Page 466 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

452.

English community. Their experience at Canton led Americans

to assume they could transact business profitably in additional

ports under the new "treaty system." Americans who had resided

in China before the Opium War were willing to accept the assur­

ances of an Imperial Commissioner as sufficient evidence that

the Chinese would not discriminate against their trade in the

new system. Some Americans even feared that attempts to nego­

tiate a treaty might offend the Chinese and thus jeopardize

their relations with the Celestial Empire. But the Treaty of

Wang-hsia, which Cushing virtually composed himself, served

American commercial and diplomatic interests in China. Most

importantly, Cushing obtained the protection of international

law for Americans and their trade at the new ports.

International (or Western) law was a novel concept in

Sino-Western relations. Until the Opium War, China had dic­

tated the basis for its contact with the West in a set of regu­

lations known as the "Canton system." Restricted to commercial

relations at the port of Canton, Westerners generally acquiesced

to Chinese rule because of the demand in the West for China teas

and silks. Americans especially were willing to trade under the

"Canton system, 11 as they.traditionally obeyed the rules and regu­

lations of the country in which they pursued commercial enter-

prise. But the Opium War changed the basis for Sino-Western

contact. The gradual deterioration of Imperial administration

1
under the Ch ing dynasty had caused an upset in the balance-of­

power that had allowed the Chinese to delineate the basis of
their foreign relations. Increasingly characterized by corrup-