Page 12 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

included a section on the origins of American diplomatic rela­

tions with China. Foster Rhea Dulles published several books

on Sino-American relations: The Old China Trade (1930) and

China and America: The Story of Their Relations since 1784 (1946).

All of these writers used the same basic sources, consisting of

government documents and assorted journals, memoirs, log books

and manuscript collections. With slightly differing emphasis,

they described the development of American trade at Canton and

the issues with which Americans had to deal before 1844, includ­

ing the Treaty of Wang-hsia. These �istorians, having based

their books most heavily on government documents and printed

memoirs, discussed the period from the American point-of-view.

In the last two decades, historians have again looked
1
at the "Canton system" and its destruction in the early 1840 s.

Unlike earlier writers, these historians have been most inter­

ested in Chinese history. They have viewed the period as

crucial in terms of China's contact with the West. Since

their primary focus is China, this latter group has tended to

lump together all foreigners in China under the umbrella of their

Western heritage. These historians, therefore, have based their

analyses of the period before 1844 on the assumption that the

American experience in China played a subordinate role to that

of the English, whose numerical strength and military power de­

termined the image of Westerners in Chinese eyes. Since the

Chinese treated all foreigners as "barbarians," national dis­

tinctions, they have argued, were less important than the overall

phenomenon of China's first contact with a civilization that

-vii-