Foreigner in
China, vol. 1 (London: Henry Colburn, 1840), 26471
passim.

82

B u i l d i n g s & L a ndscapes 14, 2007

15. Hunter, The Fan-Kwae at Canton, 5354. Note

tai-pans were heads of the foreign trading houses
and pursers were their clerks.
16. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, 217.
17. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China,
291.
18. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, 217.
19. Ibid., 116.
20. Ibid., 221.
21. Ibid., 216.
22. Ibid., 217, 22025.
23. Ibid., 217.
24. Tilden, Fathers Journals, 2:132.
25. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, 217, 225.
26. Ibid., 223.
27. Ibid.
28. Downing, The Fan-qui, or Foreigner in China,
26364.
29. Kinsman Family Papers, Peabody Essex
Museum, Salem, Mass., Mss 43, letter dated January
29, 1843.
30. See for example Hoh-cheung Mui and Lorna H.
Mui, eds., William Melrose in China, 18451855 (Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, for the Scottish History
Society, 1973), 5455.
31. John Heard, Diary, Heard Papers (FP-4),
Baker Library, Harvard University, 29. This is in reality a reminiscence penned in 1881, well after Heard
returned to the United States. The Heards home was
in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and they generally worked
out of Boston. Whampoa was the island that marked
the deep-sea anchorage of Canton.
32. Tiffany, The Canton Chinese, 22034, passim.
33. Ibid., 229.
34. Hunter, The Fan-Kwae at Canton before Treaty
Days, 31. Another source indicates that the George IV
portrait was full length and done by no less a talent
than Sir Thomas Lawrence (Gideon Nye, Jr., The Morning of My Life in China [Macao: J. M. da Silva, 1877],
19).
35. Kinsman Papers, Peabody-Essex Museum, as
quoted in Jacques Downing, The Golden Ghetto, 218.
36. Hunter, The Fan-Kwae at Canton Before Treaty
Days, 5354.
37. See Col. Lawrence Waters Jenkins, ed., Bryant
Parrott Tilden of Salem at a Chinese Dinner Party, Canton, 1819 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press
for The Newcomen Society, 1944); Ethel King Russell,
ed., Journal and Letters of Edward King, 18351844 (New

York: n.p., 1934), 99100; and Phyllis Forbes Kerr, ed.,

Letters from China: The Canton-Boston Correspondence of
Robert Bennet Forbes, 18381840 (Mystic, Conn.: Mystic
Seaport Museum, Inc., 1996), 7983.
38. Tilden, Fathers Journals, vol. 1 (voyage 3),
21214.
39. Ibid.
40. W. W. Wood, Sketches of China (Philadelphia:
Carey & Lear, 1830), 64, 66; and Hunter The Fan Kwae
at Canton, 11315.
41. This speculation is based on an interpretation of
the descriptions of certain ringleaders in the crowd
during the riot of December 7, 1842, particularly in
British Office Foreign Correspondence, Public Records
Office, Kew, FO 17/59, dispatch 71, inclosure 5.
42. British Foreign Office, Papers Relating to the Riot
at Canton in July, 1846 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1847),
18.
43. The inquiry into buildings and violence here
was inspired by Robert Blair St. George, Conversing
by Signs: Poetics of Implication in Colonial New England
Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1998), chapter 3, Attacking Houses.
44. Primary sources for the incidents of 183839
include Nye, The Morning of My Life in China, 3233,
5054; India Office Records, Canton Agency Consultations for 183839, G/12/262, 3435, 43; Canton Register extra edition for December 13, 1838, and February
27, 1839; Canton Press extra February 27, 1839; and, of
course, Hunter, Fan Kwae at Canton, 7377.
45. India Office Records, Canton Agency Consultations for 183839, G/12/262, 3435.
46. My thinking on riotous behavior has been
influenced by Sam Wright, Crowds and Riots: A Study
in Social Organization (London: Sage Publications,
1978). In particular, I have found useful the summary
in the preface of approaches to crowd behavior.
47. Again, the thoughts here are influenced by Blair
St. George, Conversing by Signs, chapter 3, Attacking
Houses.
48. Three sources for this riot are The Canton Repository, vol. 11 (1842), 68788; John Heard Diary (Baker
Library, Harvard University, FP-4), 4147; and British
Foreign Office Correspondence (FO 17/59, dispatch
71).
49. The exceptions to this generalization were two
factory blocks, one of which still contained the Dutch
consulates now rather skeletal staff, and one of which
contained the American firm of Augustine Heard &

Co., close collaborators with the British trading behemoth of Jardine & Matheson.
50. See Kinsman Family Papers, Peabody Essex
Museum, Salem, Mass., Mss. 43, Box 3, folder 9, letter
dated November 28, 1843, for attribution of design and
contracting work.
51. Excerpt from E. R. Huc, The Chinese Empire,
as quoted in Chris Elder, ed., Chinas Treaty Ports: Half
Love and Half Hate (Hong Kong: Oxford University
Press, 1999), 159.
52. Paul S. Forbes, Diary, Box 6, folder 65, entry
for May 15, 1843, Forbes Collection, Baker Library, Harvard University.
53. Heard Papers, Case 27, folder 46, Baker Library,
Harvard University.
54. John Heard, Diary, FP-4, 29, Baker Library,
Harvard University.
55. The most comprehensive source for this is British Foreign Office, Papers Relating to the Riot at Canton
in July 1846 (London: T. R. Harrison, 1847).
56. A good source for information about these
changes of the late 1840s is British Foreign Office General Correspondence 17/127, Public Records Office,
Kew, UK, particularly records of June 1847.
57. British Foreign Office, Papers Relating to the
Proceedings of Her Majestys Naval Forces at Canton
(London: Harrison and Sons for the Houses of Parliament, 1857), 144; British Foreign Office, Further Papers
Relative to the Proceedings of Her Majestys Naval Forces
at Canton (London: Harrison and Sons, 1857), 1; and
British Foreign Office China Correspondence (FO
17/253).

Johnathan A. Farris, Thirteen Factories of Ca n t o n

83