Page 54 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

40.

reckless lumbering of the Islands' sandalwood groves. By 1825

only extremely inferior wood remained. This wood could no

longer compete successfully with the fine wood brought to Can­

ton from India and elsewhere. In 1830 American merchants at

Canton warned that Hawaiian sandalwood was "worth but little

more than freight. 11 53 In other words, the wood sold for about

the same amount as the cost of shipping it to Canton.

With the decline of the sandalwood trade after 1825

the nature of American commercial activity at the Hawaiian
Islands changed. American merchants employed the port of

Honolulu in their trade between Canton and the newly indepen­

dent ports of California, Mexico and South America. During
1 1
the 1830 s and 1840 s the Islands became an integral part of

the American China trade to the West Coast, especially Calif­

ornia. At this period new merchant houses seeking a share

of this new China trade appeared in Honolulu. These merchants

differed from those who had made their profits in the fur and

sandalwood trades previous to 1830. The major merchants en­

gaged in those trades had operated out of their horreports in

the United States. They merely had agents in the Islands to

carry out their instructions. Over a certain period of time

they were guaranteed immense profits. When the supply of fur

and sandalwood petered out after 1825, these merchants discon­

tinued their resident agents in the Islands.

New merchants and their independent houses soon became

53
Bradley, American Frontier in Hawaii, pp. 7 5-76, 117-18,
214-15.