Page 128 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

114.

was an injured man & I stood up for him on all occasions but

his exceedingly bad manners in . . disagreeable encounters

I have had with him in the square I have gone into the oppo­

· • I 2 4
s1 t ion. '
Americans' attitudes must be strongly qualified. The

Americans at Canton developed various images of the Chinese.

They perceived definite distinctions among different groups

of Chinese with whom they met and dealt. Like other foreigners,

the Americans had contact with only a limited segment of

Chinese society. The major groups with whom they dealt were
the Hong merchants, their servants, the local authorities (only

indirectly) and the lower-class populace. They had no contact

with the scholar-gentry class, the highest class of Confucian

and Imperial China. Most Chinese the Americans saw were from

the Cantonese masses. As these Chinese were generally suspicious

of and unfriendly toward foreigners, Americans felt little amity

for them. Since the residents had little reason to court the

favor of these Cantonese, they dismissed them.

American attitudes toward other groups of Chinese

seldom were colored by the same circumstance. They not only

tolerated but liked their colleagues in the foreign trade, the

Hong merchants. Many American merchants and the Hong merchants

who secured their trade developed close friendships. These

Chinese helped Americans with business and even personal

finances. The Americans reciprocated for those Hong merchants

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Letter, T.H. Cabot to E. Cabot, Jan. 10 and 15, 1835,
Massachusetts Historical Society, Samuel Cabot MSS.