Page 48 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

34.

American claim to the Northwest. American interest in the China

trade was the basis for this resurgent concern for the Northwest
40
just as it would be again in the 1840's.

Ironically, as American national interest in the

Northwest began to spread, the American fur trade suffered

a temporary decline. By 1821 English and Russian competition

once again threatened the interests of American traders.

Shortly after the Northwest Company had acquired Astoria, it

abandoned the fort because of ruinous expenses. Thereafter

the Company merged with the dominant Hudson's Bay Company.

This newly-enlarged group moved their central base of operations
41
up the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver. American vessels

thus lost their business with the Northwest Company, as Hud­

son's Bay Company still sent their furs to Canton via England
in East India Company vessels. In the same year Americans

faced new Russian restrictions promulgated in Czar Alexander's

ukase. But they were able to overcome both threats. By 1823

Hudson's Bay Company borrowed the practice of the old North­

west Company in sending their furs to Canton consigned to

Americans. Before long Americans were a crucial link in

British trade between North America and Canton, as "all sup­

plies for British establishments, west of the Rocky Mountains,

were brought from London to Boston, and carried thence to the

mouth of the Columbia in American ships, and all their col­

lections of furs sent to Canton consigned to an American house,

and the proceeds shipped to England. .or the United States

4
°Foster Rhea Dulles, China and America: The Story of their
Relations since 1784 (Princeton, 1946), pp. 9-10.
41 Irving, Astoria, p. 511.