Page 39 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

25.

masters successfully kept secret the exact spots where they

procured their pepper. Eventually other captains discovered

the inlets where Peele's masters traded with Sumatran natives

and more Salem merchants entered the pepper trade.

In the early 1800's the Salem East India trade gradually

centered on pepper, coffee, sugar and spices native to the Dutch

East Indies. Carrying specie and miscellaneous cargoes of

foodstuffs, metals, soap furniture and spirits, vessels went
p
no farther than ports in Java and Sumatra. Their monopoly of

the coffee and spice trade in the Indies brought immense profits

to the merchants of Salem. These men also took over the American

trade to Calcutta, where they exchanged cargoes of Madeira wine

for sugar, indigo and India cottons. Consequently, except for

a few men such as Derby and Crowninshield who maintained fleets

of vessels, Salem merchants only occasionally despatched vessels

to Canton. Nevertheless, Salem's foreign commerce had a tre­

mendous impact on the overall East India trade. The daring
and initiative of the masters and merchants of Salem discovered

the wealth of East India and brought it back to the United
States.

VI

American trade at Canton increased greatly in the early
28
years after 1800. This expansion was partially the result

28
Latourette, "Early Relations between the United States
and China," p. 29. For the number of American vessels trading
each season at Canton in the period 1785-1815, see H.B. Morse,
The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China, 1635-
1834 (5 vols.; Cambridge, 1926), Vols. II, III.