Page 162 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

148.

profitable than ever before. After 1815 all American commerce,

foreign and domestic, prospered and expanded. But within a

few years this corrunercial bubble burst, as the United States

slid into a serious economic depression. Even as American mer­

chants in 1818 described the future of the China trade in

glowing terms, signs of impending economic troubles had ap­

peared. The major foreshadowing was a decline of available
. 3
sources o f specie. Since 1800, although furs, sandalwood

and beche-de-mer had entered the trade, the primary American

export to Canton had become gold and silver bullion.

In 1819 the American economy fell into dire circum­

stances. Banks closed their doors, currency became worthless,

businessmen went bankrupt, and farmers lost their land as

the entire country suffered a convulsion never before experi­

enced. As a result of the Panic of 1819, the China trade de­
clined drastically. Just five months after forecasting tre­

mendous growth in the China trade, Bryant & Sturgis wrote to

its agent at Canton of the "stagnated state" of the American

economy and its deleterious effect on all foreign trade. As

merchants in the United States were finding dollars (Spanish

bullion) impossible to procure, all of them would have to cur-

tail adventures to Canton. In October, Providence merchants
4
in the China trade reflected worse circumstances. As the

3
carl Seaberg and Stanley Paterson, Merchant Prince of
Boston: Colonel T.H. Perkins, 1764-1854 (Cambridge, 1971), p. 285.
4
Letter, Bryant & Sturgis to J.P. Sturgis, Mar. 12, 1819,
Bryant & Sturgis Y�S. Letter, E. Carrington & Co. to P.W. Snow,
Oct. 15, 1819, Library of Congress, Russell & Co. MSS.