Page 24 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

10.
specie for teas and silks plus the opportunity of stopping at

other ports en route to Canton to trade. For a country as

young as the United States in the 1780's, possessing a trade

at Canton equal to that of Europe's was an achievement. Shaw

noted that European merchants at Canton "viewed Lthe American

trade7 with no small degree of jealousy. 11 9

American merchants entering the trade after Shaw's

voyages to China, however, discovered that his predictions did

not bring the expected profits. Instead, toward the end of

the decade, American voyages were less successful than antici­

pated, and apparently American trade to China could not expand

indefinitely. One reason was the American market itself.

Although the new country's population promised growth, its con­

sumption of Chinese teas did have limits. More importantly, so

did the sources of American ginseng. At first specie supplemen­

ted ginseng in the inward cargo. But the United States in the

10
1780's could hardly afford any loss of specie. As an example
of the change, the voyage of the ship "Massachusetts" in 1790

was very different from that of the "Empress of China" only
six years earlier.

Major Samuel Shaw, Supercargo in the first China ad­

venture, was the principal owner of the "Massachusetts." A

former aide-de-camp to General Henry Knox, Shaw had received an

appointment as the first American consul to China in 1786. By

1789 he had returned from his second voyage to Canton on

9
Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, p. 252.
10
Latourette , "Early Relations between the United States
and China, 11 pp. 27-28.