Page 211 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

197.
80
with the Chinese.

In 1830 the British faced more problems with the
Chinese at Canton. In October, when Company agents returned

to Canton from Macao to open the trading season, they dis­

covered that three Parsees had murdered a Dutch shipmaster.

A jury of foreign residents ruled that the man's death 11was

caused by blows inflicted by three Parsees in an affray."

Immediately the governor-general ordered an investigation by

the Nan-hai hsien (district magistrate). To preclude inter­

ference, the Company shipped the Parsees off to Bombay. This

action did not please the Chinese authorities, who simultan­

eously became incensed over the fact that one of the Select

Committee had brought his wife up to the Canton Factories.

Added to this flagrant violation of Chinese law was the use
81
of sedan chairs at Canton by British merchants. Foreigners

were expressly forbidden either to keep foreign women in their

Factories or to ride sedan chairs. The Chinese, furthermore,

never had relaxed the enforcement of these regulations what­

soever. Governor-general Li severely chastised the Company

for these actions and demanded that it co-operate in a Chinese

inquest of the homicide and send the woman away from Canton.

Thus began another war of communications among the English

80
Greenberg, British Trade and the Openinq of China,
pp. 176-79. This book is based on the extensive manuscripts
of Jardine, Matheson & Co., the largest and most important
private house at Canton before 1844.
81
Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, IV,
231-35.