Page 14 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

Empire in 1844. But I have also approached this period with

an understanding of the Chinese and their attitudes toward
"barbarians."

Available Chinese sources on relations with Americans

are not overwhelming, since the major mode of contact was

through Chinese merchants at Canton. These men did not corres­

pond and retain records and memoirs like their American counter­

parts. Moreover, the Imperial Court had a traditional policy

of allowing local authorities a wide margin of decision, so

until the opium crisis of 1839 the Court displayed little con­

cern for the foreign trade at Canton. Chinese scholars gen­

erally have not dealt with this period until recently. Most

of these studies by Chinese historians are by Communist writers,

who follow the Marxist-Maoist interpretation of imperialism

that all w�sterners equally preyed on China. A few Nationalist

Chinese have countered with a more benevolent view of Westerners

and Americans. But more study, incorporating research on both
sides of the Pacific, must be done on the contact between

Americans and Chinese throughout the nineteenth century. Sino­
American relations, as they developed under the "Canton system"

were only a beginning.

-ix-