Page 251 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era
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With the removal of the East India Company's monopo
listic charter in 1834, the opium trade expanded even further.
Jardine, Matheson & Co., the largest mercantile establishment
at Canton, had stationed a receiving ship on the coast and
kept another vessel "constantly employed between the station
and Lintin, to supply the first with opium and such other
cargo as happens to be in demand." The largest American house,
Russell & Co., viewed this expanded growth as damaging com
petition. The house had neither the vessels nor the capital
to invest in the opium trade in terms comparable with the pri
vate English merchants. John C. Green, now chief of the house,
commented on the coastal trade: "We of course could not touch
this business if we wanted. II Although his house still
retained its consignments in Turkish opium, its market in Born-
bay fell to Parsee merchants. In 1834 the Parsees, many of whom
formerly consigned their shipments to American houses, now
operated through other Parsees who recently had established
houses at Canton. This change also hurt Russell & Co.'s pro
fits from their receiving ship, as the Parsees set up one of
47
Many of the ports along the coast used by English
merchants in trading opium came out of the voyage of the East
India Company's sloop-of-war "Lord Amherst" in 1831. The
President of the Select Committee at Cant.on had com.missioned
this voyage to ascertain "how far the northern Ports of this
Empire may gradually be opened to British Commerce. 11 On
board as interpreter was Rev. Charles Gutzlaff, a missionary
who understood several dialects of Chinese. (In later years
Gutzlaff traveled aboard the opium clippers and distributed
biblical tracts to the opium dealers.) Morse, Chronicles of
the East India Company, IV, 330-34. S. Wells Williams, "Recol
lections of China Prior to 1840," Royal Asiatic Society Journal
(China Branch), VIII (February 21, 1874), 16.
