Page 130 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

116.

teas and silks they paid specie, which was more valuable to

the Chinese than the products of Western countries. Conse­

quently, Americans were not so dependent upon the Co-hong's

monopoly of the trade as their major competitors, the British

28
East India Company. This factor saved them from much of the
resentment and indignation their British colleagues felt

toward the Hong merchants and the operation of the "Canton

system" of trade. Basically, the Americans were only concerned

with the most expeditious methods to achieve maximum profits.

They therefore sought to make themselves as agreeable as

possible in all reasonable circumstances. As the Hong mer­

chants pursued similar interests, the compatability of the two

groups benefited both.

Implicit in the Americans' acceptance of the "Canton

system" was their recognition of the sovereignity of Imperial

law over them. The Americans demonstrated their willingness

to adhere to the laws of the Chinese Empire in 1821 in the

Terranovia Affair by allowing an American seaman to die rather

than disobey Imperial rule. (This Affair developed over a

dispute concerning the seaman Terranovia's involvement in the

accidental death of a Chtnese woman.) In acceding to Chinese

demands to hand over the suspect to be judged and punished with­

in the Chinese legal system, the American merchants believed

they had no alternative. An American justifying in 1830 the

28 . .
l
1 B • • Morse an d H.F. Macnair, in Far Eastern Interna-
tional Relations (Boston, 1831), p. 66, state that three-fifths
of the American trade was on a cash basis.