Page 452 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

438.

one port need not pay the same tonnage duties at another port,

and (2) American vessels having anchored in port need not pay

any duties if the vessel departed within forty-eight hours and
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did not break bulk.

Cushing's proposals to regulate the payment of tonnage

duties were secondary to his overriding concern for the safe­

guard of Americans and their property at the new ports. The

English, in obtaining Hong Kong, planned to utilize its excel-

lent harbor as their base. Like the Portugese at Macao, the

English could reside and transact business at Hong Kong without
Chinese interference. English vessels would trade at the new

ports, but they would always return to Hong Kong. The Americans,

without the support of an imperial government and navy, had to

establish Factories at each port. In previous years at Canton,

American merchants residing in the Foreign Factories had experi­

enced few difficulties with the Chinese. Although even among

the Chinese the Cantonese had a reputation for their extreme

anti-foreign attitude, nothing more than verbal abuse character­

ized their treatment of Americans. Most American residents tol­

erated it as an unavoidable nuisance. The Chinese with whom they

transacted business displayed nothing but friendliness, and these

Chinese had a greater impact on American residents' attitudes.

Beginning with the opium crisis in 1839, relations be-

tween foreigners and Cantonese had deteriorated. Several riots

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These proposals became Arts. VI and X of the Treaty of
Wang-hsia. An original copy of the Treaty, written in Chinese on
silk, is in Caleb Cushing MSS, and an English version is printed
in United States Policy toward China: Diplomatic and Public Docu­
ments, 1839-1939� ed. by Paul H. Clyde (Durham, 1940), pp. 13-21.