Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
John R. Haddad : America's First Adventure in China: Trade, Treaties, Opium, and Salvation . (Philadelphia : Temple University Press , 2013. Pp. ix, 283.)
Book Reviews: MERCHANTS, MISSIONS, DIPLOMACY
The arrival of Samuel Shaw aboard the American ship the Empress of China in Canton in 1784 marked the beginning of relations between the newly established United States of America and the venerable, though increasingly decrepit, Qing Empire. Freed by the American Revolution from the restrictions on international commerce imposed by the chartered monopoly of the British East India Company, US merchants wasted little time establishing their own presence within the "Canton system" of trade by which they too could profit by acquiring the tea, silks, ceramics, and other highly desirable goods produced by the Chinese. While Shaw had ventured to China primarily as an entrepreneur, he had also been designated by the American Congress as the first Consul of the United States in Canton, thus initiating the first major period in Sino-American relations that constitutes the subject of this book by John Haddad, Associate Professor of American Studies and Popular Culture at Penn State Harrisburg.
The vicissitudes and exploits of America's early China traders is the first subject that Haddad explores in his comprehensive overview of the first half century of the American presence in China. Drawing upon the abundant information available in the business records and personal memoirs of those who participated in the trade, along with articles covering this exotic aspect of American commerce in that era's newspapers and magazines, Haddad recreates the peculiar circumstances and challenges that confronted those who did business in the restrictive confines of the foreign factories of Canton. Forced to deal exclusively with the dozen hong merchants overseen by the powerful hoppo appointed by the Imperial Household, Western merchants were obliged to adapt to various procedures and ordinances that frequently led to costly fiscal dilemmas and bitter cultural confrontations. Haddad provides an interestingly anecdotal account of the unique system of trade that grew out of...