In justifying Britain’s tactics in the Opium War (1839–42), it might seem that the Baltimore-based lawyer and historian Brantz Mayer (1809–79) had a tough case to make. His article “China and the Chinese” (1847) acknowledges that England had disregarded China’s rule of law by saturating its economy with opium, and he further notes the devastation visited on the local population in Guangdong by both the opium and the war. But Mayer sees a greater good beyond this disaster, averring that England’s aggressions are “an assertion of the right of all civilized nations to demand the sanction and safeguard...

From the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century, international businesses have spread across Europe and the world, and with their expansion came a need for more sophisticated methods of organizing data. Businesses with multifaceted operations that were spread over several nations and continents had to be able to access information quickly, so that directors could monitor costs and calculate profits at each level of their operations. By the time Americans entered into global commerce, bookkeeping practices of the large East India companies had developed into massive operations, armies of scribes keeping multiple layers of records that were cross-referenced one to...

In the decades after the Revolutionary War, American ventures into the China Trade presented an opportunity for American authors to tell a story of their new nation, winning international respect in the networks of global trade after having thrown off the colonial shackles of Britain’s mercantilist restrictions. Consider the figure of Samuel Shaw (1754–94), a Revolutionary War veteran who served in the Continental Army as the aide-de-camp to the high-ranking General Henry Knox. This frontispiece to his posthumously edited and published The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton: With a Life of the Author...

In the 1830s, a young girl named Caroline Howard King made numerous visits to the East India Marine Society in Salem, Massachusetts. Since Salem was a thriving center of maritime commerce, ships departed daily for destinations all over the world. When sea captains returned home bearing artifacts, they deposited these in the Society’s museum—East India Marine Hall. The collection was especially strong in artifacts from China, India, the East Indies, and the Pacific Islands. The hall provided visitors with an intriguing way to experience Asia without venturing far from home.

King relished her encounters with Asia. In fact, in...

During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Asian-European maritime trade relations and the world political economy underwent fundamental transformations. The emerging strategy of free trade imperialism brought the age of partnership to an end, forging a new era of international trade based on unequal exchange. In their classic study on free trade imperialism, John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson observe that the most common political technique of British expansion in the mid-Victorian era was to impose a treaty of free trade and friendship on a weaker state. The “willingness to limit the use of paramount power to establishing security for trade,” they...

Like what is happening in the conduct of Sino-foreign trade today, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries much business and social exchange between Hong merchants at Canton and their foreign counterparts happened at dining tables. Yet unlike the contemporary entrepreneurs who usually hold banquets in an impressive restaurant, old Hong merchants entertained their guests in their own luxurious residences, which were well staffed with experienced family cooks, decorated with stylish furniture and fine chinaware and, needless to say, sure to provide tasty food. To play host to their guests, Hong merchants offered dishes, wine, and dinner service in both Chinese...

Since its Portuguese establishment around 1557, the enclave of Macao was the only western gateway into China until the foundation of Hong Kong in 1841. In the nineteenth century before the Opium War, the female relatives and children of China traders from North America and Britain resided in Macao while their husbands and fathers were up in the Canton factories during the trading seasons. This essay deals with the unpublished diary of one of these ladies, Caroline Hyde Butler (1804–92) who, like Harriett Low (1809–77) and Rebecca Kinsman (1810–82), described the many dimensions and spheres of Macao’s...

So reported Qiying (耆英 1787–1858), the imperial commissioner who was responsible for negotiating the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) with England’s Henry Pottinger in Hong Kong, the Treaty of Wangxia (1844) with Caleb Cushing of the United States, and for the other trade treaties between China and the West in the mid-nineteenth century. In this memorial, Qiying refers to several points of protocol when exchanging diplomatic gifts: In the act of giving, one should give more than what is received; the nature of gifts should be understood as political etiquette and cannot be excessive in value; and personal relations between...

One consequence of what American intellectuals and journalists call the culture wars is a deepened interest in the racial dimension of US relations with people from China.¹ Literary and cultural scholars have produced most of the important work in this field, sometimes aligning themselves with, while at other times needing supplementation by, the work of more specialized historians or state political thinkers.² Innumerable books and articles have illuminated the history of US/China relations while, increasingly in recent years, American authors have made sustained efforts to explain China to the US, often for ideological reasons, but more important, for the best...

As Chinese laborers and traders migrated during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they moved with various cultural icons that helped them to cope emotionally with the challenges ahead and to maintain a sense of connection to the places and people whom they had left. Among these icons was Tianhou (天后), also known as Tin Hau in the Cantonese dialect of Guangdong Province, the region of origin of most of the Chinese who headed to North America. In the United States, a belief in Tianhou helped many emigrating workers and traders to re-establish a sense of communalism at their destination and...