The Golden Ghetto: Jacques M. Downs

E C H O E S
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 1

Foreword 7
Introduction 9
Part One: The Golden Ghetto

1. Old Canton and Its Trade 19
2. American Business under the Old System 65
3. Opium Transforms the Canton System 105
Part Two: The Residents and Their Firms

4. The Dominant Firms 143
5. The Other Houses 190
6. The China Trader 222
Part Three: Cushing’s Treaty

7. The Creation of an Official Policy 259
8. The Mission to China 287
9. Retrospection 310
Epilogue: The Legacy of Old Canton 321

List of Abbreviations 342
Appendix 1: Wade-Giles–Pinyin Equivalents 345
Appendix 2: Statistics and the American Trade 348
Appendix 3: A Note on the Silver Trade 358
Appendix 4: Known Partners of American Firms at Canton,
1803–44 364
Appendix 5: Commercial Family Alliances 367
Appendix 6: Robert Bennet Forbes’s Correspondence with
Warren Delano, 1879 371
Appendix 7: A Note on Sources 374
vi contents
Notes 383
Bibliography 459
Index 489
Plates follow page 218.

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 antici-
pated, 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 explor-
ers.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.
1
2 introduction to the republication
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 moun-
tain 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 pro-
duced 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.
introduction to the republication 3
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 gather-
ing 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 extraor-
dinary 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).
4 introduction to the republication
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), influ-
enced a generation of scholars (at the very least), as evidenced by fre-
quent 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 fac-
tories 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 thereaf-
ter 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.
introduction to the republication 5
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 rep-
resents 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 foreign-
ers, 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 com-
munity, 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 enor-
mous 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
7
8 foreword
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 ques-
tions 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 possi-
bly 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 com-
munity?” 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 com-
munity 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
9
10 introduction
the merchants, their community at Canton, and their trade? After all the
treaty, like American foreign policy generally in that era, was first and fore-
most commercial.
The sources for this undertaking are voluminous, scattered, and some-
times 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 librar-
ies, 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 col-
lected 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 prob-
lems, 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 chil-
dren 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
introduction 11
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 generali-
zations 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 mer-
chants 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 infor-
mal 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 glos-
sary 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 offi-
cial: “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 bureau-
crats in the West.
A final word of preparation for the reader: this book is neither a con-
tinuous, narrative history nor a fully sustained community study. It consists
12 introduction
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 ade-
quately. The genealogical narratives and the company charts in the appen-
dix 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 col-
lection of manuscripts. N. David Scotti, a private scholar with wide-ranging
interests and a far better nose for documents than most credentialed histori-
ans, 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,
introduction 13
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 fellow-
ship 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 con-
tinuing 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 permit-
ted 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 sup-
plies 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 chop-
house1 (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 man-
darins. Following the introduction came the inevitable tea and sweetmeats
or liquor, after which the ship proceeded upriver with a river pilot in charge
19
old canton and its trade 21
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 profes-
sion, 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
22 the golden ghetto
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 gov-
ernment 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 lin-
guists 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.
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 sug-
gested 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 exac-
tions, 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
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 dead-
liest 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 beauti-
fully 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
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 ser-
enade 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
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 denot-
ing 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 rep-
resented 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 sub-
stance that he apparently was selling.29 Now and then, when the press of
undesirables became unendurable, the exasperated foreigners would com-
plain 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.
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 disgust-
ingly 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 mer-
chandise: 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 question-
able 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.
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 unsuit-
able. 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.
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 uni-
verse,”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 descrip-
tion. 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 (includ-
ing a self-playing piano), and a beautifully tended garden whose walks were
paved with Dutch tile.47 Even making allowances for his youthful exag-
geration, it is clear that the Dutch agents at Macao lived grandly. Although
private American merchants could hardly expect to keep up with such syba-
ritic Joneses, their hongs did not lack creature comforts. The diet was little
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 free-
spending habits of China nabobs on “the management of large funds belong-
ing 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, par-
ticularly 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 arriv-
istes, 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 voluptu-
ary. He worked long and continuously—twelve to fifteen hours a day was
usual during busy periods. Most of this time was spent in the counting-
house, and travelers often remarked on the pallor common to all residents.
But at least one young man was delighted, on his arrival, to discover
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 decora-
tions, 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.
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, includ-
ing 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 report-
edly 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 count-
inghouse 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 super-
cargo 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.
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 connois-
seur of the arts (and also apparently of women), a raconteur, and dinner-
table 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.
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 missionar-
ies who began arriving in 1830 to convert China—a monumentally miscon-
ceived 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 medi-
cine. 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 preju-
dice” 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,
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 warm-
hearted,” 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, quick-
witted . . . 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 reason-
ably 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 cosmopoli-
tan 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
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 espe-

cially 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 super-
cargoes (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 monopo-
lies—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
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 misunderstand-
ing 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 friend-
ships. 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 char-
acter 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’i-
ch’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.
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 gentle-
men 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 size-
able 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, maga-
zines, 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 base-
ball though this was a generation before Abner Doubleday.96
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 foreign-
ers 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 carpen-
ter, 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 govern-
ment. 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:
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 nationali-
ties 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, particu-
larly 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:
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 perform-
ers 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 inter-
mittent 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 attrac-
tive, 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 flirta-
tions. Later other American women, wives and daughters of traders and
captains, made temporary homes at Macao. The Opium War brought still
more and even further enriched the settlement with numbers of mission-
ary 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 par-
ticularly 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 espe-
cially, 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
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 depar-
ture 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 appre-
ciate the opportunity to celebrate the Glorious Fourth. Thus the most typi-
cally 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
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 unmerci-
fully 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 dif-
ferent ages, conditions, and interests of various traders led them to appreci-
ate 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 forbid-
den 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
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 shortcom-
ings 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 subor-
dination 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 cor-
respondence is invariably short, to the point, and suffocatingly dull.
Competing merchants told stories about one another, and their corre-
spondence is full of references to the underhanded dealings, sexual adven-
tures, 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 busi-
ness 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 histori-
cal 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
with Samuel Russell is a mine of information, precisely because he has

so many personal remarks to offer about other merchants. Although appar-
ently a good businessman, he was nervous, touchy, and bearish. He held
grudges, saw subversion of the concern’s interests (with some justifica-
tion, 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 tem-
pered,” 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-pervad-
ing that the other firms—British, Parsee, and American—were often forced
to choose sides.
What apparently had begun as a personal or commercial rivalry gradu-
ally 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
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 repu-
tation for mayhem than himself—James Innes,141 the Scot, whom the com-
munity 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 sail-
boat . . . 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
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 them-
selves 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 ser-
vices. 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 quick-
ened 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 rear-
range 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
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 administra-
tive, 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 sup-
ported 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
generosity. Jeejeebhoy (Heerjeebhoy?) Rustomjee, an important Parsee

opium merchant, gave twelve thousand dollars in 1841 for the establish-
ment 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 foreign-
ers, 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 institu-
tions 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 cer-
tainly 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
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 trans-
porting 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 custom-
ary 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 ade-
quate.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 cel-
ebrated 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 cemeter-
ies: 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:
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 commisera-
tion, 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 extrater-
ritoriality 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 some-
times 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 retribu-
tion. 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 eventu-
ally 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
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 rich-
ness 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 trian-
gular 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 popu-
lation 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 foreign-
ers’ 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.
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 bus-
tling 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, exoti-
cism, and luxury to the West. Medieval contacts with East Asia were occa-
sional 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 economi-
cally. 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 super-
cargo 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 fol-
lowing 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 prosper-
ity. When French armies overran Western Europe, the American tea trade
65
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)
american business under the old system 67
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 popu-
lation 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 begin-
ning in the 1820s the smoky-flavored souchong became popular, especially
in Boston, where a number of important China merchants lived. These
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 princi-
pally from Fukien Province and neighboring districts in the adjacent prov-
inces 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 impor-
tant 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
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 care-
fully, 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
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 invari-
ably 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
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 pur-
chase 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 dif-
ficulties 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 alter-

native 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 employ-
ing great numbers of wage-earning employees existed nearby. The workers
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 impor-
tant. 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 indus-
tries 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 han-
dling 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 condi-
tions on the foreign community at Canton. The nature of the exports, the
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 gov-
ernment 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 pos-
sible. 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 busi-
ness, 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 gov-
ernment, 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 command-
ments appeared in a copy of “the original eight regulations to guard against
foreigners” prepared for the Emperor’s approval in 1831:
1. Year-round residence was prohibited.

2. Chinese merchants were forbidden to borrow money from foreigners.
3. Foreigners were barred from employing Chinese servants.
4. While in China, foreigners were to be under the control of a hong
merchant.
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 remark-
able 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 mis-
sionaries 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 dif-
ficulties 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 con-
venience 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.”
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 depend-
ent 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 offi-
cials 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 impor-
tant 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.
This position was, thus, very lucrative; Hoppos always left Canton as
very rich men. Below the commissioners were two more levels of geo-
graphical 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 every-
thing 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 sub-
ordinate 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 col-
lection 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 busi-
nessmen 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, manda-
rin 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 main-
tained. Because the hong merchants were liable as a group for the failure of
any one of their members and for extraordinary levies, they insured them-
selves 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
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 some-
times 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 liquid-
ity 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 unantici-
pated 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, permit-
ted “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.
Among its other official duties, the Cohong policed the factory area,
stood answerable for the integrity of the linguists, supervised the function-
ing of the system, and generally acted as a buffer between Chinese offi-
cialdom 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 man-
darinate. 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
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 cor-
ruption.”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 govern-
ment 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 effi-
cient 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 insol-
vent 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
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 esti-
mated 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 eco-
nomic 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 quan-
tity and chop or producer’s mark. The Chinese merchants then delivered the
goods at shipside, where stowage, a highly developed science, was the busi-
ness 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 placid-
ity 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 com-
monly found in other parts of the world. . . . They are intelligent, exact account-
ants, 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 mer-
chants. Chinese food, amusements, the plural wives, the decor of Chinese
houses, and the beauties of the gardens became the subjects of many fasci-
nating letters and diaries of American China traders.45
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—stur-

geon’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 mer-
chants 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
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—entrust-
ing 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 $175,070
1838 392,260
1839 303,114
1840 213,260 (to 4 May only)
1841 931,150
1842 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 Sino-
British 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 inter-
national 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
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 mer-
chants 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 rela-

tions 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 rela-
tions 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 for-
eigner 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 thou-
sand dollars or 25 percent on prime cost, but later vessels sometimes netted
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 accru-
ing 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 thirty-
five others took between five and twelve years to acquire enough to go
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 retire-
ment; 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 nine-
teenth century. A fortune of that size meant financial independence and
even social leadership. As late as 1846, the possession of one hundred thou-
sand 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 resi-
dent 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
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 divid-
ing 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 ser-
vices 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 accept-
ance 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 some-
times 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” ham-
mered 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 circula-
tion in China. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum.
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 thou-
sand 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 money-
lending 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 responden-
tia 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
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 organ-
ized among the merchants in Canton themselves.91 In the early days premi-
ums 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 distur-
bances 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
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 mer-
chants 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 pros-
perous 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 astronomi-
cal 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,
transients could be so numerous and troublesome that they became a nui-

sance 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, espe-
cially 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 busi-
ness 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 advertise-
ments 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 prob-
ably 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 busi-
nesses 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 pioneer-
ing 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 pub-
lished price current, and indeed this was the first item to be offered by com-
mercial 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
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 jour-
nalist, 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 poli-
cies, 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 missionar-
ies 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
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 compara-
tively 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 evan-
gelical 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 ten-
dency 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
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, year-
round 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 facto-
ries, 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 varia-
tions, 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, book-
keeper, 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
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 recom-
mend 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 special-
ized. 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 tradi-
tional, 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 count-
inghouses 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 business-
men trusted each other’s word. Because nothing like Western commercial
law existed in China, contracts were enforceable only at Macao. With tran-
sient 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.
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 mer-
chant’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 compen-
sation 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
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 prox-
imity, 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 commer-
cial 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 centu-
ries. 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 com-
mercial 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
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 ben-
efits. 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 part-
ners began settling at Macao, they also received the best medical atten-
tion 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 domes-
tic 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 ame-
nable 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:
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 temp-
tation 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.
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 prefer-
ence 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
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 gratui-
tous 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 storm-
damaged 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,
was the logical outgrowth of this increasingly complex interrelationship.

Certainly it was the most inclusive of the community’s many organiza-
tions. 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 governor-
general 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 sus-
picious 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 regu-
larly 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
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 recom-
mended, 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 agree-
ment 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 ulti-
mately 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 suspi-
cious 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 fol-
lowing 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 cir-
cumstance 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
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 accumu-
lated 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 desir-
able 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, oliba-
num, asafoetida, Terra Japonica, damar, gambier, galangal, hartall, putch-
uck, 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 cer-
tainly 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
105
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 exclu-
sive 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) prop-
erty. 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
opium transforms the canton system 107
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 car-
rying 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 car-
rying 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 over-
valuation 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 treas-
ury, 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 short-
ages were common. American supercargoes with chests full of dollars were
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 gal-
leons, 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 com-
merce 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 quan-
tities 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
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 transfer-
ring 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 sug-
gests 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
States by agents of London merchant banks, payable in London, gener-

ally 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 quan-
tity 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 thereaf-
ter, 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”
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 experi-
ment 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 impor-
tant merchant bankers concerned were located in London, although a few
were in Liverpool. The larger banks had branch houses in a number of dif-
ferent 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, ulti-
mately 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 credi-
tor 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 reduc-
ing 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
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 loca-
tional 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 smug-
glers. 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 . . . practi-
cally 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.
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 resid-
ing 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 agree-
ment 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
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 mer-
chants 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 ninety-
five 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 fol-
lowing 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 dis-
appointed 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
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 mer-
chants 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 dis-
owning it in China.”49 The Company had long refused to permit the drug
aboard its China ships, and the Chinese government had banned all impor-
tation 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 auc-
tions 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 commis-
sion merchants in Smyrna and the other cities involved.
The commercial dislocations of the era interfered badly with the developing
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 reli-
giously. 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 acci-
dent. 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 produc-
tion 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 some-
what 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
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 ever-
increasing 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 con-
tinuing 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 pro-
longed 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
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 situ-
ation 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
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 patron-
age 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 mer-
chant 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 tempo-
rary 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 occupa-
tion, 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
Perkins & Co.’s Levant and Milo off Lintin Island in the Gulf of Canton. Oil, uniden-
tified 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 com-
pelled 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
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 effi-
ciency, security, and profit, taking full advantage of superior Western tech-
nology, 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 posses-
sion of the drug within a month or so, they would pay “bargain money”
(usually fifty dollars), paying the balance when they appeared at the store-
ship. The resident merchant charged the owner a commission on each chest
sold, and the ship generally received a demurrage fee as well. The danger-
ous 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, heavily-
armed 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 trans-
ferred to the Chinese boats. The smugglers were highly skilled, and the
whole transaction took very little time. The vast superiority of the Lintin
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 else-
where. 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 pur-
chased 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 consider-
ably 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
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 impor-
tant 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 partici-
pate 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
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 advan-
tageously 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 appre-
hended. 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 conse-
quence 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 mar-
keting 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
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 substan-
tial. 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 harbor-
ing 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 infor-
mation. 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 patron-
age, 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 destina-
tion on the same mission. Ammidon, who had been resident agent for Brown
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 com-
mission 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 mer-
chants 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 con-
trolled 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 confisca-
tions, however, the great bulk of the concern’s drug was Indian. Although
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 ensur-
ing 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
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 con-
sidered 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 consider-
able 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
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 aban-
doned.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 ensur-
ing 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 patrol-
ling made difficult by the many islands and inlets, by 1838 even Jardine’s
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 impor-
tantly 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
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 prob-
ability 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 adminis-
trative 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,
it is almost certain that the accusations concerning Teng’s venality were ground-
less. 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 predic-
tion 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 authori-
ties.”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 apprehen-
sion 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 mer-
chants 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 intel-
ligent, 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 pro-
vided the causa belli for the Opium War. Private collection.
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 demonstrat-

ing 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 commu-
nity was another matter. Although less than “sudden,” the action was cer-
tainly “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 reha-
bilitation 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 com-
missioner 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 inves-
tigation, 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 inevi-
table. Commissioner Lin’s action was certainly not the most drastic form of
detention. Presumably he could have arrested all known opium traders,

driven all the residents into a stockade, thrown them into prison, or oth-
erwise 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 doc-
trine 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 with-
drawing 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 inter-
ests of our constituents generally might suffer if we Continued in it, & we are
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 deliv-
ered to Lin. When he had received about fifteen thousand chests, the
Commissioner lifted the blockade and trade resumed. The British immedi-
ately 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 mili-
tary support so much as for diplomatic action to secure for themselves the
same advantages sought by the British.137 This memorial was quickly fol-
lowed 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 sugges-
tion 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
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 follow-
ing 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 communi-
cate directly with the upper echelons of the mandarinate at Canton. In ret-
rospect 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 moder-
ate policy, and most seemed to regret his recall. They regarded the British
merchants’ criticisms as foolish, greedy, and/or bloodthirsty.
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 command-
ing 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 sol-
diers. 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” con-
nected 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
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 equal-
ity. 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 sym-
pathy 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 sol-
diers, 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 mis-
sionary, 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 super-
cargo,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 instruc-
tions, 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 communi-
ties 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 tran-
sient. 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 directed its business to Dent & Co.; Latimer seems
all of the individual agents do not appear on this chart. to have given his remaining commission business to
The minor concerns shown here are those on which Wetmore & Co. and his drug trade to Jardine Matheson;
substantial manuscript information exists. Some dates are J.P. Sturgis simply retired to Macao for a number of
problematical, especially dates of first arrival, but most years, but he was back in business by the time of the
are documented. Some terminal dates should probably Opium War; Gordon & Talbot continued in business at
be explained. For example: Blight & Co. probably New York for years after its dissolution at Canton.
146 the residents and their firms
His credit was established in China, and in case a ship’s funds proved insuf-
ficient, 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 com-
mission 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
the dominant firms 147
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 circum-
venting 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 mer-
chants 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 edu-
cation, 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
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 purchas-
ing 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 inti-
mate 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.
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 indi-
vidual 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 profit-
able 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
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 shrewd-
est 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 major-
ity.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 excel-
lent 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 dis-
played 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
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 com-
modities (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 contin-
ued 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 technol-
ogy 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 inde-
pendent 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 shrewd-
est 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.
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 prop-
erty 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 competi-
tion. 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.
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 cooper-
ated, 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
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 chang-
ing 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 inter-
est, 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 part-
ners.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 espe-
cially, 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
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, appar-
ently 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 there-
after 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 devel-
oped 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
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 characteris-
tics.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 esti-
mated 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 finan-
cial 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 cor-
respondent 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
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
visit home in 1826, and in the intervening period, the business had pros-
pered 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, humor-
less, 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 inter-
rupted 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
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 dif-
ferent 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 dis-
ciplining 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 store-
ship. 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 con-
sidered 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 understand-
ing 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
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 signifi-
cant 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 two-
year 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.
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 even-
tually 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
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 agree-
ment 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
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
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 connec-
tions 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 over-
whelmed. 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
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 busi-
ness 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 communica-
tions 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.
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 previ-
ously 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
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 busi-
ness112 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 advan-
tages 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 princi-
pals. 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.
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.
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 mer-
chants 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 experi-
enced 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. . . .
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 favorit-
ism, 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 connec-
tion 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 com-
mission 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
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 unfail-
ing 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 $88,000
1835 $132,000
1836 $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 palpa-
ble 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.
(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 per-
suaded 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) sur-
rendered 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.
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 guaran-
teed 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
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 busi-
ness 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 tempta-
tion 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 rechris-
tened 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:
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 facto-
tum, 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 com-
pany’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
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 bargain-
ing 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 dis-
tributed 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 mean-
time.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 prop-
erty 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.
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 thou-
sand 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 fol-
lowing 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 family-
centered 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 dissent-
ing 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 recommend-
ing 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.
to the firm, and his own bad luck.181 Forbes’s grumbling doubtless cen-
tered in his personality. In actuality the obstruction of which Forbes com-
plained 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 conces-
sions 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 here-
tofore 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 part-
ners 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
the other houses 191
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 collat-
eral 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
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 granddaugh-
ter (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 tact-
less. 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 con-
sidered 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 confiden-
tial 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 part-
ners 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 consoli-
date 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.
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 two-
sixteenths interest in the new establishment for a single year.17 His pride
considerably more damaged than his fortune, Coolidge refused and conse-
quently 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 establish-
ment & 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:
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 part-
nership 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 belong-
ings, clothes, the books and papers of the firm, a cow, and a dog had disap-
peared 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 unpopu-
lar, 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
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 gener-
ally,”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 fac-
tories 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.
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 Sino-
American relations generally, so the loss is particularly unfortunate.
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 ulti-
mately 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 follow-
ing 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
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 quarter-
century, 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 addi-
tional 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 reason-
able 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 fol-
lowed 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.
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 mer-
chant, 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 actu-
ally 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 rea-
sonably accurate. A surprising number of generally prudent businessmen
(reportedly including John Jacob Astor) availed themselves of this unwit-
tingly 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 numer-
ous 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 unex-
pected opportunity:
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 indi-
cate 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 neces-
sitated 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 inti-
mately 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 con-
cerns 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 hence-
forth was not expected to spend any time in China and remained instead as
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 intelli-
gent 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 gam-
bling 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 con-
siderable 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 satel-
lite but closely related to Olyphant & Co., Gordon & Talbot (q.v.).65 A more
serious consequence was a sharp drop in profits and a disproportionate
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 smug-
gling 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 effec-
tive 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
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 harbormas-
ter 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 accom-
modations. 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
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 shift-
ing 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 excite-
ment 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 charac-
ter. 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 spir-
itual 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
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, com-
menting 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 informa-
tion).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 com-
mitment, 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
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 relation-
ship 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 commis-
sions.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 correspond-
ents 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 undercapital-
ized, 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 investi-
gating 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
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 connec-
tions 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 under-
standable, 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 over-
looks obstacles which would be stumbling blocks in the path of many . . . [He]
overlooked the compact between thee and myself, so far as our original partner-
ship was involved.
Since the arrangement with Mr. Wetmore came to my knowledge I have regret-
ted 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 esti-
mate 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 organi-
zational 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 main-
tained 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 mer-
chant 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.
Consequently when Wetmore & Co. opened its doors on 1 February

1834,109 it was admirably circumstanced. Although it had but two part-
ners, 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 com-
merce 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 remit-
ted 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:
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 permit-
ted 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 ninety-
three 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 one-
half 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 smug-
gling 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
business sharply. The situation was aggravated by the fact that the skit-
tish 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 noti-
fied 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 for-
mally 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 them-
selves 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 evi-
dently did not apply to the “special” partners. Even the income accruing
to the “general” partners from public or private appointments was to be
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 part-
ners, 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
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, consist-
ing 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 fol-
lowing 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 member-
ship 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
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 admit-
ted 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
Congregationalist with a strongly Yankee concept of economy. This thrifti-

ness 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 consump-
tion of the article of Beer alone would suffice to maintain one family comfort-
able 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 hos-
pitality, 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 influ-
ence 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 vigor-
ous 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 develop-
ment 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
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 reor-
ganization the form of the company was set. It consisted of representa-
tives 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 (inci-
dentally 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,
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 eight-
eenth-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-build-
ing, 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 major-
ity 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 suf-
fered 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 nec-
essary 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 func-
tionally 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
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 industri-
alization 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
the china trader 223
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 through-
out 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 else-
where. 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
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 chil-
dren. Young Thomas was nine years old at the time. His mother and mater-
nal 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-in-
law, 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 entrepre-
neur 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 gener-
ally, 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,” neverthe-
less attended the Lawrenceville Academy.4 The founder of Green’s China
firm, Samuel Russell, lost his father when he was only twelve. He appren-
ticed 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 estab-
lish three partnerships overseas, in Lima, Valparaiso, and Canton, and another
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 busi-
ness 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 iden-
tified 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 minis-
ter, another a printer and publisher, and the third was an actor and impresa-
rio. 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 block-
maker and later a ship chandler. Each of these elders, however, was in
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 mer-
chants 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 privi-
leged 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 geographi-
cally (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 occasion-
ally 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 busi-
ness, 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
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 responsi-
bilities 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 sons-
in-law were common, as was the promotion of bright apprentices, who for
several years had been in the company “family” (the usage was contempo-
rary). 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
admission, viz. Hunter, Spooner, George Perkins, and Gilman.19 The other
oddity was Joseph Coolidge, who, although not related to any of the part-
ners, 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 pro-
tégés 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 interpreta-
tion 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:
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 indepen-
dently. 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 fami-
lies; 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 popula-
tion 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 gen-
erosity 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 repre-
sented, 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,
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 mis-
sionary 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 thereaf-
ter 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, lati-
tudinarian 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 roman-
tic 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
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 impor-
tant 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 dis-
positions. 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 sociabil-
ity 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 rea-
sonably 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 else-
where. Languages were useful, and ignorance of political and economic
events could be ruinous. Therefore a merchant had to be not only well pre-
pared, 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 gradu-
ate 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 gradu-
ated, 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,
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 signifi-
cant. A substantial number, especially of the traders, had attended good pre-
paratory schools, including Milton Academy, Lawrenceville, Boston Latin
School, Phillips Andover and Exeter, Fairhaven, and the famous but short-
lived 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 mer-
cantile 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 affection-
ate 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
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 communi-
cation 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 operat-
ing, and they could be reasonably sure of his work. Sometimes the connec-
tion 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 dem-
onstrated 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 resi-
dents 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.
Often the merchant mariner combined the two roles of captain and business-
man. Captains were supposed to have many of the same traits as business-
men—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 counting-
house 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 mer-
chants who resided in Canton during the days of the old China trade, one
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 com-
posed 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 admix-
ture of New Englanders, the Philadelphia area sent a number of high
quality natives to China. Often they were of Quaker stock, and some-
times came from very distinguished families. Nathan Dunn and his part-
ners, Jabez Jenkins and Joseph Archer, were all of Quaker background
and from Philadelphia or its environs. Wetmore & Co., which suc-
ceeded 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 sin-
cerely 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
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 propor-
tion 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 overrepre-
sented at Canton. Given the religious persuasions common in the com-
mercial 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 affilia-
tion 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 resi-
dents 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 mer-
chants—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
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 inves-
tor, 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 develop-
ment scheme, a turnpike, a cotton mill, and one of the country’s first rail-
roads—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 par-
ticipation 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 con-
tinued 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 combina-
tion 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 devel-
oped 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.
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 adven-
turous 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 capi-
talists (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, plan-

ning 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, insur-
ance, and banking enterprises (not to mention the government), as well as
in trade and transportation. In fact Canton graduates, like other rich mer-
chants, 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, absen-
tee 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 busi-
ness 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
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 legend-
ary, 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 corre-
spondents. It was also probably necessary in financiers of innovative enter-
prises of the period.
But time moved on, and, in the next generation, even this motive of eco-
nomic trustworthiness became a mechanism for liberating business manag-
ers 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 behav-
ior in the light of the good of the firm, which they identified with the stock-
holders’ interests. In each case the reasoning was the same: in the name
of duty—a larger responsibility—otherwise inadmissable behavior was per-
mitted. 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 obliga-
tions 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 rail-
roaders 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,
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 pastor-
ate, 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
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 recogniz-
able 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 idle-
ness; 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 situ-
ation. To make matters worse, he suffered from various physical difficulties
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 correspond-
ence of later date indicates that he developed still other medical and psy-
chological 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 gener-
ally. As all transportation at Canton was by water except around the imme-
diate 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 commit-
ting 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 com-
mented on the betrothal of Sullivan Dorr, who had returned from China the
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 philan-
thropies, 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 posi-
tion, 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 undemand-
ing 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 manag-
ers. 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 busi-
ness 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
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 utili-
tarian 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 con-
servatory. 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
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 conserv-
atories and fruit-houses of his nephew, John Perkins Cushing, at Watertown,
his [Colonel Perkins’s] place was considered the most advanced in horticul-
tural 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 bal-
ustrade 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
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 con-
taining 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
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, vanish-
ing 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 edu-
cated 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 visit-
ing 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.
“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 expen-
sive, 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-
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 surround-

ings 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 mono-
gram, 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 col-
lections of Chinese art in America are to be found in Boston, Philadelphia,
and New York (and, latterly, Washington, DC).
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 fre-
quently 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 move-
ments, 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, deter-
mined 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 begin-
ning 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
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 wide-
spread, 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 busi-
nessman, 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
open-handed underwriting of the China Mission and John C. Green’s liberal

endowments to Princeton and to the Lawrenceville School, few China mer-
chants 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 inves-
tigation 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 pros-
ecution 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
alone, and they probably represented the prevailing sentiment among sur-
viving 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 chief-
tain 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
259
260 cushing’s treaty
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 aboli-
tion of the “Eight Regulations.”
The missionaries were equally as powerless and contributed several more
demands: the right to preach; to maintain their churches, hospitals, cemeter-
ies, 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 mission-
aries 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 opportu-
nity 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 mis-
sionaries 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
the creation of an official policy 261
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 admit-
ting 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 high-
handed infraction of all law, human and divine . . . in the seas of China.”5
In recognition of the malodorous reputation of the opium trade, the mer-
chants 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 cooper-
ation 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 deport-
ment 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:
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 arbi-
trary 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 pun-
ishment 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 alter-
native. 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 signifi-
cantly different. Although they justified the sending of a naval squadron on
several grounds, they wrote that
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 integ-
rity, 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
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 com-
modore forced the vessel’s owners to land her cargo of one hundred thirty
thousand dollars to one hundred fifty thousand dollars in silver bullion des-
tined 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 communi-
cations 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
claims and gave way where it seemed to be necessary for harmonious

relations.24
While the Constellation lay at Whampoa, Kearny received a precedent-
making 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 character-
istic 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 atten-
tion 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 empha-

sized, 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, pos-
sibly to exercise his men, who were getting rusty after eight months of inac-
tion in Chinese waters.30 When he returned on 1 January 1843, he discovered
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., com-
plained 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 communica-
tion; 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 correspond-
ence with the governor were certainly useful for the United States. It was
not strange, therefore, that Ch’i Kung should mistake him for a plenipo-
tentiary 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
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 oversimpli-
fied 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 unno-
ticed 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
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 missionar-
ies 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 addi-
tion 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 pre-
vailing 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.
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 previ-
ously 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 pro-
British 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 funda-
mental 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 hos-
pital 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 influ-
ence of other missionaries and their allies, were probably as insistent a pres-
sure as the administration (particularly Daniel Webster) was to feel on the
matter. Nevertheless it did not override the administration’s good judgment.
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 mer-
chants’ 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 mer-
chants’ 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 expe-
ditionary 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
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 mer-
chants 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 main-
land. They seem not to have understood the problem of changed power rela-
tionships 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 missionar-
ies 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 encour-
aging. 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
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 offi-
cials. A resident commissioner seems to have been something of a com-
promise, 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 presi-
dent’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 expan-
sionist 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.
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 con-
nection 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 com-
bination 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 representa-
tive the United States could have found to conduct its first formal dealings
with China.
On the negative side, candor compels attention to Cushing’s expansion-
ism—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 administra-
tions’ 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.
writing despatches aboard ship en route to China, Cushing took the oppor-
tunity 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 conserva-
tism 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 invest-
ments.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, unfor-
tunately, 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 assign-
ment 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 chap-
lain. Cushing had “partially known” Dr. Parker in the United States, but the
two men became much closer during the months at Macao.78 Both mis-
sionaries 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 con-
ditioning factor. Cushing’s only paid help was his secretary and a physi-
cian. 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 low-
cost 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 entou-
rage, “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 eco-
nomic 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.
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 set-
tlement 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 sup-
ported 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 explana-
tion. 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
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, mission-
aries, 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 accompa-
nied 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 authori-
ties 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
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 any-
thing 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 opportuni-
ties 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!
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 post-
pone 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 impor-
tant 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 opin-
ions 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
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 extrater-
ritorial 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 manufactur-
ing 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 second-
ary 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 sen-
timent 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
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” pro-
vided 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 mer-
chants; 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
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 remain-
ing 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 considera-
tion. From his journal and personal letters, it is obvious that he was preoc-
cupied with his own affairs, especially with his advancement in Russell
& Co. His future depended on the latter, while the consulate was com-
paratively 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 acqui-
escence).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
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 pres-
ence 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 eve-
rything 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
287
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 strate-
gies. 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 extra-
territoriality 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 juris-
diction 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
the mission to china 289
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
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’i-
ying (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 governor-
general 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 mut-
terings, 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
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 sug-
gestions 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 service-
able, and his connections among the Chinese negotiators were extremely
useful. Time and again, one or another of the “barbarian experts,” assist-
ing 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 underesti-
mated: 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 inter-
preter); 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 reli-
able 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, & confiden-
tially,”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.
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 deliber-
ately 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 con-
siderable difficulty. Agents at Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton collected
Manchu books for him,21 but securing an instructor proved extremely diffi-
cult. 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
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, gov-
ernor-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 col-
lusion 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) under-
stood 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 atti-
tude. 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 correspond-
ence. Professor Latourette felt it was a reflection of Webster’s misconcep-
tion 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 inferior-
ity.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.
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 con-
sternation 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 memorial-
ized 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 responsibil-
ity,” 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. Never-
theless at no time did he step down from his haughty position of instructor
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 grant-
ing 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 repa-
rations will be made for these acts in due time.34
On 15 May, Cushing wrote Washington about “two letters of great impor-
tance from the governor-general.” One of the letters announced the appoint-
ment 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 offi-
cial, 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 corre-
spondence 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 insti-
tutions with which he was to deal. He also gathered considerable informa-
tion 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
of the original document seems to have survived, but Cushing reported that
except for minor modifications, the Treaty of Wanghia was a faithful repli-
cation 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 pertain-
ing 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 extrater-
ritorial 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
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 pre-
cisely 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 per-
sonal 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 patri-
otism 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.
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 hope-
lessly 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 pre-
viously, 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 lan-

guage 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
the same latitude as Havana, and the South China Coast can be intoler-
able 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 (pro-
vincial treasurer); P’an Shih-ch’eng (described as circuit judge of the prov-
ince, 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 entou-
rage 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 com-
missioner 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
“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 suspi-
cion. 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 sec-
retaries 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 discus-
sion: 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 solic-
itude 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.”
H. E. Ke Ying observing what had been written remarked in reply to the min-
ister, 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
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 corre-
spondence 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 commis-
sioner, 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 rela-
tions.” 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 respon-
sibility 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 manda-
rin. “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 speci-
fied, “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
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 flex-
ibility 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 impor-
tance, 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 impres-
sion 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 inadmis-
sible 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.
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 exist-
ing 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 una-
vailable, 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 negotia-
tors 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 treat-
ment 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
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 depar-
ture in very good humor.73
Thus ended the major working session of the mission. The seven negotia-
tors 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 dif-
ficulty 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 communica-
tion 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
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 govern-
ment 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.
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 com-
munication. An American official might submit his message to the impe-
rial 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 suc-
ceeded 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 adver-
sarial character of many of America’s core institutions (government, busi-
ness, 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
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 atten-
tion 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 popu-
lace against the Americans. Cushing instructed Forbes to summon a com-
mittee 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 mis-
sionaries 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
310
retrospection 311
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 com-
munity 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
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 depar-
ture, 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 consider-
ably 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 missionar-
ies 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
retrospection 313
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 corre-
spondence 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 jurisdic-
tion 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 circula-
tion 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
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 character-
ized 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 interest-
ing. 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 exten-
sion 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
retrospection 315
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 barbar-

ian 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
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 nego-
tiation, 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
retrospection 317
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 dif-
ference 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 con-
trast 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,
for calling these pacts the “unequal treaties.” Cushing himself was deter-
mined 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 solu-
tion. Cushing’s outline of the history of the institution demonstrates con-
clusively 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
retrospection 319
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, achiev-
ing 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 surren-
der 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 commu-
nity 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 determin-
ing 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
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 expe-
rience in dealing with the technologically superior (and therefore imperi-
alist) Westerners. Ch’i-ying was one of the Empire’s top administrators
and certainly no fool, but he could not have considered Cushing’s care-
fully 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 extraor-
dinary, 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
321
322 epilogue
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 advan-
tage 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 practi-
cal 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
epilogue 323
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 seduc-
tive lifestyle of the old system.
Not only merchants and missionaries but also their Cantonese com-
pradors 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, lin-
guists, 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 organ-
ize 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 foot-
dragging 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,
324 epilogue
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 inexperi-
ence. 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 gener-
ally 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 com-
merce. 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
epilogue 325
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 con-
vinced 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 com-
mercial 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 extraterrito-
riality, 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 resi-
dents 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
326 epilogue
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 organi-
zations and others like them had grown and prospered in the pretreaty envi-
ronment, 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 compra-
dor, bookkeeping systems, letter writing, and so forth. In most important
respects even countinghouse organization was recognizable as that of pre-
treaty 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 bookkeep-
ers, 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 employ-
ees, 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 resem-
bled 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 hos-
pitals, schools, charities, and scholarship. The Chinese Repository contin-
ued 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 excel-
lent theater productions. Community members also supported the race track,
epilogue 327
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, bil-
liards, 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 settle-
ments 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
328 epilogue
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 incon-
veniences 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 character-
istically 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 meta-
phorical 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 revolu-
tion 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
epilogue 329
what could happen when such ideas become the basis for action. With for-
eigners 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 flour-
ishing 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 cor-
respondence, 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, traffick-
ing 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 dif-
ficult 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 twenty-
five years, the opium trade must have appeared relatively innocuous. Once
begun the trade was revealed as a bonanza, and it soon provided the solu-
tion 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
330 epilogue
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 “enforc-
ing 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 con-
cerning opium.”19 Thereafter the letters from Dixwell contain much infor-
mation 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
epilogue 331
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 circum-
stances, 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
332 epilogue
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 estab-
lished beyond doubt.
The other partner in Russell & Co. who perjured himself was the redoubt-
able 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 com-
merce 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
epilogue 333
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 disrepu-
table. The vicious behavior of some of the crews contrasted with the fact
that the officers of opium vessels, whether British or American, were gener-
ally 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 alterna-
tive 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, particu-
larly 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.
334 epilogue
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 some-
thing 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 mer-
chants 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 thou-
sands 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
epilogue 335
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, profit-
maximizing 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
336 epilogue
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 cul-

tural 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 immu-
nity 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
epilogue 337
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, serv-
ants, 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.
338 epilogue
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 judg-
ment 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 influen-
tial, but I do not believe it.
Under almost any circumstances, people far from their homes behave dif-
ferently from more sedentary folk. They also are changed by their experi-
ences. 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 addi-
tion 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 com-
munity. 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 mis-
sionaries were not strikingly different.
epilogue 339
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 foreign-
ers’ 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 cul-
tural 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 set-
tlement. 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.
340 epilogue
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 character-
ize 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 Abiel Abbot Low

ABCFM, SCM American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
South China Mission
AH Augustine Heard
ALB Joseph Archer Letterbook
APS American Philosophical Society
BCW Benjamin Chew Wilcocks
BHR Business History Review
BL Baker Library, Harvard Business School
B&S Bryant & Sturgis
CCL Canton Consular Letters
CL-Smyrna Consular Letters from Smyrna
CNT Charles Nicoll Talbot
CP Carrington Papers
CPress Canton Press
CR Chinese Repository
CReg Canton Register
CWK Charles William King
DAB Dictionary of American Biography
DP Delano Papers
DWCO David Washington Cincinnatus Olyphant
EC Edward Carrington
ED Edward Delano
EICo British East India Company
EICoA British East India Company Archives
EIHC Essex Institute Historical Collections
FAD Frederic A. Delano
FFP Forbes Family Papers
FP Forbes Papers
GP Girard Papers
H/C House of Commons
HL Harriet Low
HP Heard Papers
H/R House of Representatives
HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania
342
list of abbreviations 343
JA Joseph Archer
JC Joseph Coolidge
JCG John Cleve Green
JEC James Eliot Cabot
JH John Heard, III
JL James Latimer
JM James Matheson
JMA Jardine Matheson Archive
JMF John Murray Forbes
JPC John Perkins Cushing
JR James Ryan
JRL John Richardson Latimer
J&THP James & Thomas Handasyd Perkins
KP Kinsman Papers
LB Letterbook
L/C Library of Congress
LLB Latimer Letterbook
LMFP Low-Mills Family Papers
LP Latimer Papers
MHS Massachusetts Historical Society
NA National Archives
NK Nathaniel Kinsman
NYHS New York Historical Society
NYPL New York Public Library
O&Co Olyphant & Company
OHG Oliver H. Gordon
OP Olyphant Papers
PA Philip Ammidon
P&Co Perkins & Company
P&E Peabody Essex Museum, Salem
PCB Peter Chardon Brooks
PHR Pacific Historical Review
PM Peabody Museum (now Peabody Essex Museum)
PP Perkins Papers
PRs Personal Reminiscences
PSF Paul Sieman Forbes
R&Co Russell & Company
RBF Robert Bennet Forbes
RBFP Robert Bennet Forbes Papers
RIHS Rhode Island Historical Society
RP Russell Papers (so-called “Russell & Co. Papers”)
SC Samuel Cabot
SCP Samuel Cabot Papers
SR Samuel Russell
344 list of abbreviations
SW Samuel Wetmore, Jr.

THP Thomas Handasyd Perkins
TP Talbot Papers
TTF Thomas Tunno Forbes
W&Co Wetmore & Company
WCH William C. Hunter
WD Warren Delano
WHL William Henry Low
WJ William Jardine
WP Wetmore Papers
WRT William Richmond Talbot
WS William Sturgis
WSW 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 Pinyin

Amoy (Hsia-men) Xiamen
Anhwei Anhui
cha (Mandarin Ch’a) cha
Chao Ch’ang-ling Zhao Changling
Chapu (Cha-p’u) Chapu
Chekiang Zhejiang
Ch’eng Yü-ts’ai Cheng Yucai
Chenhai Zhenhai
Ch’i Ch’ang (Keechong) Qichang
Ch’i Kung Qigong
Ch’i-shan (Kishen) Qishan
Ch’i-ying (Keying) Qiying
chien-shang jianshang
chih zhi
Chihli Zhili
Ch’ing Qing
Chinkiang Jinjiang
chou (magistrate) zhou
chuan (magistrate) zhuan
345
346 appendix 1
Chuenpi (Ch’uan-pi) Chuanbi

Chusan (Island) Zhoushan
Cohong (kung-hang, kung-hong) gonghang
Conseequa (P’an Ch’ang-yao) Pan Changyao
(Li-ch’üan hong) (Liquan hang)
Consoo (kan-su, kung-so) gongsuo
Foochow Fuzhou
Fukien Fujian
Hingtai (also known as Heng tai)
(Yen Ch’i-cheng) Yan Qizheng
Honam Henan
hong hang
Hoppo (see Y’üeh-hai-kuan chien-tu) Hubu
Howqua (Hao-kuan, or Houqua; Haoguan
see Wu Ping-chien)
hsien (magistrate) xian
Hsü A-man Xu Aman
Hsü Nai-chi Xu Naiji
Hunan Hunan
Hupei Hubei
Hu-pu (Board of Revenue) Hubu
Huang En-t’ung Huang Entong
Huang-p’u (Whampoa) Huangpu
I-ho yang-hang (Howqua’s hong) Yihe yanghang
Ilipoo (also I’li-pu) Yilibu
Kiangsi Jiangxi
Kiangsu Jiangsu
kuan (qua) guan
Kuan Yin (also Kun Yam,
goddess of mercy) Guanyin
Kwangsi Guangxi
Kwangtung Guangdong
Lantao Lantao
Lintin Lingding
Lin Tse-hsü Lin Zexu
lou-kuei luogui
Meiling Pass Meiling
Mu-chang-a Mu Zhang’a
Nanking (Nanching) Nanjing
Ningpo Ningbo
P’an Shih-ch’eng Pan Shicheng
(Puankhequa’s son)
Pei Bei
Pei-ho Beihe
Poyang Lake Poyang
Puankhequa Pan Qiguan
P’an Chen-cheng (1714–88) Pan Zhencheng
P’an Cheng-wei (1791–1850) Pan Zhengwei
P’an Shao-kwang (hong name) Pan Shaoguang
P’an Yu-tu (d. 1821) Pan Youdu
appendix 1 347
Shanghai Shanghai
Sing-lo (hills in Fujian) Songluo
Soochow Suzhou
Swatow (Shan-t’ou) Shantou
Szechuan Sichuan
Taiping (or Tai Ping) Taiping
Teng T’ing-chen Deng Tingzhen
Tinghai Dinghai
tsung-tu (viceroy) zongdu
T’ung-lin Tonglin
t’ung-shih (linguist) tongshi
Wang Ch’ing-lien Wang Qinglian
Wang-hsia (or Wanghia) Wangxia
Whampoa (Huang-p’u) Huangpu
Woosung Wusong
Wu Ch’ung-yueh (Howqua’s fifth son, Wu Chongyue
who succeeded his father as
head of the hong)
Wu-i (hills or mountains) (Bohea) Wuyi
Wu Kuo-ying (Howqua’s father) Wu Guoying
Wu Ping-chien (see Howqua) Wu Bingjian
Wu T’ing-hsien Wu Tingxian
yamen yamen
Yang Feng Yang Feng
Yangtze Yangzi
Y’üeh-hai-kuan chien-tu (Hoppo) Yuehaiguan jiandu
Yuen-Ming-Pao (court circular) Yuanming bao
Appendix 2:
Statistics and the American Trade
The shape and dimensions of the old American China trade are not unfa-
miliar. Morse, Dennett, Latourette, Prichard, and others sketched the broad
outlines of the commerce over half a century ago, and it seems superflu-
ous 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 mer-
chandise 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
appendix 2 349
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 com-
plemented 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 com-
piled, 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 dif-
ficulty 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 admit-
ted 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 spas-
modic. 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
350 appendix 2
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 exist-
ence 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
appendix 2 351
manuscript record, he calculated their value on the basis of contemporary

Canton prices. Although the results were “not minutely accurate,” he admit-
ted, “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 American Exports from Canton
Morse Morse
Imports Pitkin1 Pritchard2 Exports Pitkin1 Pritchard2
Year IV: 384 Imports Imports IV: 384 Exports Exports
1784–85 189,514 110,167
1785–86 56,000
1786–87 96,347 470,819
1787–88 27,778 173,042
1788–89 179,167 422,806
1789–90 552,014 1,141,139
1790–91 187,028 386,111
1791–92 46,889 520,972
1792–93 167,361 668,181
1793–94 382,167 716,389
1794–95 474,167 770,694
1795–96 1,144,103 378,230 1,023,242 1,650,000
1796–97 2,459,410 302,778 1,352,860 1,738,611
1797–98 2,319,964 307,542 387,310 1,730,000
1798–99 2,309,304 557,083 261,795 2,200,000
1799–1800 3,219,262 1,052,431 595,249 2,400,000
1800–1 4,613,463 1,169,653 1,047,385 2,500,000
1801–2 4,558,356 1,813,819 1,374,506 3,100,000
1802–3 1,608,000 877,267 2,900,000
1803–4 502,000 1,800,000
1804–5 3,555,818 3,558,818 658,792 3,842,000 3,842,000 3,842,000
1805–6 5,326,358 5,326,358 Morse 1,150,306 5,127,000 5,127,000 5,127,000
1806–7 3,877,362 3,877,362 Annual 982,403 4,294,000 4,294,000 4,294,000
1807–8 3,940,090 3,940,090 Reports 3,376,000 3,476,000 3,476,000
1808–9 479,550 479,550 479,850 808,000 808,000
1808–10 5,744,600 5,744,600 5,715,000 5,715,000
352 appendix 2
American Imports to Canton American Exports from Canton

Morse Morse
Imports Pitkin1 Pritchard2 Exports Pitkin1 Pritchard2
Year IV: 384 Imports Imports IV: 384 Exports Exports
1810–11 2,898,800 2,898,800 2,793,000 2,973,000
1811–12 3,132,810 3,132,810 2,771,000 2,771,000
1812–13 1,453,000 1,453,000 620,000 620,000
1813–14
1814–15 } 451,500 451,500
Morse
572,000 572,000
Morse
1815–16 2,527,500 2,527,500 Annual 4,220,000 4,220,000 Annual
1816–17 5,609,600 5,609,600 Reports 5,703,000 5,703,000 Reports
1817–18 7,076,828 7,076,828 6,214,800 6,777,000 6,777,342 6,047,500 Treasury
1818–19 9,867,2083 10,217,151 9,867,208 Treasury 9,057,107 9,057,033 9,277,107 Exports
1819–20 8,185,000 8,125,800 8,185,960 Imports 8,173,000 8,173,107 8,469,015 5,392,7954
1820–21 4,035,000 5,392,795 4,035,000 4,290,560 4,088,000 4,715,696 4,270,000 3,111,951
1821–22 8,199,7433 8,192,768 7,192,826 5,935,368 7,058,741 7,563,644 7,145,920 5,242,536
1822–23 8,339,389 8,339,398 4,636,071 7,523,492 7,523,492 7,724,492 6,511,425
1823–24 6,315,127 6,460,339 6,313,127 5,301,171 5,677,149 5,677,149 5,889,649 5,618,502
1824–25 8,962,045 8,962,055 5,570,515 8,501,119 8,501,119 8,745,121 7,533,115
1825–26 7,781,301 7,776,301 7,756,031 2,566,644 8,752,562 8,752,562 8,949,562 7,422,186
1826–27 4,273,617 4,243,617 3,843,717 3,864,135 4,373,891 4,373,891 4,464,888 3,617,183
1827–28 *5,394,917 6,238,7883 5,768,109 1,482,802 6,559,925 6,559,925 6,317,360 5,339,108
1828–29 *4,065,670 4,030,865 3,373,565 1,354,862 4,552,200 4,552,200 4,650,200 4,680,847
1829–30 *4,341,282 3,917,6323 3,917,632 742,193 4,209,810 3,878,141
1830–31 3,054,976 3,054,9763 3,054,976 1,290,835 4,344,551 3,083,205
1831–32 *5,531,807 3,050,9373 3,050,937 1,580,422 5,999,731 5,344,907
1832–33 8,362,971 3,590,4553 3,590,455 1,433,759 8,225,375 7,541,570
1833–34 4,090,455 1,010,483 7,892,327
1834–35 1,868,580 5,987,187
1835–36 1,194,264 7,324,818
1836–37 600,591 8,965,337
1837–38 1,516,602 4,764,536
1838–39 1,533,601 3,678,509
1839–40 1,006,966 6,640,829
*Taken from Canton paper.
American Imports American Exports

(US Treasury) (US Treasury)
1840–41 1,200,816 3,985,388
1841–42 1,444,347 4,934,654
1842–43 2,418,958 4,855,566
1843–44 1,756,941 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 conven-
tional 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 2 353
American Tea Trade with China
Morse1 Morse1 Pitkin2 Hunt’s

Season Piculs Dollars Pounds Pounds
1784–85 3,024 880,1003
1785–86 695,0003
1786–87 8,864
1787–88 5,632
1788–89 8,916
1789–90 23,199
1790–91 5,575 3,047,242
1791–92 13,974 985,997
1792–93 11,538 2,614,008
1793–94 14,115 2,009,509
1794–95 10,787 2,460,914
1795–96 21,147 2,374,118
1796–97 25,848 2,310,259
1797–98 23,356 2,008,399
1798–99 42,555 1,890,965
1799–1800 42,488 4,501,503
1800–1 35,620 3,797,634
1801–2 40,879 4,086,9603
1802–3 38,732 4,269,828
1803–4 17,788 6,053,529
1804–5 54,9024 3,622,828 7,679,120
1805–6 87,771 5,119,441 9,830,480
1806–7 65,779 6,870,806 9,402,160
1807–8 58,770 8,108,774 5,654,480
1808–9 8,128 4,812,638 1,562,320
1809–10 73,028 1,482,990 9,224,880
1810–11 21,643 7,839,457 2,615,520
1811–12 26,778 3,018,118 3,496,880
1812–13 10,556 3,056,089 1,436,880
1813–14 1,469,360
1814–15 7,133
1815–16 53,040 7,723,200
1816–17 117,396 9,391,680
1817–18 169,143 4,325,500 9,701,040
1818–19 12,035,280
1819–20 76,447 3,041,942 10,519,160
1820–21 40,153 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.
354 appendix 2
American Tea Trade with China
US
Morse Morse Pitkin5 Pitkin5 and Treasury6
Season Piculs Dollars Pounds US Treasury Pounds
1821–22 63,159 3,385,720 4,975,646 1,320,9277 4,973,463
1822–23 84,778 3,072,615 6,639,434 1,858,962 6,636,705
1823–24 76,142 3,217,645 8,210,010 2,360,350 8,208,895
1824–25 103,161 4,584,874 8,934,487 2,785,683 8,919,210
1825–26 96,162 4,485,788 10,209,548 3,725,675 10,178,972
1826–27 64,321 2,117,749 10,098,900 3,740,415 10,072,898
1827–28 78,807 3,235,620 5,875,638 1,711,185 5,868,828
1828–29 73,883 2,777,318 7,707,427 2,443,002 7,689,305
1829–30 66,204 2,496,683 6,636,790 2,045,645 6,595,033
1830–31 54,386 2,014,402 8,609,415 2,421,711 8,584,799
1831–32 83,876 3,667,565 5,182,867 1,416,045 5,177,557
1832–33 122,457 5,925,541 9,906,606 2,783,488 9,894,181
1833–34 14,639,822 5,483,088 14,637,486
1834–35 6,211,028 16,267,852
1835–36 CR8 4,517,775 14,403,458
1836–37 16,581,467 5,331,486 16,347,344
1837–38 15,185,067 5,893,202 16,942,122
1838–39 9,821,067 3,494,363 14,411,337
1839–40 19,333,597 2,413,283 9,296,679
1840–41 5,414,548 19,966,1669
1841–42 3,343,359 11,163,9319
1842–43 4,367,101
1843–44 14,257,36410 3,776,464
1844–45 14,257,36410 4,075,191
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).
appendix 2 355
American Trade in Turkish Opium

JRL2 JRL & Pitkin & P & Co.
Morse1 Morse Phipps3 Phipps Hunt’s4 & Others Smyrna
Season Chests Dollars Chests Dollars Dollars Cases Cases
1804–5
1805–6 1025
1806–7 180
1807–8 150
1808–9
1809–10 32
1810–11
1811–12 200
1812–13 100
1813–14
1814–15
1815–16 80
1816–17 488 750 375,000
1817–18 448 1,900 1,000 610,000
1818–19 807 546,339 700 437,500 262,400
1819–20 180 100 259,291 200 195,000 528,500
1820–21 30 45,750 70,000
1821–22 383 437 415,150 500 512,500 340,9916 427
1822–23 170 178,600 226 287,020 490,0816
1823–24 140 133,000 319,2316
1824–25 411 146 287,700 269,4496 1,2508 2569
1825–26 4647 270,6656 1,2508 1,651
1826–27 56 29,500 258,2356 1,30010 403
1827–28 1,000 800,000 1,6002 256,8006 1,60010 805
1828–29 1,256 ⁄ 12 816,725 1,6002 195,00011 1,50010
1829–30 715 700 502,900 9502 1,30010 556
1830–31 1,428 806,827 1,4282 418,34511 1,000+ 421
1831–32 402 221,100 1,200 762
1832–33 380 228,000 800+2 217
1833–34 963 500,000 963 655
1834–35 8–900
1835–36
1836–37 743 1,00012
1837–38 44613 2,00013
1838–39
1839–40
1840–41
1841–42
1842–43
1843–44
1844–45
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.:
356 appendix 2
1821 115,000
1822 383,000
1823
1824 133,000
1825 287,700
1826
1827 29,400
Then for the direct trade from the United States, he shows:
1827 301,804
1828 135,605
1829 103,247
1830 69,392
1831 650
1832 1,558
1833 11,043
7. This figure is a minimum; imports are unknown. The number 464 is the result of sub-
tracting 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
To the United States To Europe2 Elsewhere

Season Morse Pitkin Morse Pitkin Morse Pitkin
1817–18 5,927,519 849,823
1818–19 7,527,804 1,496,442 32,787
1819–20 6,172,991 6,793,078 1,746,194 1,348,563 262,830 31,466
1820–21 3,462,582 1,109,114 144,000
1821–22 6,016,218 772,763 774,663
1822–23 6,759,582 6,760,582 386,910 383,910 379,000 379,000
1823–24 2,808,633 5,006,243 409,012 453,706 217,000 217,000
1824–25 7,716,444 7,016,444 485,677 584,675 200,000 200,000
1825–26 7,650,938 7,650,938 884,856 684,856 416,768 416,768
1826–27 3,806,706 3,922,194 144,465 154,468 412,715 352,715
1827–28 5,318,966 533,030 291,364
1828–29 3,337,480 1,144,720 70,000
appendix 2 357
To the United States To Europe2 Elsewhere

Season Morse Pitkin Morse Pitkin Morse Pitkin
1829–30 3,620,700 139,874 339,015
1830–31 3,356,551 650,000 257,000
1831–32 5,577,732 130,000 150,000
1832–33 6,691,412 922,974 346,173
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 quar-
ters 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 suf-
fered, but no part of the commerce was affected more than silver importa-
tions. 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
358
appendix 3 359
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 remark-
able 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 encour-
aged 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
Coordinated
American British Other Flags’ British
Season Specie Import1 Specie Import Specie Import Specie Exports
1802–3 2,584,000 est. 850,000 est.
1803–4 2,932,000 est. 1,997,131 1,162,000 est.
360 appendix 3
Coordinated
American British Other Flags’ British
Season Specie Import1 Specie Import Specie Import Specie Exports
1804–5 2,902,000 1,152,147 1,816,000
1805–6 4,176,000 420,000
1806–7 2,895,000
1807–8 3,032,000 3,337,070
1808–9 70,000 500,000 1,870,0002
1809–10 4,723,000 150,000 1,564,518
1810–11 2,330,000 1,402,461
1811–12 1,875,000 1,158,685
1812–13 616,000 45,000
1813–14
1814–15
1815–16 1,922,000 1,520,400 199,700
1817–18 4,545,000 3,557,088 1,500,000 est.3 3,920,000
1818–19 5,601,000 1,500,000 est. 3,088,6794
1819–20 7,369,000 1,500,000 est. 861,4705
1820–21 6,297,000 1,500,000 est. 495,0006
1821–22 2,569,500 2,754,085 1,500,000 est. 480,5607
1822–23 5,125,000 45,000 1,500,000 est. 234,600
1823–24 6,292,840 700,000 est. 1,076,386
1824–25 4,096,000 1,076,386 700,000 est. 1,743,357
1825–26 6,524,000 63,356 700,000 est. 4,341,000
1826–27 5,725,200 600,000 est. 4,019,0008
1827–28 1,841,168 670,000 est. 6,094,646
1828–29 2,640,300 500,000 est. 4,703,202
1829–30 731,200 500,000 est. 6,746,3729
1830–31 1,123,644 35,000 500,000 est. 6,595,306
1831–32 183,655 55,000 16,700 4,023,003
1832–33 667,252 16,000 4,890,92510
1831–34 682,519 7,500 55,300 6,731,61511
1833–34 1,029,178 20,500
1834–35 378,830 3,959,453
1835–36 1,390,832 4,468,411
1836–37 463,970
1837–38 678,350
1838–39 728,661
1839–40 987,475
1840–41 477,003
1841–42 426,592
(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 newspa-
per. Pitkin’s year ends on 30 June, while the East India Company (Morse) generally opened its
appendix 3 361
books early—February to April. The US Treasury’s figures are often markedly different from
the others, viz.:
1821 3,391,487
1822 5,075,012
1823 3,584,182
1824 4,463,852
1825 4,523,075
1826 1,651,595
1827 2,513,318
1828 454,500
1829 601,593
1830 79,984
1831 367,024
1832 452,119
1833 290,456
1834 378,830
1835 1,390,832
1836 413,661
1837 155,000
1838 728,661
1839 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
Specie—Canton United States Bills—Canton

Pitkin, Morse Morse Pitkin, Morse
Year & Macgregor (Annual Reports) US Treasury & Macgregor
1801–2 1,383,000
1802–3 2,584,000
1803–4 2,932,000
1804–5 2,902,000 2,207,400
362 appendix 3
Specie—Canton United States Bills—Canton

Pitkin, Morse Morse Pitkin, Morse
Year & Macgregor (Annual Reports) US Treasury & Macgregor
1805–6 4,176,000 3,979,000
1806–7 2,895,000 2,650,000
1807–8 3,032,000 6,128,000
1808–9 70,000
1809–10 4,723,000 2,896,500
1810–11 2,330,000 2,679,126
1811–12 1,875,000 1,433,500
1812–13 616,000 321,000
1813–14
1814–15
1815–16 1,922,000 1,214,220
1816–17 4,545,000 1,922,0005
1817–18 5,601,000 4,545,000
1818–19 7,369,0001 7,369,000 200,000
1819–20 6,259,3001 6,297,000
1820–21 2,569,5001 2,569,500 2,995,0008
1821–22 5,125,000 4,612,000 3,391,487
1822–23 6,292,840 6,292,840 5,075,012
1823–24 4,096,000 4,096,000 3,584,182
1824–25 6,524,000 6,524,000 4,463,852
1825–26 5,725,200 5,705,200 4,523,075
1826–27 1,841,168 1,841,168 1,651,595 400,000
1827–28 2,640,300 2,450,000 2,513,318 500,0001
1828–29 731,2001 731,200 454,500 657,3001
1829–30 1,123,644 1,123,644 601,593 393,6501
1830–31 183,655 183,655 79,984 1,168,500
1831–32 667,2522 667,252 367,024 2,480,8711
1832–33 682,5191 682,519 452,119 4,772,5166
1833–34 1,029,1783 290,456 3,656,2907
1834–35 378,830
1835–36 1,390,832
1836–37 463,9704 413,661
1837–38 678,3503 155,100
1838–39 728,661
1839–40 987,473
1840–41 477,003
1841–42 426,592
1842–43 588,714
1843–44 571,660
1844–45 565,955
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.
appendix 3 363
6. Macgregor differs.
7. Macgregor only.
(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)
364
appendix 4 365
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
366 appendix 4
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 thor-
oughly 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.
367
368 appendix 5
Colonel Perkins and his brother James had an even more complicated rela-
tionship 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 contro-
versial 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 gen-
erations 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 grand-
nephew. Hence the family influence extended from Boston to Canton to
appendix 5 369
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 devel-
opment, 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.
370 appendix 5
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 exclu-
sion. 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 daugh-
ter, 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 edi-
tions 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 imprison-
ment 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.
371
372 appendix 6
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 remi-
niscences, & 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 dis-
couraged 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
appendix 6 373
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 cor-
respondence saved by families whose ancestors took part in the trade. It is
not entirely clear to me why people save old documents, particularly busi-
ness records. Clearly these families attached some importance to their pro-
genitors’ 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 blue-
and-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 forgot-
ten, 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 prob-
ably 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 valu-
able 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 charac-
ter, 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
374
appendix 7 375
written permission to quote from collections used. This problem is becom-

ing 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 reor-
ganized, and whatnot), one can only hope that the unreasoning fear of mis-
quotation (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 avail-
able 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, undoubt-
edly 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
376 appendix 7
of Delaware has a similar (Latimer) collection, and the university has pho-
tocopied 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 micro-
film), 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
appendix 7 377
Museum of Philadelphia. Nearby, in Greenville, Delaware, the Eleutherian

Mills Historical Library also houses some small collections and a par-
ticularly 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 type-
script 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 Nightingale-
Jenkes Papers, some Sullivan Dorr Papers, the Carter-Danforth collection,
378 appendix 7
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 quanti-
ties 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 can-
didate 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, includ-
ing 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 prob-
ably 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 publica-
tion 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 Sino-
American 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
appendix 7 379
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 “cap-
tivity” 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 miscellane-
ous 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 dis-
coveries. The “Olyphant Papers” (a handful of documents belonging to a
380 appendix 7
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 China-
Coast 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.
appendix 7 381
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 bibli-
ography 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 publi-
cations 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 trans-
lated, 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,
382 appendix 7
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 overlook-
ing 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 consider-
ably 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 repre-
sented 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
383
384 notes to chapter 1
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 meas-
urement 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 Tls 1431
Washington, Capt. Hodgkinson, 1790–91 1259
Eliza, Capt. Cowman, 1805–6 869
Eliza, Capt. Murphy, 1806–7 881
Canton, Capt. Murphy, 1809–10 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]).
notes to chapter 1 385
19. Robert Peabody, The Log of the Grand Turks (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1926), 94. This work contains an excellent description of the measurement cer-
emony, 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.
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.
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
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 invi-
tation 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 commis-
sions 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 dom-
ination 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.
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.
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
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 pre-
sumably 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 doubt-
ing Parker’s authority, but Dobell is another matter. To my knowledge sexual rela-
tions 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
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 Hsin-
pao 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 mer-
chants 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
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 admit-
ted 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.
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.
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
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 rec-
ognizable 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
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 unsym-
pathetic 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
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.
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 (follow-
ing 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 infor-
mation, 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
$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, appar-
ently, 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 thou-
sand 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 describ-
ing 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 warehous-
ing, 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
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 attrac-
tive 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.
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.
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 objec-
tivity (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,
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 jour-
nals. 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 mission-
ary 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.
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 sup-
plied 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
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.
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 wel-
comed 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
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 gener-
ally 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.
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.

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.
58. Bengal Commercial Reports, quoted in Tripathi, Trade and Finance, 181.
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 smug-
glers, 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
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 follow-
ing 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.
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.
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 interest-
ing, 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 com-
plete, 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
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.
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.
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 antici-
pated 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.
He challenges both facts and interpretations, asserting that members of the man-
darinate were not mere corruptionists. Many were morally upright, practical public
servants. “Ch’ing political culture involved a basic set of coherent, abstract, uni-
versalistic 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 con-
sumption 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 sensi-
tivities. 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
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 grant-
ing 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.
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 increas-
ing 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.
26. Bumstead fell ill and died before he could well organize the Canton busi-
ness. 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 pub-
lished 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
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-Forbes-
Cushing-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 busi-
ness” (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 conclu-
sion 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.,
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 ship-
ment 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 interven-
tion 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 accept-
ances 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 monop-
oly. 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 argu-
ment in support of the cause of the private British merchant against the monopoly
of the Company” (Anglo-Chinese Commerce and Diplomacy [Oxford, 1907], 19).
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 por-
trait 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
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 one-
third 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
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
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.,
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.
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.
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 fore-
sight 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 docu-
ments 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,
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
of the trial of Smith & Nicoll, Thomson’s New York agents, in Wilcocks’s cor-
respondence 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, furni-
ture, 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 copart-
nership 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 congratula-
tions 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 correspond-
ent’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,
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 prob-
ably 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.
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 sur-
vived 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 testi-
mony 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
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 lord-
ship’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 commu-
nity. 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—
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 con-
cerning 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 one-
eighth 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 some-
what, because the firm immediately authorized Wetmore to take one hundred thou-
sand 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 par-
ticularly, 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 “gen-
tleman.” William Couper retired to Newcastle, Delaware.
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 inac-
curate. 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
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, Anti-
Intellectualism in American Life (1962; reprint, New York: Vintage, 1963), 244–49.
9. There were also a number of small retail merchants such as grocers, apoth-
ecaries, 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.
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 evi-
dence 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”
of Framingham, Massachusetts. Of course the caveats made about farms in the

Northeast mentioned above (n. 10) should not be forgotten here. Possibly a herit-
age 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 birth-
places 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 attrib-
utes 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 dif-
ferent 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.
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 rep-
resented 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
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 “disintegra-
tive 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.
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 rou-
tinely 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 retire-
ment 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 pos-
sible 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 Sino-
American Cultural Relations,” Chapter One in Thomas H. Etzold, Aspects of Sino-
American Relations since 1784 [New York: New Viewpoints, 1978], 3–24).
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 build-
ing 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 impres-
sive 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 recog-
nized by Tyler Dennett as early as 1922 in his Americans in Eastern Asia (1922;
reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1941 and 1963).
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 cam-
paign 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 enforc-
ing 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
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.
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 treat-
ment 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.
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, respec-
tively. 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 men-
tioned 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
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 strong-
est 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 appeas-
ing 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 schol-
arly, 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 misunder-
stood 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 extraordi-
narily 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.
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 explora-
tions. 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 politi-
cal 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 mis-
sions 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 cer-
tainly 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
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 impor-
tance.” 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 authori-
ties 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 con-
tinues, “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.
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.
#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 permit-
ted, 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
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 imper-
sonal 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,
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
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 negoti-
ate 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 neces-
sity for it, better terms will be granted at Canton than could be obtained by pro-
ceeding 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
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 relation-
ships 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 man-
agement 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.
#138 (21 February 1843), 138.
62. Fairbank, Trade and Diplomacy, 105.
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 visit-
ing 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 arti-
cles 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
is more likely that it was not Cushing but American diplomatic historians who
have overplayed this theme. Apparently they missed the importance of the corre-
spondence 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
sign the letter because of a “personal pique” with Cushing. Reportedly he also pre-
vented 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 them-
selves” (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
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 country-
men 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 justifica-
tion 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
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 specifi-
cally 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.
notes to epilogue 453
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 pro-
visions 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 com-
monplace. 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
454 notes to epilogue
Alcock, The Capital of the Tycoon (London, 1863), I: 38. Incidentally in the treaty-
ports 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 compara-
tively 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.
notes to epilogue 455
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 regret-
ted 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 Forbes-
built 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 consider-
able 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,
456 notes to epilogue
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 posi-
tion, 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, evolv-
ing 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 com-
mercially, 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
notes to appendix 2 457
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), espe-
cially 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 erro-
neous 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
458 notes to appendix 5
“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
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second voyages of the Columbia (now
in Frederic Howay, ed. Voyages of the
Columbia [New York: Da Capo Press,
1961])
Hathaway, Francis, Letterbook Whaling Museum
Library Old
Dartmouth Historical
Society
462 bibliography
Heard Papers HP BL
Hill, Samuel, “Autobiography,” NYPL
Journals and Log of the Packet; and
Miscellaneous Letters
Hooper-Sturgis Papers MHS
Hoppin, Benjamin, Diary Private possession
Hoskins, John, “Narrative of the MHS
Columbia’s Second Voyage” (see Howay)
Howqua, “Houqua’s Letterbook, June 1, MHS
1840–April 5, 1843” (photostatic copy
at BL)
Hunter, William C., “Journal of Boston Athenaeum
Occurrences at Canton during the
Cessation of Trade at Canton, 1839”
Jardine Matheson Archive JMA Cambridge University
Library
Kinsman, Nathaniel, Letters to his wife, P&E
Rebecca, 1834–January 1836
Kinsman, Rebecca Chase, “Journal BL
of Rebecca Chase Kinsman on Her
Voyage to China in 1843” (typescript)
Knox, Henry, Papers Pierpont Morgan
Library
Latimer, John R[ichardson], Papers JRL L/C and University of
Delaware
Law, William, Papers NYPL
Low Family Papers LMFP L/C
Low, Harriet, Diary, 9 vols. (one HL’s diary L/C
mission). In LMFP.
Low, William H., Letters P&E
Nightingale-Jenkes Papers RIHS
Nye, Gideon, Papers Whaling Museum
Library Old
Dartmouth Historical
Society
Olyphant Papers3 OP Private possession
Perkins & Company Papers P&Co BL
James & T. H. Perkins & Company, P&Co BL
Collection
Perkins & Co./Russell & Co. Papers BL
Perkins, Thomas Handasyd, Papers THP MHS
Pingree Papers P&E
Pintard, John M[arsden], Papers & NYHS
Account Books
Samuel Russell Papers4 RP L/C
Shaw, Samuel, Miscellaneous Papers MHS
Shreve, Banjamin, Papers P&E
Smith, Thomas H. Miscellaneous Papers NYHS
(including Account Book, 1823)
Sturgis, James Perkins, Account Book BL
& Sales Book of J.P.S. (in James
Hunnewell Collection)
bibliography 463
Sturgis, Russell, Letters to his wife Boston Athenaeum

(1834–36)
Sturgis, William, Logbook and Lecture MHS
Notes on Voyages of the Eliza
1798–99, the Pearl, 1805–6, and the
Atahualpa, 1811–14
Sword, John D[orsey], Papers HSP
Talbot, Charles N[coll], Papers TP RIHS, APS
Thorndike, Israel, Papers BL
Tilden, Benjamin Parrott, “Father’s P&E
Journals” (typewritten copy also)
Townsend, Solomon, Miscellaneous NYHS
Papers
Waln Family Papers Library Co. of
Philadelphia
Waln Letterbook HSP
Wetmore Papers WP Private possession
Wolcott, Oliver, Account Book, NYHS
1804–10, Account Book, 1808–15,
and Miscellaneous Papers
Wood, William, Papers 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.
464 bibliography
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 sta-
tistics, China and Sandwich Islands, 1831–41)
bibliography 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) (trans-
mitting 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
466 bibliography
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
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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 sec-
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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.
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Canton Press. Canton, 1836–44.
Canton Register. Canton, 1827–43. (Later the Hongkong (Late Canton) Register,
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Canton Weekly Price Current. Canton, 1834——. (Sometimes printed by itself;
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Cleveland, Richard Jeffry. A Narrative of Voyages and Commercial Enterprises.
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Corwin, Edward R. Manual of the Reformed Church in America. 3d ed. New York,
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Dean, William. The China Mission . . . New York, 1859.
bibliography 467
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Forbes, Robert Bennet. Remarks on China and the China Trade. Boston, 1844.
———. Personal Reminiscences. 3d ed. Boston, 1892.
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1961.
Hunter, William C. The “Fan Kwae” at Canton. 1882. Reprint. Taipei: Ch’eng-wen
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———. 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.
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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.
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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
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(July 1948): 197–228; and EIHC 84, no. 4 (October 1948): 304–30.
“Memo for Mr. Forbes Respecting Canton Affairs.” Business History Review 40,
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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
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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
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National Gazette. Philadelphia.
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confusing.)
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———. The Gage of Two Civilizations: Shall Christendom Waver? Printed at
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———. “Remarks on the Commerce of America with China.” American Museum 7
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———. “Statement of the Ships Employed in the Trade to Canton.” American
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Credits to the New Edition
Baker Library, Harvard Business School

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Harvard Business School.
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Business School.
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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 permis-
sion 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 incorpo-
rated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Index
Abeel, David, 29, 43 Blight family, 366

Aborn, Daniel T., 157, 364 Blight, Charles, 85, 124, 130, 147, 150,
Adams, John Quincy, 268, 270–71, 366
279, 280; portrait, 269 Blight, George, 115, 147, 366
advertising, 33–36 Blight, James H., 147, 366
Alcock, Rutherford, 335 Blight, William P., 366
Alsop, Joseph, 370 Boca Tigns (or Bogue), 19; picture, 22
Alsop, Luch (née Whittlesey), 370 Boston China Traders’ banquet for
American (Protestant) China Mission, Cushing, 253
43, 57, 58, 93, 198, 206, 207, 230 “Boston Concern,” 155, 160, 165, 167,
American factory, 39, 76, 148 168, 190, 280, 367
Ammidon, Philip, 54, 118, 124, 125, Boston & Salem Merchants’ memorial
126, 127, 150, 162, 190, 227, 364; to Congress, 9 April 1840, 262–63
portrait, 164 Brandywine, USS, frigate, 287, 288,
Antelope, brig., opium clipper, 286 290, 294
Archer, Joseph, 170, 209, 210, 213, bribes, 125
214, 365 Bridgman, Elijah Coleman, 92, 93, 230,
Archer, Samuel, 157–58, 209, 210 264, 277, 281, 300, 305, 313
Ariel, opium clipper, 264, 330, 334 British Chamber of Commerce.
arrival: cost of, 24; process of, 19–25 See Canton General Chamber of
Asiatic Squadron, US Navy (a.k.a. East Commerce
India Squadron), 263, 283, 285 British East India Company, 45, 47, 98,
Astor, John Jacob, 106, 123 106, 109, 116, 117, 118, 127, 129,
attitudes towards Chinese, 36, 327. 133, 137, 157, 159, 212, 222
See also ghetto attitudes Brown & Ives, 162
Augustine Heard & Co., 179, 191–98, Brown, William & Joseph, 209
266, 310, 325, 330–31, 333, 366, 368 brutality: of Chinese legal system, 61
Bryant & Sturgis, 155, 190, 367
B. & T. C. Hoppin, 370 Bryant, John, 155
Bancker, James, 369 Bull, Betsy (née Carrington), 370
banking: Chinese, 86 Bull, Isaac M., 59, 140, 219, 224, 370
bankruptcy, 103 Bull, Nye & Co., 326
Baring Brothers & Co., 111, 154, 155, Bumstead, Ephraim, 151, 364
170, 176, 177, 367, 368 Burlingame, Anson, 307
Baring, John, 155 business: customers, 97, 100; ethics,
bartering, 107 239, 240; family obligations in, 227,
Bates, Joshua, 155, 368 229; primacy of, 222–23, 240; style,
Battle of Chuenpi, 138 217–21; transferability, 237–41
Beale, Thomas, 51 Butler, Cyrus, 162, 370
Benton, Thomas Hart, 273
Big Four, 196, 198 Cabot, Samuel, 151, 154, 160, 224,
bill trade, 109, 112, 325 369
blackmail, 83 Calhoun, John C., 268
489
490 index
Canton General Chamber of cotton trade, 72, 129

Commerce, 101–4 Couper, William, 212, 365
Canton Merchants’ Memorial to Couvert, Jacob, 199, 365
Congress, 25 May 1839, 261–62 Cowsajee family, 127
Canton Press, 92 credit, 86–89, 95
Canton Regatta Club, 48 Cryder, John, 213, 370. See also
Canton Register, 92, 173, 333 Morrison & Cryder, Wetmore &
Carrington, Betsy. See Bull Cryder
Carrington, Edward, 41, 89, 90, 100, Cryder, Mary Wright, 370. See also
148–50, 162, 224, 236, 237, 250, Wetmore
252, 360; portrait, 149 Cushing, Ann. See Higginson
Cary, Thomas C., 224 Cushing, Caleb, 140, 261, 268, 273,
cemeteries, 60 275–77, 279, 280; advises Chinese,
Ch’ao Ch’ang-ling, 300, 305 291, 307; consults Canton merchants,
charities, 60 290; develops policy, 288–89,
Ch’eng, Yü-ts’ai, 292–95, 303, 310 292–95; instructions, 283–85, 302;
Ch’i Kung, 264, 265, 293 leaves China, 319; picture, 276;
Ch’i-ying, 266, 267, 278, 285, 292–95, preparation for embassy, 287
296–310; influences on, 304; portrait, Cushing, John P., 75, 85, 119, 120,
298 122, 125, 148, 151, 152–53, 156,
China policy: development of, 279; 157, 159, 163, 210, 224, 241–42,
origins of, 259–60 244, 245, 246, 364, 367; country seat
Chinese Courier, 55, 92, 173 “Bellmont,” 246
Chinese negotiating techniques, 294, Cushing mission, 11
297–99, 301, 303 Cushing Treaty, 9–10, 11, 189, 196,
Chinese New Year, 52–53 278, 279; evaluation of, 317–20;
Chinese Repository, 58, 91–92, 205, flaws in, 316; Grand Council
326 determined to subvert, 315; reaction
Ch’ing bureaucracy, 75 to, 312–16; testing, 310. See also
Chinnery, George, 41–43, 81 Treaty of Wanghia
chits, 95–96 customs, 24
clerks, 96–97, 173, 227, 232–33 customs commissioner. See Hoppo
climate, 38
clippers. See opium clippers Davidson, G. F., 186
Cohong: conflict of interest among, Delano, Amasa, 91, 146–47, 191
79–80; duties of, 78; end of, 82; Delano, Edward, 54, 140, 182, 189,
history of, 77; vitality of, 80; 331, 336, 365; picture, 187
vulnerability of, 119, 323. See also Delano, Warren, 54, 60, 104, 179–80,
hong merchants 183, 189, 191, 219, 264, 365,
communication between governments, 371–73; Algonac, 247; portrait,
306–8 180
comprador: duties of, 24, 25, 36, 37, departure: cost of, 24; process of, 25
78 Derby, Elias Hasket, 143, 200
conflict of interest, 79 Dermigny, Louis, 147
Confucian value system, 76, 79 dining, 51–52, 98, 218
Conseequa, 148 disease, 25, 60
Consoo Fund, 76, 77, 79–80, 323 diversification, 220
Consoo House, 76 division of labor in firms, 93–96, 326
Constellation, USS, 263, 265, 286 Dixwell, George Basil, 195, 196, 198,
convention of Chuenpi, 138, 140 330–31, 336
Coolidge, Joseph, 54, 55, 67, 140, 179, Dobell, Peter, 41
192–96, 198, 330; portrait, 193 Don Juan, 331
coolie trade, 340, 364, 366, 368 Donnell, John, 120, 123
index 491
Dorr, Sullivan, 90, 147–48, 236, Forbes, Thomas Tunno, 159–60, 365,
243–44 367
Dunn, Nathan, 75, 85, 158, 210, 217, foreign traders: apprenticeship
365 system, 232–34; captains among,
234–35; disputes among, 53–56;
East India Squadron, US Navy. See education and experience, 231–34;
Asiatic Squadron geographical origins, 234–35; later
Edward Carrington & Co., 370 lives, 236–41, 245–55; lifestyle,
Eight Regulations, 73–74, 75, 94, 104, 36–39; nepotism among, 227–29;
260, 327. See also restrictions on religious affiliations, 235–36;
trade retirement, 241–45; social origins,
Elliot, Captain, 86, 103, 133 222–31
Elliot, Sir Charles, 137, 138, 179–80, Framjee family, 127
181, 222–23, 324–25 Fraser, George W., 330
Emily incident, 120–21 fraud, 99–101
Emory (a.k.a. Emery), Charles, 311 Frazer. See Fraser
Empress of China, 73, 112 French, William, 91, 156–57, 364
Endicott, James B., 186 fringe benefits, 97–98
etiquette, 49 fur trade, 89–90, 105–6, 150
Everett, Charles, 158
Everett, Edward, 273 Gantt, Christopher, 115, 119
exotic imports, 105 George W. Talbot & Co., 199
exports: American from Canton, Ghetto attitudes, 328–30, 333;
356–57; Chinese, 109 “Shanghai Mind,” 337–40. See also
extraterritoriality, 283, 288, 289, 305, attitudes toward Chinese
310, 315, 317, 319, 320, 321, 325, Gilman, Joseph T., 183, 331, 365
327 Girard, Stephen, 84, 115, 123
Goodhue & Co., 191
factories: furnishings, 25, 38; layout Gordon, Oliver H., 202, 208, 209, 366,
and construction of, 25–31; living 369
conditions in, 36–39; shops and Gordon & Talbot, 203, 208, 366, 369
peddlers nearby, 31–37 Gott, Benjamin, 158
fees: customary, 78–79 Gough, General Hugh, 139, 195
fire of 1822, 29, 59–66, 199 Gray, Robert, 150
flood, 59 Green, John C., 54, 55, 58, 168, 173,
flower boats, 62; picture, 64 191, 194, 220, 224, 245, 281–82,
Forbes, James Grant, 367 364; portrait, 169
Forbes, James Murray, 368 Grelaud, Arthur, 101
Forbes, John Murray, 54, 57, 82, 154, Grew, Henry Sturgis, 368
164, 165, 170–71, 176, 177–79, 192, Griswold, Nathaniel and George, 176,
206–7, 213, 219, 224, 228, 237, 281
240, 250, 262, 280, 364, 365, 367;
portrait, 238 Hallam, John, 183
Forbes, Paul Sieman, 53, 82, 186, Haven, John P., 191
189, 219, 227, 271, 285, 289, 290, Heard, Albert Farley, 366
291, 296, 332, 365, 367; picture, Heard, Augustine, 39, 55, 56, 100, 140,
188 162, 164, 166, 167, 190, 191, 194,
Forbes, Robert Bennet, 57, 80, 81, 85, 195–98, 251, 271, 286, 364, 366;
128, 136, 155, 156, 158, 160, 161, portrait, 197
164, 165, 172, 182, 183, 190, 192, Heard, Augustine, II, 366
194, 195, 215, 219, 223, 234, 240, Heard, John, III, 37, 53, 54, 196, 198,
254, 330, 332, 365, 367, 371–73; 263, 268, 366
mansion, 251; portrait, 178 Higginson, Ann (née Cushing), 368
492 index
Higginson, Henry, Sr., 368 James P. Sturgis & Co., 119, 156, 161,
Higginson, J. Babcock, 127, 368 364, 367
Higginson, Stephen, 368 Jardine, Andrew, 330
Higginson, Stephen Perkins, 368 Jardine, Matheson & Co., 179, 196,
holidays, 51–53 198, 205, 222
hong merchants: attempts to extort Jardine, William, 58, 98, 212, 332
money from, 119; duties, 21–22, Jenkins, Jabez, 209, 218, 365
76, 78; exploitation of, 79, 83; jobs, 94–95
friendship with Americans, 81–93; Joss House, 48
reliability of, 80, 104; responsibilities
of, 102–3; status of, 37, 76. See also Kane, Dr. Elisha Kent, 277
Cohong Kearny, Commodore Lawrence, 26;
Hong Kong, 129, 138, 267; sketch of, policy of, 263–66, 272, 279, 318,
314, 324–25 330
Hong Kong Yacht Club, 48 Keating, Arthur Saunders, 55–56
Hoppin, Benjamin, 370 Kendrick, John, 146
Hoppin, Benjamin, Jr., 370 King, Charles W., 202, 203, 204–5,
Hoppin, Thomas H., 162 206, 207, 208, 244, 272
Hoppo, 24, 75–76, 77 King, Edward, 173, 331, 365
Hormajee family, 127 King, Samuel, Jr., 199, 369
hospital, 52. See also Parker, Peter King & Talbot, 199, 369
hotels, 81, 90, 91 King, William Henry, 365, 366;
Howell, John, 147 “Kingscote,” 249
Howland and Aspinwall, 282 Kinsman, Captain Nathaniel, 51, 53,
Howqua, 43, 46, 77, 176, 316, 331, 54, 59, 60, 194, 216, 218, 219, 365
369; building up of fortune, 151; Kinsman, Rebecca (Mrs. Nathaniel),
friendship with Americans, 81–82, 51, 216, 217–18, 289
151–54, 156, 159, 172, 177, 179,
181–82, 192; influence of, 219; laborers: types of, 24–25
intervention by, 194; portrait, 153; Langdon, John M., 114
profits, 101; wealth, 80 Langdon, Joseph, 253
Hsü A-man incident, 296, 310 Latimer, John R., 37, 43, 49, 54, 89,
Hsü, Nai-chi, 131–32 101, 120, 126, 151, 165, 166, 167,
Huang En-tung, 292, 302, 305, 311 210, 244, 248, 366
Hunter, William C., 33, 51, 80–81, Latourette, Kenneth Scott, 293
167, 183, 220, 242, 365, 366; Lawrence, William A., 216–17, 219,
portrait, 174 365
Hunt’s Merchants’ Magazine, 260–61 lawsuits, 102
Lejee, William Real, 212, 213, 216,
illegitimate children, 49–50 365
imports: Chinese, 105, 108, 128–30 Lewis, Edwin M. & Co., 282–83
information gathering, 78 Lin, Tse-hsü, 131–36; portrait, 134
Ingraham, Joseph, 150 linguists: duties of, 22–24
Innes, James, 46, 56, 138 Lintin: picture, 121; system of
insurance, 89 marketing, 122, 129
Irving, Mortimer, 173 liquor: consumption of, 25, 37, 39
Issaverdes, George, 115 Low, Abiel Abbott, 85, 171–73, 364;
Issaverdes, John B., 115 picture, 172
Issaverdes, Stith & Co., 114–15 Low, Edward A., 183
Low, Harriet, 50, 75, 209
J. D. Sword & Co. See Sword, Low, Mrs. William Henry, 75
John Dorsey Low, William Henry, 39, 50, 54–55, 89,
J. & T. H. Perkins, 150–51, 155, 367 162, 167, 182, 190, 364; portrait, 166
index 493
Macartney, Ld.: mission, 295 Olyphant, David, 201, 202, 203, 205,
Macondray, Frederic W., 166, 254 206, 207, 218, 325, 365, 366
Maritime Customs Service, 323 Olyphant & Talbot, 366
Matheson, James, 107, 130, 138, 139, opium, 118; attempts to legalize, 118,
159, 330 131–32; demand for, 117–18; effect
Matheson, Jardine, 89 of use, 131; opium crisis of 1839–40,
McGillivray, William, 106 84, 179, 215, 260; poppy picture,
meals, 39 113; price of, 117, 130; production
medical care, 25, 98 in Turkey, 123–24, 325
Megee, Captain William F., 81, 90, 91, opium clippers, 175, 196, 334
109, 148, 150, 236 opium trade: American and British
metals, 129 dependence upon, 205, 278–79, 338;
Milne, Richard, 84 American opposition to, 206, 207,
missionaries, 43–44, 57, 58, 92, 218; Chinese attempt to end, 131–36;
229–31, 240–41, 360; attitudes, differing views of traders and
336–37, 338; reaction to Cushing missionaries, 260; Emily incident,
Treaty, 312–17, 322, 323, 326 120–21; growth of, 112–40, 204;
Missionary Herald, 313 hong merchant in, 120; implications,
Missouri, USS, steam frigate, 287 279, 334–35, 338; Indian, 124, 125,
mistresses, 49 165, 167; opium traders’ reaction
monetary system, 86–88 to Cushing Treaty, 312–13, 318,
Moore, William, 216, 365 321, 329, 330–34; profits from,
Morris, Robert, 65, 146 213, 332–33; risks of, 156; Russell
Morrison & Cryder, 213, 370 & Co.’s abstention from, 173, 179;
Morse, Hosea Ballou, 27, 122, 150 statistics, 351, 355–57; suggested
Morss, William Howard, 205, 366, policy, 282; Turkish, 114, 116, 118,
369 123, 126, 128, 151, 154–55, 161, 175
Moses, Joseph, 311 Opium War, 182, 193; American
most-favored-nation privileges, 266, response, 260–63, 270–71, 336
285, 316, 320, 325 Otadui & Co., 330
Mu-chang-a, 314–15 “outside man,” 94
N. L. & G. Griswold, 168, 171, 236 Page, Benjamin, 147

nankeens, 72 Paine, Ann (née Perkins), 368
Napier, Lord, 55, 102, 137, 212 Paine, Frederick W., 158, 368
Nathan Dunn, 217, 218, 242, 246 Paine, Sarah, 368
Nathan Dunn & Co., 165, 209, 365 Paine, William Fitz, 368
nationalities: dress of, 44–45; relations P’an Shih-ch’eng, 294, 300, 305
among, 46, 80–83 Panic of 1819, 200
“New Regulations” for foreigners at Panic of 1837, 176–77, 208, 213, 369
Canton, 311 Parker, Commo. Foxhall A., 285, 294,
newspapers, 92 318
Niles Register, 319 Parker, Peter, 43, 57, 231, 270–71,
Nye, Clement Drew, 366 277, 279, 280, 281; association with
Nye, Gideon, 242, 366 Cushing, 291, 294, 300, 305, 311,
Nye, Parkin & Co., 366 313
Nye, Thomas S. H., 366 Parkin, William W., 366
Parkman, Susan, 368
Offley, David, 114 Parsees, 45, 58–59
Oliver, James, 147 pastimes, 25, 39, 47–51, 80–81, 97,
Olyphant & Co., 56, 165, 198–209, 326–28
220; opposition to opium trade, 207, Paulding, James Kirk, 263
310, 366, 369 Peabody, Joseph, 123
494 index
Peking: Cushing’s proposed visit to, Roberts, Edmund, 31

302–3, 306 Roberts, Joseph, 196, 198, 366
Perit & Cabot, 190 Russell, Angustus, 228, 370
Perit, John W., 191, 365 Russell & Co., 56, 136, 156, 160,
Perkins, Ann. See Paine 161–69, 176, 177, 179, 184, 190–91,
Perkins Brothers (Smyrna), 114 195, 204, 210, 218, 219, 220, 223,
Perkins & Co., 150–62, 164; 310, 325, 331–32, 333, 364, 367;
domination of Turkey trade, 123, picture of Russell & Co., Shanghai,
190, 364, 367 327
Perkins, Colonel Thomas Handasyd, Russell, George Robert, 120, 151, 190,
123, 150, 151, 183, 224, 245, 252, 191, 365
253, 262, 282, 364, 367, 368 Russell, Jonathan, 162
Perkins, Elizabeth. See Sturgis Russell, Samuel, 90, 127, 151, 160–61,
Perkins, George, 183, 365 162, 224, 228, 248, 249, 364, 369,
Perkins, James, 151, 224, 245, 364, 367 370; home, 249; portrait, 163
Perkins, Samuel G., 245, 368 Russell & Sturgis, 190, 367
Perkins-Sturgis-Cushing alliance, 158. Russell, Sturgis & Co., 175, 177, 179,
See also Boston Concern 190–91, 365, 367
Perry, USS, brig., 277, 296–97 Rustomjee, D. & M., 213
Peter Parker’s Ophthalmic Hospital, Rustomjee, Jeejeebhoy, 59
58, 93
Phillips, John, 126 salaries, 96
pidgin, 22, 74 Sampson, George R., 206
Pierce, William (vice consul), 289 Samuel Russell & Co., 162, 364
pirates, 61, 107 Scott, 199
Pitman & French, 157, 364 secrecy, 100–101
Pitman, Timothy G., 91, 156, 364 servants, 36, 96
Pottinger, Sir Henry, 139, 267, 285, “Shanghai Mind,” 335, 340
292, 297, 319 Shaw, Major Samuel, 39, 80, 143, 230,
poverty: among Chinese, 60–61 368
Praya Grande, 19, 51, 290, picture, 21 Shaw, Robert Gould, 195, 368
price currents, 91–92, 100 Sherry, 301–2
price cutting, 100 Shillaber, John, 330
Prince, Captain Job, 146 shipbuilding, 91
printing, 91–93 shipping regulations, 24
profits, 83–86, 101, 128 Shroff, 107
projêt, 295–96, 300 silk trade, 71–72
Puankhequa, 37, 77, 81, 152, 294 silver trade. See specie trade
Sino-Portuguese Treaty, 2 November
Randall, Thomas, 146 1749, 292
Rawle, Duns & Co., 326 Slade, John, 92
Rawle, Samuel, 217, 365 slavery, 288
Read, William, 115 Smith, Adam, 335
real estate, 90 Smith, Thomas H., 146, 165, 199, 200,
religious services, 25 201
remittance crisis, 110 smuggling, 41, 112, 118, 119, 122–23,
reputations: commercial, 97 125, 128, 129–31, 132, 133, 157,
restrictions on trade, 72–75. See also 170, 204; Chinese government
Eight Regulations attempts to eliminate, 120–21,
Reynolds, J. N., 122 131–36. See also opium trade,
rice, 128 Chinese attempt to end
river life, 62–64 Smyrna, picture, 114
river pilots, 21 Snow, Peter Wanton, 41, 150, 280
index 495
Snow, Samuel, 39–41, 90, 147, 148, Tilden, Bryant P., 36, 81, 146
236; country seat, 248; portrait, 40 Tilton, E. G., 297
social hierarchy: Chinese, 78 Treaty of Nanking, 73, 129, 140, 260,
specie trade, 106–8, 109, 110, 111; 265, 266, 267, 288, 289; general
“chopped” dollars, 87; statistics, regulations, 272, 323, 333
358–63 Treaty of Wanghia, 11. See also
speculation, 89–90 Cushing Treaty
Spooner, Daniel N., 183, 365 treaty port culture, 322, 326–28, 334
St. Louis, USS, frigate, 288, 296–97 treaty ports, 266, 324–25
Stansbury, Daniel, 150 treaty tariff, 289, 320
Stith, Griffin, 120 trucking, 107
Sturgis, Ann Cushing, 157 T’ung-lin, 301, 305
Sturgis, Elizabeth (née Perkins), 368 Tyler, John, 267, 272, 273
Sturgis, George W., 156, 364, 367
Sturgis, Henry, 364, 367 “unequal treaties,” 305, 318, 319,
Sturgis, Henry Parkman, 120, 151, 156, 322
190, 191, 365 Union Club, 48
Sturgis, James P., 51, 55, 90, 119, 156,
157, 165, 166, 242, 264, 364, 367 van Braam-Houckgeest, Andreas
Sturgis, Josiah, 130, 367 Everardus, 41, 147, 248
Sturgis, Lucretia, 155 verbal contracts, 95
Sturgis, Nathaniel Russell, 367, 368
Sturgis, Robert Shaw, 367 Wang, Ch’ing-lien, 132
Sturgis, Russell, Jr., 150, 155, 183–84, Wang-hsia: temple at, 300
185, 191, 219, 240, 365, 369; Ward, Thomas Wren, 111, 170
picture, 185 Webster, Daniel, 263, 270, 271, 272,
Sturgis, Russell, Sr., 367, 368 273, 279–80; adopts merchants’ view
Sturgis, William, 128, 151, 156, 160, of opium policy, 284, 302; instructs
234, 236, 237, 240, 367, 378 Cushing, 283–85; policy, 284, 302;
subsidiary business, 86–93, 326 portrait, 274
supercargo, 143 Webster, Fletcher, 31, 277, 285, 286,
Supplementary Treaty of Bogue, 267, 290, 292, 300, 305
285, 292, 317 Wen-feng, 293
Sword, John Dorsey, 146, 326 Wetmore & Co., 171, 204, 209–17,
218, 219, 220, 310, 365
Talbot, Charles Nicoll, 199, 201–2, Wetmore & Cryder, 217, 370
206, 207, 237, 240, 365, 366, 369 Wetmore, Esther, 370
Talbot, George W., 369 Wetmore & Hoppin, 370
Talbot, Olyphant & Co., 202, 205 Wetmore, Josiah F., 370
Talbot, William R., 208, 366 Wetmore, Mary Wright. See Cryder,
tea: chests, 42; damage to, 98–99; John
picture of packing, 99; processing of, Wetmore, Samuel, 85, 210, 369, 370
68–70; season, 93–94; types of, 67 Wetmore, Samuel, Jr., 212, 215, 216,
tea tasters, 65, 326, 327 217, 225, 365, 370
tea trade, 65–71; fraud, 70; picture, Wetmore, William Shepherd, 209,
69; statistics, 353–54; tariff racket, 210, 212, 213, 215, 216, 217,
200–1, 212 219, 224–25, 283, 325, 365, 370;
Teng, T’ing-chen, 132, 204 Château-sur-Mer, 250; picture, 211
Terranova affair. See Emily incident Wetmore, Willard, 370
textiles, 129 Whampoa, 21, 23; picture, 25
Thomas H. Smith & Sons, 365 Whitall, Joseph, 170
Thomson, Edward, 146, 157, 158, 165, Whittlesey family, 369
200 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.

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E C H O E S

The Golden Ghetto

Series General Editor: Robert Nield

Other titles in the Echoes series:

© 2014 Andreae Downs, Trustee of the Downs Family Trust

First published in 1997 by Associated University Presses, Inc.

ISBN 978-988-8139-09-5 (Hardback)

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Introduction to the Republication of The Golden Ghetto 1

Part One: The Golden Ghetto

Part Two: The Residents and Their Firms

Part Three: Cushing’s Treaty

Epilogue: The Legacy of Old Canton 321

Plates follow page 218.

Jacques M. Downs knew more about the history of early American

writers and those immediately concerned. So it was that Edward Delano,

5. John King Fairbank, Chinese-American Interactions: A Historical Summary (New Brunswick,

The republication of The Golden Ghetto in the Echoes series of Hong Kong

Frederic D. Grant, Jr.

This is a remarkable book. It is not a lifetime’s work, for Jacques Downs is

received it pretty nearly complete from her nationals resident in Canton.”

Peter Ward Fay

To enter upon so substantial a study of so relatively obscure a subject is

of several separate but interdependent sections, each of which develops a

whose advice I always found very valuable, was a major influence in my

Arrival and Departure

as the Cohong (kung hong or kung hang—officially authorized merchant

On their way upriver to Canton, the ship’s businessmen probably gave

The tone of repugnance in this account is especially interesting because

or mixed) Hong, indicating that it was generally occupied by Parsees,

Shop in China Street. Watercolor by unidentified Chinese artist, E80607.23. Notice

If the smaller shopkeepers and peddlers were distrusted by the Americans,

Life at the Factories

Puntinqua’s (Puankhequa family) Country Villa. Watercolor by George West (Cushing

During the busiest periods, transients greatly outnumbered the residents.

Chinnery arrived at Macao, having fled from India, or so he said, to avoid

gentlemanly and agreeable, and somewhat optimistic. He found no difficulty in

Other Foreigners at Canton

Lascars (Indian sailors) dressed still differently:

A Bombay Muslim is described glowingly:

And of the Parsees, the same source notes:

The British and Americans, almost uniformly, dressed in white espe-

Recreation and Social Life

Off-duty activity became more varied as the community developed. Traders

The most popular, elaborate, and expensive of the competitive activities

We are such a mixture of gentlemen, sailors, and all of us necessarily bachelors,

We have civilized many cubs of supercargoes—in two months—and taught them

And perhaps more importantly, “the extreme forms of politeness among

It is situated on the “Praya Grande,” with a pretty garden in front, a yard at

Feasts, Holidays, and General Indulgence

These amenities were available only at Macao; Canton residents enjoyed

Chinese New Year was a considerably more interesting holiday. It lasted

More often American merchants were interested in the happy Chinese

Lack of Harmony within the Community

with Samuel Russell is a mine of information, precisely because he has

To be considered more at length in a later chapter is one of the most

Faith and Charity

Despite the understandable dissonance between opium merchants and those

We have given up that profane practice of working on Sundays (except where

generosity. Jeejeebhoy (Heerjeebhoy?) Rustomjee, an important Parsee

The [newly relandscaped] square or park—is a great improvement, and great

The Dark Side