Page 46 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

32.

although it did appear to aid the Americans in late 1814.

Local authorities warned the English to keep their warships

out of terri torial waters of the Interior. 11 3 7 This order in
11
effect protected American vessels anchored near Canton� But

ELglish obedience to the warning rather than Chinese enforce­

ment rendered the vessels safe. Other nations in China did

not act as impartially as the Chinese. In December 1814 the

American Letter-of-Marque brig "Rambler" of Boston captured

the H.B.M. ship "Arabella" of Calcutta. But the Portugese,

who controlled the port of Macao on the coast of China, ar­

rested and jailed the "Rambler's" captain and forced the crew

to return the "Arabella" to the English. The Americans never­

theless scored a minor victory by first disposing of the

"Arabella's" cargo.

VII
After the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, English warships

ended their blo-::kade of Canton and American vessels stranded

there sailed to the United States. American trade with China

for the war years had been even less than that of the year of

the Embargo in 1807-08. In the year after the War ended
38
American trade to China quickly revived. This postwar China

37 11.A
n Anglo-American Conflict Occurs in Chinese Waters,
Nov. 30, 1814," in Fo Lo-shu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino­
Western Relations, 1644-1820, The Association for Asian Studies:
Monographs and Papers, No. XXII (Tucson, 1966), p. 394.

38
Morse, C h ronic es o t e East In ia Company, III, 155-65,
d.
f h
. 1
206, 228, 243-44, 308, 328.