![]() Labor was also much cheaper, yet the skill standards were extremely high and, in many cases, more inventive than their Western counterparts. The plain truth of the matter was that silver, as a raw commodity, was significantly cheaper in Canton than in the West. Another factor helped boost the Chinese Export Silver production: namely, greed. Most importantly, it was the ships’ captains and heads of the family trading companies, many of whom were extremely young (at one time, the great Perkins & Co. Without the trade treaties, silvermaking in China most probably would have remained a highly Chinese phenomenon, created mostly for the privileged classes and the Imperial Court. It was the intensity of shipping and trade that gave birth to Chinese Export Silver. A vast number of merchant ships and their crews were a permanent fixture at Canton Canton itself must have resembled Bedlem to our modern ordered eyes. In just under 100 years, the number of foreign traders at Canton rose from a few thousand to tens of thousands. In fact, many of the British ships were actually built in Calcutta. The Boston Clan) and there were British merchants based in London, Hull, Glasgow, Dundee and Calcutta (the home of the British East India Company). There were the Massachusetts Bay merchant families (a.k.a. ![]() ![]() Many of the merchant adventurers were family controlled. None of this could be done, however, without a highly convoluted and corrupt system between the Western merchants, their own agents based in Canton and the Chinese Cohong.Ĭanton Harbor and factories with foreign flags, circa 1805 (Peabody Essex Museum) But the common thread through all these years is shipping and, although 1842 saw a sea change in trading possibilities with China that favored the British, it was the British and American sea merchants who held pole positions. What I have compressed into a nutshell was, in reality, an incredibly busy and frenetic trading period carried out at all odds and under duress. This war is now considered in China as the beginning of modern Chinese history. The failure of the treaty to satisfy British goals of improved trade and diplomatic relations led to the Second Opium War (1856–60). Five treaty ports and cession of Hong Kong Island finally ended the trading monopoly of the old Canton system. After 85 years and the First Opium War, in 1842, the Treaty of Nanking granted indemnity to Britain. One person it particularly riled was King George III of Great Britain for reasons that were equally as calculated as the reasons why the Emperor of China was trying to keep his country hermetically sealed to the outside world. This convoluted system was tolerated but generally disliked. The carrying of any firearm was strictly forbidden. ![]() Merchants were allowed to stay within their enclosure, while any women that accompanied them had to stay in Macao. Each approved trading country had its own trading enclosure in a complex of long, low storage buildings that collectively were known as The Thirteen Hongs or Co-hong. An area at the mouth of the Pearl River was designated as foreign quarters significantly this was just outside of the city wall around Canton, but the ships themselves were not allowed to sail beyond Macao. What we know as the China Trade began in 1757 when, by Imperial edict, a set of stringent regulations were implemented in order to try to control the non-Chinese merchant sea traders trying to set anchor in Chinese ports. Today it would be worth considerably more, especially since it is decorated in the high Chinese style. This particular item was sold at Christie’s, New York, for $813 in 2008. ![]() Here we have a late 19th-century Chinese Export Silver bosun’s whistle that is similar to one that was featured and written of in the famous Chait Collection in 1985 by John Devereux Kernan. ![]()
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