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.
Recent studies of private merchants in the Canton trade (circa 1700–1842) have confirmed the importance of their role in the commerce, which includes not only the eras of the various European East ...India companies but also periods of exclusively private trade. This chapter explores the forms of private trade in which the French engaged; identifies distinctive features of that trade; places the trade in the overall context of France’s China trade; argues that private traders were a legitimate part of Sino-French trade at the very start; and provides brief biographical sketches of traders who were active during the period
In 1997, the excavation of the recently-discovered wreck site of a European sailing vessel on the southern edge of Thitu Reef in the South China Sea yielded no cargo of precious commodities, but ...rather a variety of items related primarily to the vessel’s defense and to daily life at sea: musket shot, cannon balls, guns (cannon), anchors, iron ingots, ship’s fittings, several dozen loose and badly corroded coins, several shoe buckles, eating utensils, spigots and glass decanter stoppers. The s...
Pirates, trafiquants et rebelles entre Chine et Viêt Nam, 1895–1940 (Maintaining order on the edges of the Empire: Pirates, smugglers, and rebels on the Sino–Vietnamese border, 1895–1940), offers a ...fresh view into criminal activity, and the efforts to control it, in the regions along the Sino–Vietnamese border in what was then the French protectorate of Tonkin. Given weaknesses in the statistical data and the fact that the colonial records do not provide a complete list of the crimes committed, but rather just those considered to be of sufficient interest to merit reporting, a general study of the evolution of criminal activity was deemed unfeasible. Types of material utilised include, to name just a few, correspondence; bulletins of the criminal police; reports and statistical yearbooks from the French Gouvernement Général de l'Indochine; monthly reports from the frontier police and also from the territories into which the borderland regions were divided; and accounts of incidents and of seizures of contraband.
Breakers! It was 9 p.m. on June 7, 1763, and a storm was blowing in the South China Sea. Sailors on watch aboard the Earl Temple spotted shallow-breaking waves about a mile ahead. The vessel was ...bound for Manila, where it was to have much-needed repairs done before heading for Canton (Guangzhou), China. Just three weeks had passed since the three-masted sailing vessel, an East Indiaman chartered by the English East India Company, had left the Dutch port of Batavia (Jakarta, Indonesia). The vessel carried a cargo of iron, tin, and lead brought from Benkulen. When sailors cried out, "We see breakers ahead!" the man at the helm quickly spun the wheel to turn the great three-masted vessel to starboard (right). "The Commanding Officer upon Deck hearing the noise that was made on the forecastle ran foreward to see the Breakers and how far we were from them," survivors reported. "In the meantime the Ship's company were all in confusion, seeing the Ship was so near the Breakers and driving bodily upon them." As the ship drew closer to the waves that indicated shallow water, probably a coral reef, sailors scrambled to lighten the ship. They threw some of the ship's cannons overboard. Then, in desperation, the captain ordered the masts cut away to lighten the ship. This task took less than six minutes. But the vessel already had six feet of water in its hold.
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