Page 226 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 6 A New Context of Porcelain Trade 1760-1770

33
emergence of foreign trade. They believed that the Qing Government intended to

promote the overseas trade instead of prohibiting foreign trade. This research agrees

with this argument that the confinement of Canton has actually stimulated trade, as

well as the local manufactures. The interpretation that the Qing Government’s policy

was to ‘close the Chinese gate to the rest of world’ is simply erroneous. In fact, many

interactions, especially through local dealers and European traders, forged closer links.

As mentioned above, the 1755 regulations legitimated shopkeepers and outside

dealers to conduct a private trade of porcelain.

Thus, when Canton became the sole place to trade, with the expectation of a

certain number of arriving ships, the trade was more predictable and less volatile. The

business between Chinese dealers and foreign traders was often short term in the

previous period. This explains why the number of porcelain dealers was fluctuating

and some of them joined the trade and they might disappear in the next season. Most

porcelain dealers were non-Hong merchants and some of them were travelling

merchants. This means they did not have warehouses for stock, and that they would

need to consider the risk of their parcels being refused. For example, in 1756, the

service supplied by a Hong merchant was rejected by the VOC supercargoes because

33 See William Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hong mou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth
Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); Pierre-Etienne Will, R.Bin Wong and
James Z. Lee, Nourish the People: The State Civilian Granary System in China 1650-1850
(University of Michigan Press, 1991); R.Bin Wong, China Transformed: Historical Change and
the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Helen Dunstan, State
or Merchant: Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006); Peter C. Perdue, ‘Property Rights on Imperial China's Frontiers’ in John
F. Richards (ed.), Land, Property, and the Environment (Oakland: Institute for Contemporary
Studies, CA, 2002), pp.71-93; Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the
China Coast, 1700-1845, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University of Press, 2005); Merchants of
Canton and Macao: Politics and Strategies in Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong:
Hong Kong University of Press, 2011); Merchants of Canton and Macao: Success and Failure in
Eighteenth-Century Chinese Trade (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016).
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