Page 206 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

192.

that Russell & Co. partners began to feel that their house's

business in England was more important than its American busi-
73
ness. The growth of Russell & Co.'s business in England to

this level was based on the house's financial ties with the

Barings. (This connection was another residual benefit the

house received from John P. Cushing and Perkins & Co.) No

other American house at Canton in the 1830's was able to

achieve the volume and value of trade handled by Russell & Co.

In 1837 Russell & Co. was still the second largest

trading establishment at Canton. This standing was quite an

accomplishment, especially since the status of the British
trade had changed. Four years earlier, in 1833, Parliament

had voted against renewing the Eqst India Company's charter.

Instead Parliament threw the English China trade open to pri­

vate traders. This vote had been a victory for the proponents

of free trade in England, namely the industrialists of the

North and Midlands. These men, aware of Americans' profits in

the importation of British woolens and cottons to Canton, began

lobbying for free trade as early as 1829. Their position was

bolstered by the number of private British traders already es­

tablished at Canton. These latter merchants, restricted to the

trade between India and Canton (i.e. the opium trade), had been
74
anxious to expand into trade to England. The amount of profits

73
Letter, A. Heard to S. Russell, Dec. 15, 1835, Heard MSS.
Letter, G. Wilees & Co. to S. Russell, Jul. 6, 1836, Heard MSS.
Letters, Perkins & Co. to S. Russell, Apr. 27, 1832; J. Coolidge
to S. Russell, Jun. 29, 1833, J.C. Green to S. Russell, Dec. 13,
1834, Russell & Co. MSS.

74
Private traders had already begun making inroads into
the home trade by sending Canton gooas to Singapore, where the
cargoes were transshipped aboard vessels for London. Greenberg,
British Trade and the Opening of China, pp. 97-99.