Page 250 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

236.

servers also claimed other reasons for its failure "were

owing. .to bad management & mainly to the circumstance of

the Chinese being so firmly fixed in their old habits as to

prefer getting the Opium thro' their accustomed channels

altho' they are obliged to pay much higher for it. 11 Although
many of the English discontinued their ventures along the

Coast, a few of them tried to maintain their efforts on a

small scale. Aware that the coastal trade had as yet come to
11
1
nothing, 11 the Americans were not able to effect Cushing s ideas.
But Perkins & Co. continued to predict that continued restric­

tive policies in the area around Canton would expand the coas­

tal trade. This expansion did not occur until after 1831,

but even earlier Cushing aided the efforts of a few English
merchants by allowing them, for a price, the use of Perkins

46
& Co.'s vessels and crews to deliver the opium. When the

increased volume of Indian opium flooded Canton in the early
1
1830 s, these English merchants merely stepped up their

operations. Within a few years American and English opium

clippers visited the coastal ports of Amoy, Chinchew, Foochow,

and Ningpo regularly. One of Jardine's clippers even ventured

46
Perkins & Co. observed that the only opium profitable
along the coast was Indian opium, as the Chinese in that region
did not like Turkish. In the 1820's Americans primarily dealt in
Turkish, although Perkins & Co. did have consignments from India.
Barred from trading in India, Cushing planned for his opium
clippers to procure transshipped opium at Batavia from Portugese
vessels out of Damao. Letter, T.T. Forbes to T.H. Perkins, Nov.
1, 1824, Forbes MSS. Bennet Forbes was one of the captains
despatched by Cushing to serve English merchants along the coast.
Letter, J.P. Cushing to R.B. Forbes, Jan. 19, 1827, Forbes
Family MSS.