Page 222 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era
P. 222

208.

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                               American  merchants          attention  returned  to  their  trade
                   after  the  Napier  Affair.           The  1834-35  season  was  a  very  pros­

                   perous  one  for  the  Americans.            They  continued  the  extensive

                                                                                              1
                   commercial  network  they  had  constructed  in  the  1820 s.                     But
                   the  China  trade  would  never  quite  be  the  same.                The  demise  of


                   the  East  India  Company  and  the  rise  of  the  private  British

                   merchants  had  irrevocably  changed  the  fundamental  attitudes

                   on  which  British  trade  at  Canton  operated.                Although  Lord

                   Napier  had  failed,  others  would  follow.                Furthermoreu  the

                   ascendance  of  the  private  traders  had  also  encouraged  them

                   to  flaunt  the  formerly  submerged  opium  trade.                 American  mer­

                   chants  had  also  become  involved  in  the  opium  trade,  although

                   to  a  smaller  extent  than  the  English.              The  Chinese,  in  seek­

                   ing  to  maintain  the  "Canton  system"  of  trade,  could  not  afford

                   to  allow  such  an  illegal  trade  to  continue  unabated.
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