Page 386 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

372.

in Southeast Asian �orts influenced these men to argue for

a stronger Navy. This larger trade emanated from the expanding

American trade at Canton. At this time American corrunission

houses at Canton, already prospering, began to ?xtend their

interests to Batavia, Manila and Singapore. But there was no

support for the establishment of an East Indian s��adron at

Canton.

Other proponents for the new squadron included officers

who had served on the "Potomac" and the "Peacock." Two of

these men published accounts of their cruises after return­
60
ing to the United States. Both authors voiced the same

arguments as those expressed by consuls in East Indian ports .

. American commerce east of Cape of Good Hope, now worth ten

million dollars yearly, required the "constant vigilance and
61
protection of the government." But these men visualized

competition from the English as great a threat to American

foreign trade as pirates or foreign governments. This espec­

ially applied to the China trade, with the dissolution of the
62
East India Company's monopoly in 1834. The Navy Department

1
responded in the mid-1830 s with the creation of the East

60 N
J. . Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate
Potomac, under the Command of John Downes, during the Circum­
navigation of the Globe, in the Years 1831, ]8]2, and 1834 (New
York, 1935) and W.S.W. Ruschenbe.rger, A Voyage round the World:
including an Embassy to Muscat and Siam, in 1835, 1836, and 1837
(Philadelphia, 1838).

61
Ruschenberger, Voyage round the World, p. 240.
62
Reynolds, Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac,
pp. 384-85. Ruschenberger, Voyage round the World, p. 388.