Page 177 - 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

1728: ‘We have had an abundance of rain here, yet in the Inland Provinces, they have

17
scarcely had any…so that we are now obliged to stand still.’ They also needed to

buy packing materials such as wooden chests. For example, officers once made a deal

with a carpenter to make Chinaware chests and ordered him to make them as soon as

18
possible.
Accidents might also delay the shipment of ‘China ware’. In 10 October 1723,

the officer received a report that one of the EEIC boats sank on the way to board the

ship Harfford, which carried fifty-six chests of ‘China ware’. They worried about the

breakage and sent for help immediately. Although they repacked the next day, some

chests were damaged and were put in upside down in a hurry. In the end, the boatmen

19
were punished as an example to all men for the future.
However, despite all the operational difficulties and frustrations experienced at

Canton, the EEIC porcelain trade with China increased steadily. By the 1700s the

Dutch merchants faced competition from the British East India Company (founded

1600) whose presence in the Far East was growing stronger. It first cornered an equal

share in the Chinese export market with the Dutch, and by the 1730s, it had attained

20
trade supremacy.

17 IOR/G/12/27, 5 August, 1728.
18 IOR/G/12/35, 30 July 1730.
19 IOR/G/12/24, 20, 21 October, 1723.
20 Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood, with additional contribution by Ts’ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang,
Science and Civilisation in China Volume 5, Part 12, Ceramic Technology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), p.745.
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