Page 365 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

3 51.

cially-appointed consul. They also desired "an experienced

physician and surgeon attached to the American consulate,"

especially to assist American seamen. In the past the Amer-

icans had faced the "degrading" necessity of using the services

of English doctors.

In 1814 Benjamin C. Wilcocks, a resident-agent from

Philadelphia, received notification of his appointment as
1
American consul. The State Department s attitude had not

changed. Wilcocks still faced problems of impressment and he

protested with as little success as Carrington had eight years

earlier. After the War, Consul Wilcocks had to deal with the

opium trade and official Chinese attempts to thwart the impor­

tation of opium. An opium trader himself, Wilcocks duly re­

ported that the Chinese detained an American ship with an

opium cargo. The consul did not add that he owned an interest

in the cargo. He did nothing again but protest to the Chinese.
Shortly thereafter in 1821, while the Chinese continued meas­

ures to stop the opium trade, Wilcocks and the Americans at

Canton became involved in the Terranovia Affair. This crisis

pointed out the futile position occupied by the consul. Dis­

tance and modes of communication virtually ruled out waiting

for decisions from the United States. There was no reason to

expect the State Department's concern anyway.

Instead, the consul looked to the American community

at Canton for advice and counsel. During the years of American

trade at Canton the American consul, himself always a merchant

who possessed nothing beyond a title, had become dependant on