All that was yet to come, though, when John Murray Forbes wrote to Houqua in August 1843 just as the Opium War was coming to its end. In the letter, he tried to imagine what the war might ultimately mean for his old friend. The Canton system would be essentially dissolved as a result of the British treaty. Houqua’s enormous fortune had come from his long success as a Hong merchant, part of the small monopoly on the Chinese side of the Canton trade, but now the British would be able to work with anyone they wished. This would remove Houqua from his centrality to China’s foreign trade but it was also, Forbes noted, a blessing in its own way. Houqua had long been trapped in his position between the foreign merchants and the Chinese government, blamed for any problems that arose, regularly squeezed for massive contributions—toward the White Lotus suppression, toward the actions against pirates. Most recently, the Hong merchants had helped pay for the ransom of Canton from a threatened British occupation in the war, to which Houqua personally contributed more than $1 million.5 His overall losses in the war would total more than $2 million all told, a figure worth billions in economic power today.6 But Forbes, his young and trusted protégé, realized that the end of the war might actually be Houqua’s liberation.
You should come to America, Forbes told him. “If when the Hong system ceases, the Mandarins continue to exact money from you, I do not see where it will end unless you will make up your mind to take one of my ships . . . for the conveyance of yourself and family and come to this country, where every man is called upon to pay his fair share of the expenses of the government.”7 Instead of having the weight of the Canton government’s finances on his shoulders, Houqua could be a free man in an equal society. And if the climate in New England might be too cold for the comfort of an elderly Chinese businessman who had spent his life in subtropical Canton, Forbes suggested he could look into buying property in Florida, or in the Caribbean, “where the climate is beautiful, and where for a small sum you could buy as much land as is covered by Canton.” Houqua could live there however he pleased; he would have his own Canton, on his own terms. John said he would relish the chance to sail down from Massachusetts to visit him. Maybe he would come every winter.
Houqua died on September 4, 1843, never having gotten the letter.
Acknowledgments
As a historian, my first order of gratitude is to the librarians, curators, and archivists without whose work my own would be impossible. Those who have been most helpful to me in this project include, in no particular order: Maria Castrillo at the National Library of Scotland; Karen Robson and Mary Cockerill at the University of Southampton Archives; Rebecca Jackson at the Staffordshire Records Office; John Wells at the Cambridge University Library Department of Manuscripts; Katherine Fox and Melissa Murphy at the Harvard Business School’s Baker Library; Martha Smalley, Joan Duffy, and Kevin Crawford at the Yale Divinity School Library; Adrienne Sharp and June Can at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Sabina Beauchard, Anna Cook, and Thomas Lester at the Massachusetts Historical Society; Tania Quartarone at the Peabody Essex Museum; and Susan Greendyke Lachevre at the Forbes House Museum. Thank you also to Martin Barrow for permission to use the Jardine Matheson archives at Cambridge University.
It was an unexpected stroke of good fortune that just as I was starting to draft the chapters involving Thomas Manning, based on the limited and fragmentary sources then available on his life, the Royal Asiatic Society in London announced that it had discovered his personal papers and diaries languishing in an antiquarian bookseller’s shop and was in the process of acquiring them. I am grateful to Ed Weech and Nancy Charley at the RAS for organizing those papers and making them available to me on remarkably short notice.
Thank you to Susanna Hoe for helping me track down the typescript she and Derek Roebuck prepared of Charles Elliot’s letters, which had gone missing at the National Library of Scotland. It was an invaluable aid as I labored to decipher Elliot’s atrocious handwriting, which is some of the worst I’ve ever seen and says quite a bit in itself about Elliot’s fragile state of mind.
Sincere thanks to Lord Napier and Ettrick for sharing the diary and notebooks of his ancestor William John, the 9th Lord Napier, from his assignment to China in 1834. Thanks also to Charlie Napier of the Clan Napier Society for transcribing several more of William John Napier’s letters from China that are in his possession. In all of my research for this book, there was no episode so memorable or pleasant as the early September morning I spent reading those notebooks at Lord Napier’s Cambridgeshire home, eating fresh plums from the garden and watching the horses as they grazed in the pasture outside the window. As came clear from the notebooks, William John Napier was far more the author of his own fate than I had expected, but I do wish to make clear that the fact that he was so ill-suited to his position in China should not in any way reflect on the good name of the Napier clan.
Tobie Meyer-Fong, John Delury, Heather Cox Richardson, Michael Berube, and Jay Rathaus all took on the laborious work of reading my draft manuscript in its earliest form and providing corrections and suggestions that greatly improved the book. Any remaining shortcomings of substance or style are of course my own responsibility, but at least there will be fewer of them thanks to these readers.
My great debt to the many scholars whose work precedes and undergirds my own should be clear from the notes, but I would like to thank several people who provided advice and helpful conversation, vetted translations, or helped me find sources along the way, especially Robert Bickers, Chuck Wooldridge, Timothy Alborn, John Darwin, Marian Rocco, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Joel Wolfe, Melissa Macauley, Luna Lu, Janet Theiss, Gary Chi-hung Luk, Tobias Gregory, and Lei Duan. Thanks as well to Barak Kushner for hosting me at Cambridge and giving me a tantalizing glimpse of the life of a don.
I am grateful to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, especially Jan Berris, for their longstanding encouragement of my work, and to the other members of the Public Intellectuals Program for the same. The history department at the University of Massachusetts has been a productive base for more than a decade now, and I thank my colleagues—especially Joye Bowman, our chair during the years I was writing this book, who was a constant voice of support. Thanks also to Sharon Domier, our fantastic East Asian Studies librarian, and Dean Julie Hayes of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts.
The Writers’ Mill in Florence, Massachusetts, provided the focused and (shall we say) industrious space in which I both started and finished writing this book; thanks to the other millworkers for making it possible. Thanks also to the staffs of Bread Euphoria, the Lady Killigrew, the Brass Buckle, and Haymarket Café for providing good coffee and energizing places to write and think.
It was a privilege and a pleasure to work again with Andrew Miller at Knopf; in this day and age, I realize how fortunate I am to have an editor who devotes such time and energy to the books he publishes. Andrew’s keen insight and sense of structure helped shape and refine this book over several drafts in ways I never could have accomplished alone. The other staff at Knopf who worked on the book were amazing as always—Zakiya Harris, in particular, guided me through the many twists and turns of the production process with patience and good cheer. Great thanks to Lisa Montebello for managing the production of the book, Soonyoung Kwon for designing the text and layout, and John Vorhees for designing the jacket. Thanks as well to Paula Robbins and Terry Bush at Mapping Specialists, Ltd., for designing the maps. And of course thank you to my wonderful agent, Brettne Bloom, who helped me shape the book from the beginning and has been my steadfast champion and cheerleader all along.
Home is where I find my greatest inspiration. My son, Eliot, was born as I was starting the research for this book and he is just now learning how to read as it comes to press. The same was true of my older daughter, Lucy, for my previous book. Putting aside the question of whether I can write another book without providing them with an additional sibling, I thank both of them for the joy and perspective and sense of purpose
they give me. And none of this would be possible, or even have a point, without my wife, Francie Lin, who keeps me centered and balanced and makes everything worthwhile.
Notes
INTRODUCTION Canton
1. This description of Canton is a collage drawn from a range of sources including, in no particular order: Valery M. Garrett, Heaven Is High, the Emperor Far Away: Merchants and Mandarins in Old Canton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Robert Bickers, The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832–1914 (London: Allen Lane, 2011); Aeneas Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China, in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794 (London: J. Debrett, 1795); James Johnson, An Account of a Voyage to India, China, &c. in His Majesty’s Ship Caroline (London: Richard Phillips, 1806); Harriet Low Hillard, My Mother’s Journal: A Young Lady’s Diary of Five Years Spent in Manila, Macao, and the Cape of Good Hope, ed. Katharine Hillard (Boston: George H. Ellis, 1900); Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014); Samuel Kidd, “Canton,” in The Christian Keepsake, and Missionary Annual, ed. William Ellis (London: Fisher, Son, & Co., 1836), pp. 170–78; Jonathan Spence, God’s Chinese Son (New York: Norton, 1996); Charles Godfrey Leland, Pidgin-English Sing-song; or, Songs and Stories in the China-English Dialect (London: Trübner and Co., 1876); William C. Hunter, The ‘Fan Kwae’ at Canton before Treaty Days, 1825–1844 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882); Tiffany Osmond, The Canton Chinese: or, The American’s Sojourn in the Celestial Empire (Boston, MA, and Cambridge, UK: James Munroe, 1849); Anon., An Intercepted Letter from J––T––, Esq. Writer at Canton to His Friend in Dublin Ireland (Dublin: M. N. Mahon, 1804); Jacques Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press, 1997); Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom (London: W. H. Allen, 1883); and personal letters of Thomas Manning and Robert Bennet Forbes.
2. One welcome exception to this trend in general-interest books on the Opium War is Julia Lovell’s recent The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams, and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2011), which is especially recommended to the reader interested in military history as it goes into much greater detail on the events of the war itself than the book at hand does.
PROLOGUE The Journey of James Flint
1. Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926), vol. 1, pp. 266–67; George Anson, A Voyage Round the World, in the Years 1740–1744 (Edinburgh: Campbell Denovan, 1781), vol. 2, book 3, p. 244.
2. Charles Frederick Noble, A Voyage to the East Indies in 1747 and 1748 (London: T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, at the Tully’s Head, 1762), p. 306; Petition of James Flint to the Court of Directors of the United East India Company (to become a supercargo), read in court February 19, 1745, British Library, East India Office Records, IOR/E/1/33.
3. “Transactions of a Voyage in the Success Snow from Canton to Limpo and afterwards to Tien-Tsin, 1759,” British Library, East India Office Records, IOR/G/12/195 (China and Japan, Miscellaneous Papers, 1710–1814), item 12; Susan Reed Stifler, “The Language Students of the East India Company’s Canton Factory,” Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 69 (1938): 46–82, see p. 49; Robert Bennet Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston: Samuel N. Dickinson, 1844), pp. 22–23.
4. Details of Flint’s voyage are taken from his journal, “Transactions of a Voyage in the Success Snow from Canton to Limpo and afterwards to Tien-Tsin, 1759,” BL IOR/G/12/195. The White River (Chinese: Bai He) was best known to foreigners at the time as the Peiho.
5. Morse, Chronicles, vol. 1, p. 75.
6. Da Qing Gaozong Chun (Qianlong) huangdi shilu (Taipei: Taiwan Huawen shuju, 1964), juan 598, pp. 5a–6b.
7. As translated in the Canton Register, August 25, 1830; also in Anon. (“A Visitor to China”), Address to the People of Great Britain, Explanatory of Our Commercial Relations with the Empire of China (London: Smith. Elder and Co., 1836), pp. 62–63.
8. The edict ordering the beheading of Flint’s teacher is in Da Qing Gaozong Chun (Qianlong) huangdi shilu, juan 598, pp. 5a–6b.
9. On Flint dying, see, for example, p. 124 of Zhang Dechang, “Qingdai yapian zhanzheng qian zhi Zhong-Xi yanhai tongshang,” in Bao Zunpeng et al., eds., Zhongguo jindaishi luncong, part 1, vol. 3, pp. 91–132. On tofu, see Benjamin Franklin to John Bartram, January 11, 1770, in William Darlington, ed., Memorials of John Bartram and Humphry Marshall (Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston, 1849), pp. 404–5.
10. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2nd ed. (London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1778), vol. 1, pp. 87–88.
11. Voltaire, A Philosophical Dictionary, vol. 3 of 10 (Cannibals–Councils), pp. 81–82, in series vol. 7 of The Works of Voltaire, A Contemporary Version, 43 vols. (Akron, OH: Werner Company, 1905).
12. A. E. Van-Braam Houckgeest, An Authentic Account of the Embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the Court of the Emperor of China, In the Years 1794 and 1795 (London: R. Phillips, 1798), vol. 1, pp. v–vi.
13. Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), pp. 36–39, 116–22.
14. Aeneas Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China, in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794 (London: J. Debrett, 1795), p. v.
15. Henry Defeynes (Monsieur de Monsart), An Exact and Curious Survey of all the East Indies, even to Canton, the chiefe Cittie of China (London: Thomas Dawson, 1615), p. 30 (changing numeral 6 to “six”).
16. Lt.-Col. Sir Richard Carnac Temple, ed., The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia, 1608–1667 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1919), vol. 3, part 1, p. 173.
17. Ibid., vol. 3, part 1, p. 178.
18. Anon. (“A Looker-On”), Chinese Commerce and Disputes, from 1640 to 1840. Addressed to Tea Dealers and Consumers (London: W. Morrison, 1840), p. 8.
19. Ibid.; and Andrew Ljungstedt, An Historical Sketch of the Portuguese Settlements in China (Boston: James Monroe and Co., 1836), pp. 276–78.
20. Temple, The Travels of Peter Mundy, vol. 3, part 1, p. 191.
21. Morse, Chronicles, vol. 1, p. 158.
22. Michael Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, 1800–1842 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), p. 3.
CHAPTER 1 A Time of Wonder
1. Macartney letter to the Chairman of the East India Company, September 26, 1792, British Library, India Office Records, IOR/G/12/92. On naval preparations: William James, The Naval History of Great Britain, from the Declaration of War by France in 1793 to the Accession of George IV (London: Richard Bentley, 1859), vol. 1, p. 53; George Leonard Staunton, An Authentic Account of an Embassy from the King of Great Britain to the Emperor of China (Philadelphia: Robert Campbell, 1799), vol. 1, p. 17. In accordance with English usage of the time, “Chinese emperor” here is meant to indicate the emperor of China; it does not imply that the emperor was ethnically Chinese. The emperors of the Qing dynasty were Manchu.
2. Helen Robbins, Our First Ambassador to China: An Account of the Life and Correspondence of George, Earl of Macartney, with Extracts from His Letters, and the Narrative of His Experiences in China, as Told by Himself, 1737–1806 (New York: Dutton and Company, 1908), p. 220.
3. Roland Thorne, “Macartney, George, Earl Macartney (1737–1806),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–13).
4. Aeneas Anderson, A Narrative of the British Embassy to China, in the Years 1792, 1793, and 1794 (London: J. Debrett, 1795), p. 146.
5. George Macartney, An Embassy to China: Being the Journal Kept by Lord Macartney during His Embassy to the Emperor Ch’ien-lung, 1793–1794, ed. J. L. Cranmer-Byng (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1963), p. 213.
6. U.S.-British comparison based on table
for 1792 in Hosea Ballou Morse, The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635–1834 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926–29), vol. 2, p. 193; thirty-nine British ships visited Canton that year (including both Company and private vessels), versus six from the United States.
7. “The China Trade,” Times, June 8, 1791.
8. Earl H. Pritchard, “The Instructions of the East India Company to Lord Macartney on His Embassy to China,” part 1, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2 (April 1938): 201–30, see pp. 202–3 and 210–11.
9. Staunton, An Authentic Account, p. 18.
10. Ibid., p. 17 (changing “Pekin” to “Beijing”).
11. William Jardine Proudfoot, Biographical Memoir of James Dinwiddie, Ll.D., Astronomer in the British Embassy to China, 1792, ’3, ’4 (Liverpool: Edward Howell, 1868), p. 26.
12. William Alexander, “Journal of a voyage to Pekin in China, on board the ‘Hindostan’ E.I.M., which accompanied Lord Macartney on his embassy to the Emperor,” British Library, Add MS 35174, fol. 86; Staunton, An Authentic Account, pp. 492–98; the full catalog of gifts is in the British Library, India Office Records, IOR/G/12/92, fols. 155–86.
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