Page 207 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

193.

they were amassing convinced English industrialists of the

rationality of opening the China trade to everyone. While

1
"free traders" campaigned against the East India Company s
monopoly, the Company could not defend itself effectively.

It could not combat American competition and its other spheres

of operations were in financial difficulty. By 1831-32 the

question had already been decided in England against the
75
Company.
1
Immediately after the end of the Company s monopoly

in 1834, the business of private English houses expanded.

Jardine, Matheson & Co., previously the largest of the private

traders in the India-to-Canton trade, maintained its position

of leadership. The house quickly replaced the Company as the

largest mercantile establishment at Canton. But Russell & Co.

was not far behind. This house could never overtake Jardine,

Matheson & Co., because the Americans never conducted as large

an opium trade as did the English. The opium trade, further­

more, at this time began to be an issue in the China trade.

Before 18341 when the private traders were subject to the

power of the East India Company, the opium trade remained

rather submerged. But with the end of the Company's charter,

the private houses gained ascendancy at Canton. The British

merchants in these houses, unlike the East India Company and

the American merchants, were not content with the "Canton
system." Having rid the China trade of one monopoly, these

76
Englishmen also wished to do away with another, the Co-Hong.

75
Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, pp.
175-84.
76
Greenberg, British Trade and the Opening of China, p. 179.