History
of the China Trade
Source: The British Library China
From the time when progress in marine
technology made it possible to explore sea routes, numerous attempts
were made by the Europeans to establish commercial contact with China,
a country believed to possess some of the "finest of treasures".
The Portuguese appeared in Chinese
waters before the British in the early 16th century. Their skills in
coercion, diplomacy, and in the suppression of piracy undoubtedly
helped them to gain territorial rights at Macao in 1557. Subsequently,
they opened trading enclaves at Ningpo, Foochow, and Amoy along the
coast to the north.
The first British attempt to find
trade routes to China was made in 1596, but the fleet under the command
of Captain Benjamin Wood failed to reach its destination and was lost
without trace. Some forty years later in 1637, a Captain Weddell
successfully landed at Canton after forcing a passage through the Bogue
(from Portuguese word bocca, a mouth), and opened trade negotiations
with the locals on behalf of the East India Company. Nevertheless, his
entry to China met fierce resistance from the Chinese officials and he
was forced to leave the country without any commercial success. His
ship was wrecked on his journey home.
In 1672, the English East India
Company finally secured a trading post in Taiwan - ten years after the
Dutch East India Company had been expelled from the island by the
Chinese. The Company was soon engaged in direct and regular trade with
the Chinese from that base and was permitted to make regular voyages to
Amoy, Chusan and Canton. By the turn of the century, the Company's base
for the China trade was transferred from Taiwan to its "factory" at
Canton. With its Royal Charter, the Company was granted the privilege
of monopoly of trade in the East Indies until 1833.
From 1700 onwards, most foreign
traders were confined in Canton, where rigid restrictions were imposed
through the practice of Co-hong, a guild of Chinese merchants, the sole
recognized agency between foreign and Chinese merchants. The Hongs were
the only merchants licensed by the Chinese officials to deal with the
foreign traders. They were made responsible not only for all business
deals with foreigners, but for their debts and behavior as well.
However rich and influential they were, the merchant class was
traditionally despised by the mandarin class in China. The Hong
merchants, as a result, could not enjoy the full rights of profiting
from the trade. They were under the jurisdiction of a local governor
and a customs officer who was required to pay a large sum every year to
the government and subsequently he recovered his cost several times
over by levying heavy taxes on foreign ships (including one for
measuring the length of incoming ships) and by taking huge cuts from
the deals made by the Hong merchants, who in their turn passed the tax
burden to the foreign traders. The limited trading ports and the
exorbitant fees paid to the customs officer via Hong merchants were the
main grievances expressed by the Company traders. Seeking ways of
by-passing the restrictions imposed by the local officials at Canton,
the Court of Directors of the East India Company proposed sending a
royal envoy to the Imperial Court at Peking to negotiate a preferential
treaty.
He was accompanied by his Secretary
Sir George Staunton (1737-1801) and his eleven-year-old son, a
linguistic genius who had learned to speak and write Chinese. Other
distinguished personalities in his entourage include William Alexander
(1767-1816), a painter who recorded the entire event in water-color
sketches, and three craftsmen specialized in metallurgy, weaving and
pottery, who were ordered to observe the technological developments
made by the Chinese. On board the ship, Macartney carried £15000 worth
of presents from the East India Company, the highlight of which was a
Planetarium with the latest astronomical technology from Europe, to be
presented to the Emperor of China.
In September 1793 Macartney was finally granted an audience with
Emperor Qianlong to whom he presented the valuable gifts and a letter
from George III, in which the King of England requested permission from
the Emperor to establish a British Resident Minister in Peking in
charge of overseeing trading affairs. During the interview, the child
Staunton was an instant star, who delighted the elderly Emperor with
his fluent spoken Chinese.
A few days later, Macartney and his entourage were invited to the
Emperor's eightieth birthday party but to Macartney's disappointment,
the Emperor himself did not show up. On 3 October, he received a reply
from Emperor Qianlong in a formal ceremony in the Palace. The reply
confirmed his worst fear that the request for a Resident Minister in
Peking was not granted. Knowing that it would be futile to insist on
his first request, Macartney sought the approval of the Emperor to lift
some of the trading restrictions to the English traders. The second
letter was again unconditionally rejected. The first British envoy to
China was thus dismissed.
A second mission led by Lord Amherst
went to China in 1816 and, like its predecessor, returned without any
agreement with the Chinese government.
Meanwhile, the China trade flourished despite the failure of
governmental efforts to remove the administrative restrictions. In the
18th century, the Company traded British woolens and Indian cottons for
Chinese tea, porcelain, and silk. Tea imports soon became the largest
single item in Britain's trading account. Conversely, the export to
China of British and Indian goods began to decline and trade imbalance
between Britain and China occurred as a result. The shortage of silver
to pay for the tea imports forced the British to seek other commodities
to compensate for the loss and to bring in profit. They discovered
opium, a highly lucrative commodity. Although never directly involved
in the sale of opium, which was banned in China by Imperial edict of
1729 as an illegal drug, the East India Company was responsible for
most of its production in India, mainly for its medicinal value. The
actual business of selling opium was conducted through private
agencies.
In 1833, the jealously-protected
monopoly of the East India Company was finally abolished and the China
trade was opened to the competition of dozens of British companies, who
had been petitioning the government and lobbying members of Parliament
for free trade for years.
Not long after the end of monopoly of
the East India Company, it became evident that opium traffic had turned
into the sole profitable business for some British companies in
southern China. By 1830s, opium flooded the entire black market in
China and, inevitably, became a major cause of concern for the Chinese
Government. A Chinese official in Canton, Commissioner Lin, ordered the
confiscation of some 20,000 chests of opium from English ships and
refused to pay indemnity to the British traders. This incident outraged
the British and triggered the first Opium War in 1840. This lasted two
years and resulted in a treaty which caused Hong Kong to be ceded to
the British Crown for 150 years and five Chinese ports, Canton, Amoy,
Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai to be opened to foreign traders.
Bibliography
Morse, H.B. Chronicles of the East
India Company trading to China, 1635-1834. (Clarendon, 1926)
Greenberg, M. British Trade and the
the opening of China 1800-42. (Cambridge University Press, 1951)
Top
of page
|
