Page 172 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 4 Early Eighteenth-century EEIC Porcelain Trade in Canton 1729-c.1740

prices and customs and bridge the gap between government officials and foreign

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traders, as well as collecting customs duties and fees for local government. In theory,

all the trade activities with foreign traders have to be conducted through licensed Hong

merchants; nonetheless, as we will see, the trade in porcelain was handled by many

other dealers who were not licenced merchants.

The trading took place in ‘factories’. This is the reason that the EEIC records were

named ‘Factory Records’. The EEIC would rent a Hong house as their factory in each

season in the early eighteenth century, as written in the factory record. Hong in

Chinese is applied to ‘place of business or shopping’. It could be a firm or a shop.

This owner of the Hong house served as brokers and dealer between Chinese and

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foreign traders, usually called Hong merchants. This title refers only to the owner of
the house.

In 1751 the EEIC Court suggested the expediency of hiring a factory at Canton

for a term of years, instead of pursuing the expensive practice of hiring one every

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season, and from about this time, the EEIC had a permanent factory at Canton.

Because the EEIC built its permanent factory in Canton, ‘renting Hong house as their

factory’ was no longer mentioned in the records.

One of the earliest recorded views of the Canton waterfront was dated by Patrick

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Conner to 1750. (Figure 4-2) This painting shows that it runs back from the

3 Detailed introduction of Co-Hong can be found in Weng Eang Cheong, ‘Introduction’ The Hong
Merchants of Canton: Chinese Merchants in Sino-Western Trade, 1684-1798 (Surrey: Curzon
Press, 1997), pp.1-26. Paul A. Van Dyke, Merchants of Canton and Macao: Politics and
Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press), pp.1-
5.
4 Peng Zeyi, ‘Qingdai Guangdong yanghang zhidu de qiyuan’[The origin of the Canton Hong-
merchant system in the Qing dynasty’] Lishi yanjiu [Historical Studies], 1(1957), p.21.
5 East India Company, Great Britain, India Office, List of factory records of the late East India
Company preserved in the Record Department of the India Office, London (London, 1897), p.xvi.
6 Patrick Conner, The China Trade 1600-1860 (Brighton: The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery &
Museums, 1986), p.29.
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