Page 74 - Merchants and Mandarins China Trade Era

60.

moral superiority was moreover an incomprehensible concept for

the Europeans. The failure of the Chinese to recognize this

would eventually climax in war.

By the time American traders arrived at Canton in the

late eighteenth century a rigorous system of rules and regu­

lations for governing Western trade had been established. Such

had not been the case when the Europeans ventured to China in
the sixteenth century. Although the Chinese restricted the

trade, the atmosphere was much more open and free. But

jealousies among various European traders, especially between

the Portugese and the Dutch, led them to be more aggressive

toward the Chinese and their trade. Their flagrant violation

of existing laws convinced the Imperial government of the need
23
for more rigid regulation. Over the following two hundred

years the Chinese developed the system which American and other

foreign merchants called the "Canton system." Included in this

system were laws governing all facets of the foreign trade, even

the lives of the merchants who participated in it.

As soon as their vessels entered Chinese waters,

Americans met with Chinese regulations. Although foreign

vessels remained unmolested by the Chinese at the Outer

Anchorages of Macao and the islands nearby, legally there was

to be no trade until a foreign vessel reached the Inner Anchorage

1
at Whampoa. Beginning in the early 1820 s, foreigners developed

23
wines, A Peep at China, p. 102.