Page 47 - The colours of each piece: production and consumption of Chinese enamelled porcelain, c.1728-c.1780

CHAPTER 1 Introduction

manuscript form and with detailed records of manufacture of works of art from 1723

to 1911, this archive is the most important text for understanding the management

system of imperial workshops, now collected in the First Historical Archives in

Beijing.

1.4.2. The English East India Company Canton Factory Records

In any study of the EEIC's commercial links with China, the best source materials are

provided by the Company's own documents, which are located in the India Office

Records (hereafter IOR) in the British library. Up to 1680, the EEIC trade with China

65
was conducted by country ships freighted by the Company’s factory at Bantam, but

it was then decided to employ ships freighted direct from England. By 1715, ships

were dispatched to Canton yearly, with a supercargo appointed to each ship. From

1721, the EEIC’s records of its trade in South China began to be written with diaries

and consultations of the supercargoes of the individual ships for each trade season, in

manuscript form, in which they recorded details of sales and purchases and

negotiations with merchants and officials for the information of the Court of Directors

in London. These Diary and Consultation Books or Factory Records are available for

consultation in the Asian and African Reading Room at the British Library.

The Factory Records of EEIC at Canton were categorised into three sections

within the British Library: first, Factory Records: China and Japan which is also called

65 The ‘country ship’ was a privately-owned merchant vessel that operated under special
restrictions. Under licence from the East India Company, they traded along the Indian and Maylay
coasts to Sumatra, the Eastern Islands and to China and later to Botany Bay, to the Persian Gulf,
the red sea. For studies of ‘Country ships’, Anne Bulley has done very detailed research, Anne
Bulley, The Bombay Country Ships 1790-1833 (London and New York: Curzon, 2000).
31