Page 473 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

459.

The fundamental change was the inauguration of a new system

of trade, the "treaty system, " which would govern Western

relations with China into the twentieth century. For over a

half century, American residents in China had lived and traded

under the "Canton system." Now gone forever--the Co-hong, the

Hoppo and Consoo fund, Cumshaw and measurement fees, receiving

ships, confinement to the Foreign Factories at Canton, inter­

diction of foreign women, and all the attendant characteristics

of the old laws--Americans and Chinese in 1844-45 looked forward

to a promising but uncertain future.