Page 242 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

228.

heavy exactions which they are subjected to by the Mandarins.
32
II
Although Manila did not overshadow Lintin in the
opium trade, like Batavia the port became important in the

overall American China trade. Throughout the history of the

American trade in opium, the drug never assumed the paramount

role in the American trade that it occupied in British trade
33
with China.

1
By the mid-1820,s Cushing s management made the "Bos­
ton Concern" the primary American speculators in opium. In

January 1825 Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the paterfamilias of

the Perkins commercial establishment, wrote to his nephew at

Canton that "we have no powerful competitors" in the opium

trade. "If the calculations we have made. .as to the quan-

tity of Opium. .is correct, you will compleatly isi£7 con-

trol the market. 11 The market Perkins mentioned was in Turkey
34
opium. But at the very time Perkins wrote to Cushing other

32
Letters, Perkins & Co. to E. Perkins, Jun. 5, 1821,
Perkins & Co. to J. & T.H. Perkins, Sep. 10, 1822, Perkins & Co.
to Addison & Co., Feb. 25, 1823, Perkins & Co. to T.H. Perkins,
Feb. 27, 1823, Perkins & Co. MSS.
33
The later American trade in opium to Batavia, Manila
and even Singapore can be seen from "Consular Returns for American
Vessels arriving at & departing from the Port of ___ ," enclosed
in Consular Despatches: Batavia, Manila, Singapore. These Returns
only begin around 1834. American trade in opium to Singapore began
in spring 1830, Letter, A.L. Johnston & Co. to J.R. Latimer, Apr.
10, 1830, Library of Congress, Latimer F3mily MSS.
34 ., ·
h'
,
1 etter, T.H. PerK1ns to J.P. Cus 1ng, Jan. 15 1825 ,
Massachusetts HistoricGl Society, Samuel Cabot MSS. By this time
American trade in opium at Smyrna had grown to allow the estab­
lishment of four commercial houses at the Turkish port: Woodman
& Offley, Perkins Brothers, Langdon & Co., and Issaverdes, Stith
& Co. (Stith was a former supercargo in the China trade.) Downs,
"Americans and the Opium Trade," p. 423 (footnote).