Page 361 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

347.

cormnerce in China and the Pacific Ocean necessitated sole

American occupation of the Northwest Coast. Congress re­
23
jected the bill. During the following decade Congress

1
never discussed the Northwest. By the late 1820 s the fur
trade had declined in that area and, although American com­

merce in the Pacific continued to grow, fur trading vessels

almost ceased to appear on the Coast. When the question of

1
occupying Oregon resurrected in the 1840 s, Americans argued

in terms that were not purely cormnercial.
Aside from some concern over the Northwest in the

1
1820 s, the American government ignored China. In 1828 the

editors of the major newspaper at Canton noted: 11The United

States of America furnishes nothing that we have seen or

heard concerning China, or any other country of Asia.

American merchants at Canton did not find the government's

lack of concern surprising. They were at Canton to trade.

The merchants realized their government could not supply them

with any military support, without which diplomatic inter­

ference was meaningless. In their view of the world the

Chinese refused to recognize other countries as anything but

tributary states. This belief in the superiority of the

Celestial Empire precluded diplomatic relations in the Western

sense. Americans at Cc:inton accepted their stu.tus as "bar­

barians" and did not demand support from the American govern-

23
u.s., Congress, House, 20th Cong., 2nd sess., Dec. 23,
1828- Jan. 9, 1829, Annals of Congress, 125-95.

24
Canton Register, I, 32 (Aug. 16, 1828).