Page 13 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

refused to acknowledge its inferiority to the Celestial Empire.

John King Fairbank, the most notable of these Chinese historians,

has been the major force behind modern American scholarship on

China. His book Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast: The

Opening of the Treaty Ports, 1842-1856 (1953) focused on Anglo­

Chinese relations, but it remains one of the best discussions

of the turbulent period in which the "treaty-port system"

replaced the "Canton system." Most importantly, Fairbank fos­

tered a new approach to the study of contact between China and

the West. By emphasizing a familiarity with Chinese history

and sources, he encouraged scholars to understand Sino-Western
relations from a Chinese point-of-view.

My purpose in this study has been to re-examine the

genesis of American relations with China. I have viewed this

period of initial contact between Americans and Chinese as a

development distinct from the overall Western experience, al­

though it was part of that phenomenon. Americans shared the

Western heritage of the Europeans at Canton, yet the merchants

and traders from the United States forged their own set of

attitudes and actions regarding China and the "Canton system."

In my study of the American experience in China under the "Canton

s y stem", I have retraced the research of Latourette, Dennett

and Dulles. Unlike these authors though, I have relied most

heavily on the private papers of American residents at Canton and

on the business papers of their cornrnission agencies and houses.

These merchants and their trade defined the basis on which the

American government established formal relations with the Celestial

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