Page 217 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

203.

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posi tion. Until then the Chinese did not recognize any
official from foreign countries. They in fact dealt through

consuls, but only as tai-pans or head men. The Chinese treated
1
foreign consuls (or the East India Company s Select Committee)

as spokesmen for the merchants of their respective national­

ities. To communicate through one person was practical, but

that person carried no special rank with the Chinese and cer­

tainly no political overtones.

By the end of July, Lord Napier and governor-general

Lu settled into a stalemate, with a flurry of demands and re­

fusals passing back and forth. One of the American residents

vacationing at Macao tersely commented on the situation: "I

observe that Lord Napier has commenced the warfare of negotia­

tion, which for what I can see, may be continued very harm­

lessly, as long as his patience lasts, the Chinese being at

11 91
their old Game--& consequently quite at home-- The next
move by the Chinese was to threaten the English with a stop­

page of trade. Governor-general Lu ordered Napier to return

to Macao, where he w o uld be anyway, and await word from Peking.

If he should not wish to go, the Chinese would stop their trade.

Such an order aroused Napier•s stubbornness. He did not leave

and in mid-August the Chinese halted all trade with the English.

90
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t
C1ang Hsin-pao, Commissioner Lin an d h e Opium War
h
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(Cambridge, 1964), pp. 51-62. Maurice Collis, Foreiqn Mud: the
Opium Imbroglio at Canton in the 1830 s and the Anglo-Chinese
1
War (New York, 1946), pp. 108-21.
91
Letter, A.A. Low to A. Heard, Jul. 29, 1834, Heard MSS.