Merchants Of Canton And Macao

Paul Van Dyke works in many languages and archives to uncover the history of Peark River trade. This two-volume work is likely to be the most definitive reference work on the major trading families of Guangzhou. Organized as a series of family studies, this first volume includes exhaustive profiles of nine of the dominant hongs and their founding patriarchs for which good information survives: Tan Suqua, Tan Hunqua, Cai and Qiu, Beaukeequa, Yan, Mandarin Quiqua, Ye and Tacqua Amoy, Zhang, and Liang.

Merchants were central to the huge growth in China’s foreign trade and contributed to the development of world markets and networks. Merchants of Canton and Macao: Success and Failure in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade brings together much new research about the inner workings of the merchants of Canton and Macao. The book studies in detail the leading Chinese merchants and merchant families as well as the porcelain and silk trades. By examining the successes and failures of dozens of Chinese merchants involved in foreign trade, it provides fresh insights into China’s unique form of capitalism and her role in the rise of global commerce. Van Dyke’s conclusions on the nature of Qing policy towards foreign trade are bold, original and supported by intensive research. In contrast to the traditional focus on British and American trade, his research draws on archives in multiple languages, spread around the world. ‘Like its predecessor, this volume offers a detailed and vivid reconstruction of business practices based on a remarkable collection of archival sources in Chinese and diverse European languages. It will be especially welcome by economic historians as well as anyone who wants to understand global history as it played out in a particular place.’ —R. Bin Wong, Distinguished Professor of History and director of the Asia Institute, UCLA ‘Once again Paul Van Dyke has plumbed the depths of the archives to provide us with an extraordinary catalogue of the activities of European and Chinese traders during the heyday of the Canton trade. In this second volume of his encyclopedic study, Van Dyke focuses in detail on the transactions that took place between foreign private and company traders and Chinese licensed merchants.’ —Madeleine Zelin, Dean Lung Professor of Chinese Studies, Columbia University ‘This is a great study which will be the ultimate work on the subject for many years to come. It is as complete as the available documentation at present makes possible; it is concise, well organized and the subject is researched with great thoroughness.’ —Christiaan Jörg, author of Porcelain and the Dutch China Trade

This study utilizes a wide range of new source materials to reconstruct the day-to-day operations of the port of Canton during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Using a bottom-up approach, it provides a fresh look at the successes and failures of the trade by focusing on the practices and procedures rather than on the official policies and protocols. The narrative, however, reads like a story as the author unravels the daily lives of all the players from sampan operators, pilots, compradors and linguists, to country traders, supercargoes, Hong merchants and customs officials. New areas to studies of this kind are covered as well, such as Armenians, junk traders and rice traders, all of whom played intricate roles in moving the commerce forward. The Canton Trade shows that contrary to popular belief, the trade was stable, predictable and secure, with many incentives built into the policies to encourage it to grow. The huge expansion of trade was, in fact, one of the factors that contributed to its collapse as the increase in revenues blinded government officials to the long-term deterioration of the lower administrative echelons. In the end, the system was toppled, but that happened mainly because it had already defeated itself. General readers and academicians interested in world and Asian history, trading companies, country trade, Hong merchants, and articles of trade will find much new and relevant information here.

It is not often recognized that China was one of the few places in the early modern world where all merchants had equal access to the market. This study shows that private traders, regardless of the volume of their trade, were granted the same privileges in Canton as the large East India companies. All of these companies relied, to some extent, on private capital to finance their operations. Without the investments from individuals, the trade with China would have been greatly hindered. Competitors, large and small, traded alongside each other while enemies traded alongside enemies. Buddhists, Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Parsees, Armenians, Hindus, and others lived and worked within the small area in the western suburbs of Canton designated for foreigners. Cantonese shopkeepers were not allowed to discriminate against any foreign traders. In fact, the shopkeepers were generally working in a competitive environment, providing customer-oriented service that generated goodwill, friendship, and trust. These contributed to the growth of the trade as a whole. While many private traders were involved in smuggling opium, others, such as Nathan Dunn, were much opposed to it. The case studies in this volume demonstrate that fortunes could be made in China by trading in legitimate items just as successfully as in illegitimate ones, which tellingly suggests that the rapid spread of opium smuggling in China could be a result of inadequate, rather than excessive, regulation by the Qing government. ‘For this absorbing book, Van Dyke and Schopp have convened excellent scholars, junior and senior, to throw new light on the foreign merchants outside the East India companies who shaped China’s engagement with the world at least as much as the companies’ men did, if not more. The slumbering field of foreign trade in Qing China has come back to life.’ —Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia ‘Much scholarship on the China trade has focused on the activities of the vast state-sponsored companies. This book flips the script. Now we know that, right under the noses of those economic behemoths, smaller private traders from Europe, America, and China were quietly reshaping the trade with their innovation, networking, grit, and dreams.’ —John R. Haddad, The Pennsylvania State University

This study eschews the uncritical acceptance of secondary sources that has characterized studies in this field, going back to and reinterpreting previously neglected primary sources, thereby enabling it to chart linkages between the European and Asian trades that have been regarded as parallel but unrelated (or at best competing) activities. In so doing, the work sheds new light on this crucial period.

Paul A. Van Dyke’s new book, Whampoa and the Canton Trade: Life and Death in a Chinese Port, 1700–1842, authoritatively corrects misconceptions about how the Qing government treated foreigners when it controlled all trade in the Guangzhou port. Van Dyke reappraises the role of Whampoa in the system—a port twenty kilometres away from Guangzhou—and reassesses the government’s attitude towards foreigners, which was much more accommodating than previous research suggested. In fact, Van Dyke shows that foreigners were not bound by local laws and were given freedom of movement around Whampoa and Canton to the extent that they were treated with leniency even when found in off-limit places. Whampoa and the Canton Trade recounts the lives of seamen who travelled half-way around the globe at great risk and lived through a historic period that would become the framework for subsequent encounters between China and the rest of the world. Were it not for the exchanges between the major powers and the Qing empire, the world—as we know it—would be a rather different place. Hence, Van Dyke’s command of data mining shows that Whampoa was a key pillar in the Canton System and, thus, in the making of the modern world economy. ‘Paul Van Dyke has transformed our understanding of the Canton trade. In this book, he brings his enormous knowledge of the primary sources to this study of Whampoa, the anchorage on the Pearl River used by all foreign ships when that trade was confined to the port of Canton, presenting “a view of the trade from the common seaman’s perspective.”’ —Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh ‘Paul A. Van Dyke wonderfully brings to life the drudgery and danger faced by the diverse men who worked the ships of the Canton trade. He skilfully fashions vivid images of the texture of their lives from danger to boredom, from illnesses and accidents to drinking and whoring.’ —R. Bin Wong, UCLA