Page 228 - 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

important to note, however, that the Co-Hong functioned as a representative of trade

to secure a steady stream of revenue for the Qing Government and the controlling of

the foreign trade. This was a great opportunity for Canton Hong merchants, as they

came to monopolise foreign trade with several European nations.

The EEIC and other trading companies took notice of the increase in the

merchants’ collective power, indicated by the formalisation of the Co-Hong. In a 1760

letter from the EIC supercargoes (officials in charge of the trade) to the Company’s

Council of Bombay and of Fort St. George, the officials complained of

‘Encroachments of the Mandarins and Merchants’ stating that they are becoming so

Burthensome that unless the several Companies Trading here should fall on some

Scheme to defeat their projects, we are very doubtful the Terms will in a few Years

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be too exorbitant and too disadvantageous to continue the Sending Ships [sic].

While the situation was in reality less dire than the EEIC believed, the letter shows

an illustration of the concerns from foreign companies. By allowing the Co-Hong to

trade with the foreign companies, the Qing government also concerned the control of

the trade, as it regulated the Co-Hong by making sure there was always healthy

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competition between factions within the institution. Therefore, when it felt the Co-

Hong’s power had grown too great, the Qing Government stepped in as it did in 1764,

and the governor general and Hoppo declared, ‘a monopoly of the highest degree and

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contrary to the law’. This resulted in the Qing granting ‘30 percent of the tea trade
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to the inland merchants’, a move that effectively undermined the monopolistic

37 ‘Letter from Supercargoes to President and Council of Bombay and of Fort St. George, October
30, 1760’, cited in Hosea Morse, The Chronicles, vol. 5, p.93.
38 Van Dyke, Politics and Strategies, pp.57-59.
39 Ibid, p.58.
40 Ibid.
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