Page 406 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

392.
4
imported previously. In fact, this trade never completely

stopped. Reports of opium smuggling emanated from Macao in

August, three months after Lin's destruction of the drug at
5
Canton.

American merchants refrained from the opium trade during

1839-41 because of commercial necessity. Robert Bennet Forbes,

chief of Russell & Co. for part of this period, wrote that
American merchants retired from the opium trade "as soon as

they found it for their interest to do so, fearing that it would

endanger their regular business. II Once the English vacated

Canton, the Americans, "knowing that they would be in the powers

of the local authorities at Canton," had greater reason to avoid
6
trafficking in opium. Their profits from the regular trade,

now an American monopoly, were too large to lo se. But the

English at Macao and then at Hong Kong had nothing to gain from

stopping their share of the drug trade. They first sustained

the contraband trade from Macao. As strained relations with

the Chinese finally deteriorated to the point of war, the English

concentrated their opium trade along the China coast. Value of

4
Letter, J. Coolidge to A. Heard, Nov. 29, 1835, Harvard
Business School, Baker Library, Heard MSS. Coolidge claimed that
in September 1839 Jardine, Matheson & Co. earned one million pounds
sterling from the sale of opium. He explained that "this sounds
large, but there must be some foundation for it ,. for I heard it
from an enemy."
5
Extract of Letter, W.P. Peirce to L. Saltonstall, Aug. 4,
1839, Library of Congress, Caleb Cushing MSS.
6
R.B. Forbes, Remarks on China and the China Trade (Boston,
1844), pp. 50, 54-55. As of March 1840 Russell & Co. had not re­
sumed any trade in opium. Before the. crisis in 1839, that house
had possessed the major share of the American opium trade. Letter,
R.B. Forbes to S. Cabot, Mar. 3, 1840, Massachusetts Historical
Society, Samuel Cabot MSS.