Page 467 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

453.

tion and venality, Ch'ing officials became powerless to en­

force Imperial rule. The expansion of the opium trade in the
1
1830 s signified the decline of the "Canton system." As

power slipped away from the Chinese administrators, the Eng­

lish stepped into the vacuum. Seeking to create order and

stability, England used its military force to impose Western

concepts of international law on its relations with the Chin­

ese Empire. Consequently, the basis. of Sino-Western contact

became the "treaty system."

Many Americans trading in China remained blind to the

fundamental changes inherent in the Treaty of Nanking. These

merchants, who still intended to operate with the Chinese

under old regulations, did not deem the protection of interna­

tional law necessary for the successful prosecution of trade.

But Cushing, as a lawyer and diplomat, realized in 1843 that

rights and privileges not secured by treaty could easily disap­
pear. The presence of English military force in China, its

power already manifested in the Opium War, lent plausibility to
Cushing's concern over the change in the basis of foreign trade

in China and over the consequent impact on the status of Ameri­

can commerce. Cushing shrewdly observed that British occupation

of Hong Kong gave English traders an advantage over their com­

petitors. Like the Portugese at Macao, the English possessed

a territorial base (with an excellent harbor) from which they

could exclude all Chinese interference. Americans, on the other

hand, had only the doubtful protection of Imperial law. As the

Ch'ing dynasty declined and Imperial power waned, the Chinese