Page 42 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

28.

Although American seamen averted war in China, they

were not so successful in the Atlantic Ocean. Consequently,

the United States declared war on England in June 1812.

Immediately English warships at Canton blockaded all American
vessels anchored there. American trade in China virtually

stopped. The English, furthermore, successfully kept Americans

away from the Northwest Coast and from the Sandwich Islands,

thereby halting the American fur trade in the Pacific Ocean.

This branch of the American China trade had changed since

its beginning in the 1780's. A group of Boston merchants who

had made their fur trading operations more efficient had pushed
32
out their rivals. But the American merchant who had taken

the lead in the American fur trade and who suffered most from

English policies during the War was a New Yorker, John Jacob

Astor.

1
In the 1780 s Astor, a German immigrant merchant to New
York, had begun merchandizing furs from Montreal to Europe via

New York. Desiring to expand into general sales, Astor had

moved into the China trade. By 1805 he owned the ship "Beaver"

in which he shipped specie, ginseng, quicksilver and furs to

Canton. Astor was also interested in improving his profits in

the fur trade. He devised the method of employing a number of

vessels, whereby he split the voyage from the Northwest Coast

to Canton into separate sections. Each vessel had a specialized

32
Seaberg and Paterson, Merchant Prince of Boston, pp.
181-82. The most prominent Boston house in the Northwest fur
trade was that of James & Thomas H. Perkins. The latter had
begun his career in the China trade as a supercargo for Elias
Haskett Derby of Salem.