Page 231 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

217.

imported opium, never sold well in an unadulterated state at

Canton. But it did prove useful as an additive to Turkish

opium.

American activity in the opium trade after 1815 in­

creasingly agitated the East India Co. at Canton. The Select

Committee felt that "the importation of any quantity of Turkey

Opium cannot fail to have a material effect on the price lof

16
all opiu� in the China market.11 In the first trading

seasons after the end of the war, the Cormnittee watched as the
total quantities of Bengal opium bought at Canton declined

while sales of Malwa and Turkey increased. The cause of the

drop in Bengal opium was its higher price, for which British

merchants at Canton were responsible. They had combined dur­

ing the war, when little opium other than Bengal was imported

to China, to raise the price per chest. By 1817 the Chinese

had turned to the cheaper though inferior Malwa and Turkey
17
opium. The Company, although it did not actually trade in

opium itself, became apprehensive lest its profits in the pro­

duction of opium falter. John Perkins Cushing astutely real­

ized that Company Directors would not remain idle. In a letter

to his cousin at Leghorn_he wrote: 11We know very well the

jealousy of the East India Co. & their readiness to make sacri­

18
fices to destroy all interference.11

16
Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, III, 238.
17
Morse, Chronicles of the East India Company, III, 339.
18
Letter, Perkins & Co. to F.W. Paine, Mar. 24, 1818, Har­
vard Business School, Baker Library, Perkins & Co. MSS.