Page 254 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

240.

£erred the opium to their own bags and carried it away. This

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process occurred quickly and efficiently. With the rapid
expansion of trade after 1834, certain English merchants de­

cided to cut costs and increase their opium profits. Begin­

ning in 1835, they sent opium in small craft up to Whampoa
and even to Canton. These actions alarmed everyone involved

in the trade, including "the most respectable houses. .who
52
confined their operations to the outer stations.11

While foreigners became more flagrant in their impor­

tation of opium in the 1830's, the Imperial government once

again examined the opium trade. What caught the Court's at­

tention was the growing coastal commerce. Foreigners had been

sighted as far north as Manchuria. Unlike previous occasions

on which the Emperor's concern centered on the physical detri­

ments of opium, the situation now began to have a crucial im­

pact on the economic structure of the Empire. The most devas­

tating effect of the opium trade was the drain of silver

bullion (sycee). Chinese opium dealers had begun paying for

the drug in sycee in the late 1820's, only a few years after

the Americans stopped importing silver dollars in favor of

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bills of exchange. Americans commented on the specie drain

51
william C. Hunter, The 'Fan Kwae' at Canton before Treaty
Days, 1825-1844 (London, 1882), pp. 64-65.
52
R.B. Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston,
1844), p. 46. Morse, Trade and Administration of the Chinese Em­
pire, pp. 332-36.

53
For the argument that the end of imported silver was more
important than the growth of the opium trade, see W.E. Cheong,
"Trade and Finance in China, 1784-1834," Business History, VII, 1
(January 1965), 34-56, and H.B. Morse, The International Relations