An Empire on the Edge

by Nick Bunker

  6. The global trade in commodities: Carole Shammas, “The Revolutionary Impact of European Demand for Tropical Goods,” in The Early Modern Atlantic Economy, ed. John J. McCusker and Kenneth Morgan (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), chap. 7; T. H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution (Oxford, U.K., 2004), esp. pp. 59–64; Jacob M. Price, “The Economic Growth of the Chesapeake and the European Market, 1697–1775” in Journal of Economic History 24, no. 4 (Dec. 1964), pp. 496–511; and for statistical data on colonial trade on the eve of the American Revolution, James F. Shepherd and Gary M. Walton, Shipping, Maritime Trade and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, U.K., 1972), especially pp. 36–42 and pp. 156–66.

  PART ONE: THE EMPIRE OF SPECULATION

  Chapter One: THE TIGER’S MOUTH

  1. Zhuang Guotu, Tea, Silver, Opium, and War: The International Tea Trade and Western Commercial Expansion into China in 1740–1840 (Xiamen, China, 1993), p. 21.

  2. Voyage of the Calcutta: From the ship’s log, Oct. 1770–Sept. 1772, L/MAR/B/308/E, IOR. Approaches to China: Alexander Dalrymple, Chart of the China Sea (April 1771), Maps 62710 (1), BL; James Horsburgh, Directions for Sailing to and from the East Indies, China, … (London, 1811), vol. 2, pp. 192–203; and William Milburn, Oriental Commerce (London, 1813), vol. 2, pp. 462–65. This chapter’s opening section also draws upon the logs of other ships that sailed to China that year, especially the Vansittart and the Cruttenden, in the same L/MAR series, and Alfred Spencer, ed., Memoirs of William Hickey (London, 1948), vol. 1, chaps. 16–18. Data on cargoes to China: East India Company Journal of Commerce, 1769–1773 at L/AG/1/6/16, IOR.

  3. Burke on tea: Speech in the House of Commons on American taxation, April 19, 1774.

  4. British tea trade to 1772: Louis Dermigny, La Chine et l’Occident: Le commerce à Canton au XVIIIe siècle, 1719–1833 (Paris, 1964), vol. 2, pp. 521–25, 621–28; and House of Commons, Return Showing the Number of Pounds Weight of Tea Sold by the East India Company, 1740–1837 (Feb. 11, 1845), in Parliamentary Papers (Commons), 1845 (191).

  5. Profit made on sales of tea: Calculated by the author, using data taken from House of Commons, 3rd Report of the Committee of Secrecy, Feb. 9, 1773, reprinted in Reports from Committees of the House of Commons (1804), vol. 4 (East Indies), pp. 68–69, containing a profit-and-loss account for the China trade for the years 1762–72; and from the same volume, p. 278, an account of shipping costs, in the 5th Report of the same committee, March 30, 1773.

  6. Size of the smuggling trade: Author’s estimate, calculated by taking total Chinese tea exports, given in tables in Dermigny, La Chine et l’Occident, and then deducting the tea imported legally into European markets with duty paid. Also see Hoh-Cheung and Lorna H. Mui, “Smuggling and the British Tea Trade Before 1784,” American Historical Review 74, no. 1 (1968), pp. 51–55.

  7. China under Qianlong: Evelyn Rawski, “Re-envisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese History,” Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 4 (Nov. 1996), pp. 829–42; and Ramon H. Myers and Yeh-Chien Wang, “Economic Developments, 1644–1800,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 9, pt. 1, The Ch’ing Empire to 1800, ed. Willard J. Peterson (Cambridge, U.K., 2002). However, perhaps the most vivid illustration of China’s economic achievements in this period can be found in a masterpiece of Chinese art, the vast panoramic townscape Prosperous Suzhou, commissioned by Qianlong from the artist Xu Yang and painted between 1756 and 1759. Some forty feet long, and intended to be kept in the emperor’s private apartments for his eyes only, this painting of the town of Suzhou near Shanghai celebrates Chinese commerce and agriculture and depicts them in exquisite detail. Usually on display at the Liaoning Provincial Museum in China, it was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in the winter of 2013–14. Canton trading system and the Flint case: Guotu, Tea, Silver, Opium, and War, pp. 2–6, 12–13, 22–23; and Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong, 2005), pp. 9–16.

  8. Tax revenues from Canton: Preston M. Torbert, The Ch’ing Imperial Household Department (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 97–103; and H. T. Huang, “Tea Processing and Utilisation,” in Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 6, Biology and Biological Technology, ed. Joseph Needham (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), pp. 538–48.

  9. Tea planting in Fukien: Guotu, Tea, Silver, Opium, and War, pp. 53–74; and Robert Gardella, Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757–1937 (Berkeley, Calif., 1994), pp. 14–31, 38–48.

  10. Role and remuneration of the supercargoes at Canton: File D/27, EIC Correspondence Reports, 1771–77, pp. 47–48 (entry for Nov. 5, 1771), IOR; and the supercargoes’ diaries, in the Canton Factory Records, R/10/5 (1761–69), and R/10/9 (1771–77), IOR. For the career of a typical supercargo: The cash book of John Searle, relating to a trip to the East between 1769 and 1771, Chancery Masters’ Exhibits, file C107/154, NAK. He invested £788 on his own account and came home with commission income of about £4,000, together with trading profits from selling the tea, rhubarb, spices, and cloth that he acquired. British activities in China in the 1760s and 1770s, see H. B. Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China (Oxford, 1929), vol. 5, pp. 144–46.

  11. The shipping interest: 5th Report of the Committee of Secrecy of 1772–73, pp. 279–85; Lucy S. Sutherland, A London Merchant, 1695–1774 (Oxford, 1933), chap. 4; and Anonymous, Observations on East India Shipping (London, 1774). On Captain Thomson: Entries relating to Thomson, his brother David, his father, George, and his uncle George Willson, in Anthony Farrington, Biographical Index of East India Company Maritime Service Officers, 1600–1834 (London, 1999).

  12. Dutch tea trade: Yong Liu, The Dutch East India Company’s Tea Trade with China, 1757–1781 (Leiden, 2007), pp. 44–48, 146–52. Smuggling: Dermigny, La Chine et l’Occident, vol. 2, pp. 660–66. Corruption in Guernsey: Documented in Treasury correspondence for 1772, T1/489/118–42, NAK.

  13. Credit and the Hongs: Van Dyke, Canton Trade, pp. 96–97; and balance sheet for the Canton factory, March 9, 1772, R/10/9, IOR and Morse (1929), vol. 5, pp. 165–73.

  14. London tea auctions: Data from a pamphlet published in 1780 by the Committee of Fair Trade Tea Dealers, Advice to the Unwary; or, An Abstract of Certain Penal Laws Now in Force Against Smuggling.

  15. Indian background: C. A. Bayly, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, U.K., 1988), pp. 45–55. For an excellent account of the way the East India Company functioned at home and abroad, see H. V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756–1833 (Cambridge, U.K., 2006), esp. chaps. 5 and 8.

  16. Colebrooke and his colleagues: Biographical sketches in James Gordon Parker, “The Directors of the East India Company, 1754–1790” (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1977), and also see note 12 on p. 395 herein.

  17. The company’s deteriorating finances: 8th Report of the Secrecy Committee, pp. 356–58, 374–89, 401–23. Also see Sulivan’s very revealing letter to Henry Vansittart, May 28, 1770, MS Eng.Hist.b.190, Sulivan Papers, Bodleian Library. Bengal famine: Rajat Datta, Society, Economy, and the Market: Commercialization in Rural Bengal, c. 1760–1800 (Manohar, 2000), pp. 285–315, 238–56. For a clear and cogent narrative of the company’s relationship with the politicians of the day, see H. V Bowen, Revenue and Reform: The Indian Problem in British Politics, 1757–1773 (Cambridge, U.K., 1991); but also Lucy S. Sutherland, The East India Company in Eighteenth-Century Politics (Oxford, 1962), chaps. 7–8.

  Chapter Two: “THIS DARK AFFAIR”: THE GASPÉE INCIDENT

  1. Conversation between George III and Thomas Hutchinson, July 1, 1774: Peter Orlando Hutchinson, The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson (London, 1886), vol. 1, p. 172.

  2. Winter of 1771–72: Massachusetts Gazette and Boston News-Letter, Dec. 26, 1771; entries for Jan. 27–30, 1772, in Donald Jackson, ed., The Diaries of George Washington (Charlottesville, Va., 1978), vol. 3, pp. 86–87; Co
nnecticut Journal, Feb. 21, 1772; and Providence Gazette, Feb. 22, 1772. Generally, for daily notes on weather in southern New England: Farm journals (1752–87) of Joseph Andrews of Hingham, Massachusetts, microfilm P-363, MHS. Tea smuggling and Royal Navy response: daily entries in Journal of Rear Admiral John Montagu, “Remarks on the Squadron in North America (1771–1774),” (hereafter cited as “Montagu’s journal”), ADM 50/17, NAK.

  3. Admiral Montagu: ODNB; and Diary of John Adams, Dec. 29, 1772, digitized by the Massachusetts Historical Society at www.​masshist.​org/​digitaladams/​archive/​diary. Montagu’s orders: Letter from Lord Sandwich, May 27, 1771, ADM 2/97 (Admiralty Letters), pp. 73–88, NAK. Naval role in the colonies: Neil R. Stout, The Royal Navy in America, 1760–1775: A Study of Enforcement of British Colonial Policy on the Eve of the Revolution (Annapolis, Md., 1973), pp. 165–70.

  4. Opinions of Dudingston: Henry Marchant to Benjamin Franklin, Nov. 21, 1772, in BFP, vol. 19, p. 379; and Charles Stedman, History of the Origins, Progress, and Termination of the American War (London, 1794), vol. 1, p. 80. The Dudingstons of Fife: Walter Wood, The East Neuk of Fife: Its History and Antiquities (Edinburgh, 1887), pp. 175–77. Three boxes of Dudingston family papers are in the special collections at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, MS dep 114 (Dudingston of St. Fort). The most relevant document is box 1, number 4, containing schedules of family debts, including those owed by the lieutenant.

  5. Laws of trade: His Majesty’s Customs Commissioners, Instructions to John Mascarene, Comptroller at Salem (1769), reprinted in Sources and Documents Illustrating the American Revolution, 1764–1788, ed. Samuel E. Morison (Oxford, 1923), pp. 74–83. Dissenting opinions in Whitehall: “Observations on the Trade & Revenue of North America, with … a Plan for the Prevention of Smuggling” (1771), D(W) 1778/II, 494, esp. pp. 27–31, Dartmouth Papers. For the figure of £47,000, the gross revenue from customs duties in North America: Colonial tax receipts, T1/504, f.71, Treasury Board Papers, NAK. Cost of imperial administration: Julian Gwyn, “British Government Spending and the North American Colonies, 1740–1775,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 8, no. 2 (1980), pp. 77–81.

  6. Stedman, History of the Origins, Progress, and Termination of the American War, vol. 1, pp. 11–17.

  7. Dudingston’s reputation: Story in Virginia Gazette (Rind’s edition), July 27, 1769, describing his fracas at sea with Davis Bevan of Chester, Pennsylvania.

  8. The Canceaux: Montagu’s journal, Feb. 19, 1772; proclamation by Governor Hutchinson, Boston News-Letter, March 19, 1772, and Boston Post-Boy, March 22, 1772; Newport Mercury, Feb. 22, 1772, and Providence Gazette, Feb. 22, 1772; and Montagu to the Admiralty, April 18, 1772, in DAR, vol. 5, pp. 73–74.

  9. Seizure at Tarpaulin Cove: Montagu’s journal, Feb. 20, 1772. Meeting with Governor Joseph Wanton, and reference to the Swanzey: J. R. Bartlett, ed., Records of the Colony of Rhode Island (Providence, 1862), vol. 7, pp. 64–66. Fortune incident: Dudingston to Boston customs commissioners, Feb. 22, 1772, T1/491, fol. 125, Treasury Board Papers, and March 9–31, 1772, T1/491, fols. 127–28, Boston Admiralty Court Papers, NAK. Also see the Newport Mercury, story datelined Feb. 24, 1772, cutting preserved inside Admiral Montagu’s letter of Sept. 1, fol. 393, T1/491, NAK. American sources: Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, vol. 7, pp. 145–46; and Richard K. Showman et al., eds., The Papers of General Nathanael Greene (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1976), vol. 1, pp. 29–35.

  10. The Greenes: David McCullough, 1776 (New York, 2005), pp. 20–22. For “such a Spirit of Resentment,” see Greene to Samuel Ward, April? 1772, in Showman, Papers of General Nathanael Greene, p. 26.

  11. Colonial Rhode Island: David S. Lovejoy, Rhode Island Politics and the American Revolution, 1760–1776 (Providence, 1958), esp. pp. 6–11, 15–18; and Sydney V. James, Colonial Rhode Island: A History (New York, 1975). Volume of shipping: Accounts of Vessels Entering American Ports, 1772, among Lord North’s papers, MS North a.12, Bodleian Library.

  12. Rebuilding of Providence: John Hutchins Cady, The Civic and Architectural Development of Providence, 1636–1950 (Providence, 1957), chaps. 4 and 5. Candle factory: Caroline Frank, “John Brown’s India Point,” Rhode Island History 61 (Fall 2003), pp. 54–57.

  13. Rhode Island charter: David A. Weir, Early New England: A Covenanted Society (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2005), pp. 51–56.

  14. Stephen Hopkins: American National Biography; and Jack P. Greene, The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, U.K., 2011), pp. 40, 83–84, 186. Also see note 23 below.

  15. College of Rhode Island, first commencement: Newport Mercury, Sept. 11, 1769. Also see Reuben Aldridge Guild, Early History of Brown University (Providence, 1897), p. 85.

  16. The increase in smuggling in the British Isles: House of Commons, First Report from the Committee on Illicit Practices Used in Defrauding the Revenue, Dec. 24, 1783, app. 4; and Treasury Board Papers for March to June 1772, T1/505 pt. 1, NAK.

  17. The Browns: James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantation: The Colonial Years (Providence, 1968), esp. chap. 8 and p. 208. Charles Rappleye vividly describes the Browns in his Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution (New York, 2006), esp. pp. 24–28.

  18. Dudingston in Narragansett Bay: Providence Gazette, March 21 and 28, 1772.

  19. Rhode Island rum and molasses trade: John J. McCusker, Rum and the American Revolution: The Rum Trade and the Balance of Payments in the Thirteen Continental Colonies (New York, 1989), pp. 397–99, 439–40. John Adams on molasses: Adams to William Tudor, Aug. 11, 1818, in The Works of John Adams (Boston, 1856), vol. 10, p. 345.

  20. Governor Wanton: J. R. Bartlett, History of the Wanton Family of Newport, Rhode Island (Providence, 1878), pp. 78–80; and Hedges, Browns of Providence Plantation, pp. 32–33, 81. Wanton’s exchanges with Dudingston and Montagu, and John Brown’s petition: Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, vol. 7, pp. 60–68, 174–75.

  21. Principal sources for the destruction of the Gaspée: Bartlett, Records of the Colony of Rhode Island, pp. 58–190; and Dudingston’s court-martial, reprinted in Samuel W. Bryant, “HMS Gaspée—the Court Martial,” Rhode Island History 25, no. 3 (July 1966), pp. 65–72. There is a useful discussion of inconsistencies in the sources in Neil L. York, “The Uses of Law and the Gaspée Affair,” Rhode Island History 50, no. 1 (Feb. 1992), pp. 3–21.

  22. Gaspée raid participants: Abraham Whipple, John B. Hopkins, Joseph Tillinghast, and Samuel Dunn (sea captains); Ephraim Bowen (son of Ephraim Bowen, MD); and Joseph Bucklin. Whipple and Bucklin were schoolhouse trustees: Providence Town Papers, MS 214, vol. 2 (1761–75), fol. 35, RIHS. Celebrations in 1826: Rhode Island American, July 4, 1826; and Newport Mercury, July 8, 1826.

  23. For an expanded discussion of this point, see John Phillip Reid, In a Defiant Stance: The Conditions of Law in Massachusetts Bay, the Irish Comparison, and the Coming of the Revolution (University Park, Pa., 1977), chaps. 7 and 8 and pp. 85–87.

  24. Response to the Gaspée incident: Hutchinson to Lord Hillsborough, June 12, 1772, in Hutchinson Letter Books, typescript copy, MHS; Dudley to Admiral Montagu, July 23, 1772, T1/491, NAK; and Montagu’s journal, June 12, 1772. For “confusion, dismay and distress,” see James Boswell, Reflections on the Late Alarming Bankruptcies in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1772), p. 1.

  Chapter Three: A BANKRUPT AGE

  1. George F. Norton of Yorktown, Virginia, to John Hatley Norton, July 8, 1772, in John Norton and Sons: Merchants of London and Virginia, ed. Frances Norton Mason (New York, 1968), p. 254.

  2. For “the greatest speculator in London,” see Robert Orme to William Ridge, July 1, 1772, MS Eur/Orme OV 202, pp. 90–91, IOR. Alexander Fordyce: Press reports in Middlesex Journal, June 11–15 and 20–23, 1772, and Morning Chronicle, June 24, 1772; his examination in bankruptcy, in the Morning Chronicle, Sept. 26, 1772; and “Memoirs of a Late Celebrated Banker,” Scots Magazine, Aug. 1772. The figure of £500,000 represented
the total trading losses of the Fordyce bank. The net deficiency in its accounts was £150,000, of which £100,000 was owed by Fordyce himself.

  3. Memoir of the Late Mrs. Henrietta Fordyce (London, 1823), pp. 53–55.

  4. For “a bankrupt age,” see prologue to Samuel Foote, The Bankrupt (London, 1773). Gambling culture of the period: Paul Langford, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991), p. 558. Lord North on Britain as a gambling nation: 1774 budget speech, General Evening Post, May 19.

  5. Economic acceleration after 1760: Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850 (New Haven, Conn., 2009), pp. 84–85.; and Robert C. Allen, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective (Cambridge UK, 2009), chaps. 3 to 6.

  6. Boswell, Reflections on the Late Alarming Bankruptcies in Scotland, p. 7. Crash of 1772 and America: Richard B. Sheridan, “The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and the American Colonies,” Journal of Economic History 20, no. 2 (June 1960), pp. 172–76, 185–86. European dimension of the crash: Frank C. Spooner, Risks at Sea: Amsterdam Insurance and Maritime Europe, 1766–1780 (Cambridge, U.K., 1983), pp. 86–96.

  7. British economy in the 1770s: Mokyr, Enlightened Economy, chiefly chap. 9 (agriculture), pp. 177–86, and chap. 12 (productivity), pp. 255–60. Economic output: Stephen Broadberry and Bas van Leeuwen, “British Economic Growth and the Business Cycle, 1700–1850,” online from the Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Nov. 25, 2008, www2.​warwick.​ac.​uk.

  8. Perhaps the most successful defense contractor was Sir Lawrence Dundas (1712–81), a Scottish banker commonly known as the Nabob of the North. His profits during the Seven Years’ War came to at least £600,000. Dundas led the financing of two great construction projects of the 1760s and 1770s: the Edinburgh New Town and the Forth and Clyde Canal. For a perceptive analysis of the connection between military contractors and the speculative boom of the 1760s and early 1770s: David Hancock, Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, U.K., 1995), chap. 9. Business conditions after 1763: T. S. Ashton, Economic Fluctuations in England, 1700–1800 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 61–62, 98–100, 127–30, 151–60.