Page 113 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

99.

British residents at Canton considerably outnumbered the

Americans. As long as the East India Company retained its

chartered monopoly of the British trade with China, the British

population was roughly double that of Americans. With the end

of the Company's monopoly in 1834, private British traders and

Parsee merchants from India flooded into the Canton trade.

From that time, British residents outnumbered Americans three­

to-one or four-to-one. The Parsees at one point even pushed
2
the Americans into third place in total population. The

extremely limited number of American residents at Canton was

a very significant factor in the formation of American attitudes

and actions in China. This £actor is certainly remarkable in

view of the fact that Americans arrived at these concepts in­

dependently of the numerically dominant British establishment

at Canton.

Not only was the American merchant population at Canton

3
limited in number, it was homogeneous in character. The back­
grounds of Americans were remarkably similar. Virtually all

of them came from commercial cities, if not seaports, in the
northeastern United States between Providence and Philadelphia.

after 1840. This source is the best, although women and
children are not counted. In some issues though the place of
residence is included.
2
chinese Repository, V, 9 (January 1837), 426-29; X, 1
(January 1841), 58-60; XI, 1 (January 1842), 55-58; XII, 1 (Jan­
uary 1843), 14-17; XIII, l (January 1844), 3-7; XIV, 1 (January
1845), 3-9.

3
The basis for conclusions made concerning factors of
homogeneity of American residents is a compendium of informa­
tion gathered from the various manuscript collections consulted.