Page 122 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

108.
of the American corrununity at Canton that had been first apparent

when the group was composed of independent shipmasters and super-

cargoes.

II

American attitudes toward China and the Chinese

developed basically from the contact the American residents

at Canton had with the Hong merchants. Chinese convention

and Imperial edicts strictly limited American social inter­

course to this group of Chinese. The Hong merchants never­

theless were not the only Chinese with whom the Americans had
contact. Although foreigners had no social relations with the

natives of Canton, they daily were among these Chinese in the

Factory Square. Foreigners furthermore were able to venture

into certain parts of the city of Canton, where they were

surrounded by all sorts of Chinese. In theory Imperial law

proscribed Westerners from leaving the confines of the Foreign

Factories. But in practice the Chinese enforced this regulation

only to the extent of prohibiting foreigners inside the city

walls. Canton, already in existence for fifteen hundred years

when the first Americans arrived, had long before expanded

beyond its walls which were only six miles in circumference.
1
By the 1830 s, when the population of Canton numbered over a

million inhabitants, at least half of the Cantonese lived
13
outside the old city walls. In addition to the Pearl River

on which thousands of Chinese lived in boats, the suburbs (as

13
David Abeel, Journal of a Residence in China, and
the Neighboring Countries from 1829 to 1833 (New York, 1834)
p . 75 .