Page 193 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

179.

from their South American colonies back to Spain. The most

successful American merchants in the China trade, such as

Thomas H. Perkins and John J. Astor, sent their vessels back

and forth to Europe to procure metals, food stuffs, sundries

50
and specie for the Canton trade. During the war this branch
of the American China trade virtually halted as all Ai�erican

shipping suffered a decline.
After the war ended, the same Americans who had parti­

cipated in the China trade before 1812 resumed their ventures.

These men were joined by many other American merchants anxious

to share in the profits of the postwar economic and commercial

boom. The resulting problems forced the older merchants to

make some changes in their operations. Their problems now con­

cerned selling China exports as well as the continuous task

of procuring imports for Canton. Those merchants who before

1812 had sought imports in Europe began in 1816-17 sending

their Canton teas and silks there to sell. Although prohibited

from entering English markets because of the monopoly of the

East India Company, Americans were very effective in taking

over the markets of Continental Europe. Major ports for Amer­

ican-exported China teas and silks included the northern

European cities of Hamburg, Bremen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and

Antwerp. (China exports did not seem to appeal to the Medi-

terranean area, where no one drank tea.) The bulk of this

5
°Kenneth W. Porter, John Jacob Astor, Business Man
(2 vols.; Cambridge, 1931), II, 598. Seaberg and Paterson,
Merchant Prince of Boston, pp. 155-56.